A Study Of The Interference Of Chinese Tone On English Intonation Learning For Chinese Students

Tone and intonation can be mutually exclusive depending on their diversified changes in pitch level and their various use of pitch pattern in language. Their reciprocal influence is quite common in the same language or between two different languages. Throughout the past 20 years or so, exploring the negative effects of English intonation responsible for obstructing Chinese tone learning has become one of the most intriguing topics in the field of TCFL research. Regrettably, however, the converse influence hasn't aroused much interest among scholars in the field of TEFL research until recently.In this thesis, both the micro-contrastive study and the macro-contrastive study are used to demonstrate the distinctions between Chinese tone and English intonation. The study of their differences aims to reveal the interference of Chinese tone on failure in learning English intonation for Chinese students. Admittedly, the former study has attracted much attention among a few linguistic researchers, which could provide a theoretical basis for our understanding of such interference. However, it is hoped that the latter study as this thesis has presented from a practical perspective can be associated with the existing former, to help Chinese students see the distinctions between the two more adequately, and accordingly to find out how these differences may pose some certain interference on their study of English intonation more easily. What is more, due to the analysis of this interference, this thesis focuses on some related methods to overcome the problems that have hindered Chinese students from learning English intonation.This thesis is divided into six chapters. Chapter 1 presents a brief introduction composed of the research background, the literature review and the outline of this thesis. Chapter 2 is concerned with why Chinese tone and English intonation can be brought into the touch with the contrastive analysis. In addition, it introduces two contrastive approaches and discusses their advantages and disadvantages. Through the use of these two approaches, chapter 3 and 4 are the bulk of the paper that concentrates on the contrastive analysis of Chinese tone and English intonation to look at the interference of the former on Chinese students'acquisition of the latter. Chapter 5 provides some solutions for Chinese students to keep the interference of Chinese tone on learning English intonation manageable. The last chapter deals with conclusions, implications and limitations.This thesis should give us reason to believe the phenomenon that English intonation learning is disturbed by Chinese tone for most Chinese students and to treat it as identical to Chinese tone learning for many English students of Chinese as a second or foreign language. Supporting evidence mainly comes from sentence stress, changes of pitch level, tone patterns and tone value involved in English intonation, which are not so easy for Chinese students to acquire under the negative influence of Chinese tone. Although the significance of this thesis is to expound the interference of Chinese tone on English intonation learning for Chinese students, it has become clear that the other ultimate significance is to achieve Chinese students' progress of English intonation learning through the analysis of this interference.