A Comparative Phonological Error Analysis Of Thai Learners Of Chinese

The number of people learning Chinese in Thailand is greatly increasing because of increasing economic and cultural communication between the two countries. When Chinese learning enjoys a good development among Thai students, many problems naturally arise. Chinese pronunciation is one of these problems. Till now, it is still difficult for both students and teachers. Phonological learning is the first step in the process of second language acquisition. Standard pronunciation can greatly promote other linguistic proficiency. But I notice that most of previous scholars only concern Chinese learners in Thailand. No one has given a comparative phonological error analysis between Thai students in Thailand and China. In this paper, I have attempted to fill this blank based on previous studies, in hopes of working out their similarities and differences. I have designed a group of testing tables including all Chinese initial, finals and four tones so that my study could be more plausible. Every Chinese characters have labeled with pinyin. Data collecting have been finished in two schools: one is a Suan Dusit Rajabhat University in Thailand, and the other is Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. There are two groups of testee: Thai students learning Chinese in China and Thai students learning Chinese in Thailand, with students of the same Chinese learning time in the same group. I have adopted Error Analysis Theory and Inter-language Theory to do a deep analysis based on the collected data. Through this, I hope that my study can give some implications to teaching method of pronunciation in Thailand and helping Chinese learners in Thailand well mater Chinese pronunciation rules.