effects of high variability phonetic training on monosyllabic and disyllabic Mandarin Chinese tones for L2 Chinese learners

Although computer-assisted auditory perceptual training has been shown to be effective in learning Mandarin Chinese tones in monosyllabic words, tone learning has not been systematically investigated in disyllabic words. In the current study, seventeen native English-speaking beginning learners of Chinese were trained using high variability phonetic training paradigm. Two perceptual training groups, a monosyllabic training group and a disyllabic training group, were compared and accuracy in identifying the tonal contrasts in naturally produced monosyllabic and disyllabic words (produced by native Mandarin Chinese speakers) was evaluated. The learners' performance on tones in disyllabic words was also investigated in terms of syllable position (initial and final position), tonal context (compatible and conflicting context), and tonal sequence (same and different sequence). Results showed that after four training sessions in a two-week period, beginning learners of Chinese significantly increased their tonal identification accuracy from the pretest (60%) to posttest (65%) and this improvement in training generalized to new stimuli by a new speaker (12% increase). The current findings, however, did not show significant differences between the monosyllabic perceptual training group and disyllabic perceptual training group: both showed improvements from pretest to posttest. Although native English-speaking learners in both training groups made improvements in their tonal identification performance in general, when examining learning for the two types of stimuli (monosyllabic and disyllabic stimuli), the results showed distinct patterns in the learners' performance. While both training groups improved tonal perception in monosyllabic stimuli, training with disyllabic stimuli (disyllabic training group) was much more effective (especially for the disyllabic stimuli) and significantly helped native English-speaking participants to acquire the tones. These results illustrate the limitations of the current tone teaching based solely on monosyllabic words. Instead, the current results advocate for incorporating more common disyllabic words, which are highly variable, into tone learning routines in the classroom in order to achieve native-like tone acquisition.