Study On Tone Acquisition Of Chinese Learners From Different Language Backgrounds

This study proposed two hypotheses according to Transferring Theory of Contrastive Analysis and Speech Learning Model.According to the Transferring Theory of Contrastive Analysis,it put forward the hypothesis that the Chinese language learners whose mother tongue is tonal language produce better Chinese tones than the learners whose mother tone is non-tone language.And according to the Speech Learning Model,it put forward the hypothesis that the Chinese language learners whose mother tongue is non-tone language produce better Chinese tones than the learners whose mother tone is tonal language.In order to test the two hypotheses proposed,this study adopted an experimental phonetics method by examining the acoustic output of Chinese single-character tones and double-character tones of 12 Bangladeshi learners and 12 Thai learners,and compared to the production result of 8native Chinese speakers to explore the effect of tone language experience on Chinese language as second language tone acquisition.In this study,the fundamental frequency and duration data of 32 speakers were extracted by the speech analysis software Praat,and SPSS was used to analyze the data by the growth curve modeling.The experimental results show that,this study supports the hypothesis proposed by Transferring Theory of Contrastive Analysis that the Chinese language learners whose mother tongue is tonal language produce better Chinese tones than the learners whose mother tone is non-tone language.Moreover,with the continuous improvement of learners’ Chinese proficiency,the performance of their tone production is gradually approaching that of Chinese native speakers.Finally,based on the experimental results,the article puts forward relevant teaching suggestions for the teaching and training of Chinese tones,reflects on the shortcomings of this research,and puts forward prospects for future research.