Study Of Filipino Students Learning Mandarin Pronunciation

This essay studies on the Filipino students from local schools whoare learning Mandarin. Based on the peculiarities of Mandarin phoneticsystem, this essay compares Mandarin with Filipino phonetic, in order tosummarize the regular pattern of the errors. On this basis, consider theaffecting factors on Filipino students who learn Mandarin, the essay comeup with some more effective teaching strategies and methods ofpronunciation for Filipino students.Filipino and Mandarin belong to different language families, one isAustronesian, the other is a Sino-Tibetan language family. These twolanguages have a great difference on pronunciation between each other.Those differences give the Filipino leaners many obstacles while learningthe pronunciation of Mandarin. The essay is based on the Mandarin phoneticsystem, conducting a comparative analysis of both vowels and consonantsof the two languages. Through the comparison of voice and articulation,we can generally divide Mandarin into three types:1. The same voicebetween Mandarin and Filipino;2. The voice is similar, but slightlydifferent in articulation;3. There is no such voice in Filipino. Forlearners the first type of voice is easy to acquire, once they find thesame voice from their mother language–Filipino; the second type isaffected by their mother language, learners are easily made errors onthose voice, teachers should find out the errors and correct them in timeto avoid the rigid phenomenon of pronunciation; the third type takes moretime for learners to acquire than the first type, but once learners getthe correct pronunciation they will not forget. For tones, the essay usesZhao Yuanren’s Five Phonetic Method as a standard to summarize errorsof learners’ pronunciation.Same as other languages learning process, Filipino students areaffected by many factors during their Mandarin learning process. Thesefactors can be summarized as: characteristics of Mandarin; the complexspelling rules of Mandarin; subjective factors from learners; externalenvironmental impact on Mandarin’s education.Based on these affecting factors, the essay suggests some teachingstrategies and methods for Filipino students in hope to promote teachingMandarin phonetics in the Philippines.