The Experimental Analysis Of Tone Acquisition By French Primary-Chinese Learners

Tones play an essential role in Chinese learning. However, domestic research on the acquisition of Chinese tones by learners whose mother tongue is French is rare. To explore the acquisition of Chinese tones by primary-level French students, this thesis, by employing a piece of phonetic experimental software and carrying out a questionnaire survey, makes an investigation into French students’acquisition of Chinese tones and their awareness of Chinese tones. Using the linguistic theory, the author analyzes the causes of their errors in learning Chinese tones and proposes relevant teaching strategies.The thesis begins with an introduction which is about the background, subject, methodology and significance of this research. Chinese tones play the role of distinguishing characters and words. It is harder for a Chinese learner to grasp Chinese tones than to grasp the initial consonant and the vowel of a Chinese syllable. What’s more, he is very prone to fossilization. Very few researchers have put focus on French students when they conduct research on tone errors and there is no research at all on French students’acquisition of disyllabic tones. The author therefore decided to probe into local French students’errors in learning monosyllabic and disyllabic tones when volunteering as a Chinese teacher at the Institut Emmanuel d’Alzon in Nimes, France.The second part introduces the theoretical basis and the previous studies of tone acquisition. Studies on tone acquisition errors are mainly based on the interlanguage theory and the theory about Chinese tone patterns. As the means and the scope of the research on tone acquisition develop, some problems arise such as research means should improve its scientific value and the research should be expanded to cover other countries. This thesis holds that the key to these problems is how to apply research findings to practical teaching and find effective teaching strategies.The third part elaborates on the experimental design, the experiment data acquisition methods, and the data processing methods as well. The author makes a random selection of12French students who have learned Chinese for more than one year, and makes a record of their speaking of Chinese tones. Then the author makes an acoustic analysis of the recording materials by using Praat and normalizes the obtained data in order to ensure comparability.As the key part of the thesis, part four describes and analyzes the fundamental frequency and duration of the monosyllabic tones. The phonetic experimental analysis of monosyllabic tones, from a static perspective, reflects French students’errors in tone acquisition. Moreover, the author compares the fundamental frequency data and the duration data of the12French students with those of a Chinese student majoring in broadcasting in order to analyze the errors made by primary-level French students in learning monosyllabic tones.The innovative fifth part describes and analyzes the fundamental frequency of the disyllabic tones. The phonetic analysis of disyllabic tones, from a dynamic perspective, reflects French students’errors in tone acquisition. This part analyzes French students’errors in learning disyllabic tones by comparing their tone patterns and pitches with those of Standard Mandarin.By comparing Chinese tones with French tones, the concluding part analyzes French students’errors in learning Chinese tones caused by the negative transfer of mother tongue. On the other hand, this part makes a questionnaire survey and investigates French students’ awareness of tones and the causes of their errors in learning Chinese tones from their standpoint. Finally, based on the results of the experiment and the survey, the author proposes some effective teaching strategies to remedy the errors made by the French students in learning Chinese tones.Based on the analysis of the phonetic experiment and the questionnaire, the thesis concludes that French students’tonal ranges of the four Chinese tones are narrower than those of Chinese speakers. French students have made the most errors in the second tone because they have made its tone pattern similar to that of the third tone and failed to give it enough rising. Then follows the fourth tone which has not received enough falling. Moreover, French student give a lower pitch to the first tone. They have made very few errors in the third tone and the pattern and pitch of this tone made by French students is quite similar to those in Beijing dialect. For French students, the fourth tone has a shorter duration. According to the analysis results of the disyllabic tones, the main problem faced by French students is that they show a lack of smooth transitions between two syllables. This is especially obvious when a third tone appears before another tone. A second tone when appearing after another tone cannot rise to the top while a fourth tone cannot fall to the bottom. By analyzing the questionnaire results, the thesis finds that French students show certain awareness of the importance of the Chinese tones but fail to do so in practice and they have very few methods of learning Chinese tones. For French students, when the four tones are arrayed in order of difficulty, with difficulty level increasing from left to right, they are the second tone, the fourth tone, the third tone and the first tone respectively.To remedy the errors made by the French students in learning Chinese tones, the author proposes to establish a more precise connection between Chinese tones and French tones, to enlarge students’tonal range, to improve the teaching of the "half-third tone", and to diversify students’methods of practicing disyllabic tones.