The Acoustic Study And Teaching Strategies Of Kyrgyzstan Beginners On Chinese Tones

This study is a phonetic experimental study on the performance and acquisition of dis-syllable tones of Russian speaking Chinese learners in Kyrgyzstan, comparing with the tones of three Chinese teachers. Using Praat, a modern phonetic analysis software, we measured and obtained pitches of the recording samples with 20 tones consisting of one-word, two-words and simple sentences so as to discovered the regular patterns of tone performance behind the common errors. On the basis of former relative theories, we analyzed the reasons of the inaccuracy and errors in their tone performance, aiming at providing some reference for both the Russian speaking learners in Kyrgyzstan and the Chinese teachers, especially later researchers in this field. There are five chapters in this paper:Chapter I Introduction We introduced the background, research objects and methods, purpose and significance of research overview.Chapter II The Design and Process of Tone Experimental We invited 30 Russian speaking Chinese learners of beginning level as our subjects, and 3 native Chinese speakers(Mandarin level 1-A) to join our control group. As to the recording text, we designed a word list consisting of 20 disyllabic words, covering all possible tone combinations. Both the subjects and members of the control group are required to read the word list twice in our recording procedure. Praat reads the fundamental frequency of each syllable at 11 equally divided points.Chapter III The Analysis of the Experimental Data With the T Value Normalization Method, we transformed the values of fundamental frequency into a pitch value on a scale from 0 to 5. After calculating the average pitch values of both the subject group and the control group at each point, we draw both pitch lines in one graph and the tone acoustic space of the subject group in order to discover the errors and performance patterns of the subjects, meanwhile to conclude the feature and rule of the errors.In dissyllabic words, the single word was pronounced best in all groups. And the worst perform appeared in the simple sentences for the influence of the former or latter syllables.Chapter IV The Analysis of Error With the theories of error analysis, co-articulation, inter-language hypothesis, and the comparison of pitch and intonation patterns between Russian and Chinese languages, we try to explain the reasons that caused the error patterns above.Chapter V The Strategies of Tone Teaching Based on the type and causes of errors, we put forward specific teaching special and practical strategies on tone teaching to enhance Russian speaking Chinese beginners in Kyrgyzstan.Conclusions We summarized comprehensively the tone errors’ types of Chinese beginners, and pointed out shortcomings of the experiment to improve.