A Study On Teaching Of Tones For Korean Students Of Short-term Chinese Training In China

The acquisition of tones in Chinese has always been comparatively difficult for Korean learners of Chinese, so great importance must be attached to it in classroom teaching, especially for students of short-term Chinese training in China. For this kind of training course, the teaching of tones should be distinctive, efficient and effective due to the limitations on time, curriculum design etc. This present research explores the teaching of tones for students from Sungshin Women’s University who came to China for short-term Chinese training. Below is the structure of the thesis:The first chapter is the introductory part which presents the rationale, state quo, subject and methodology of the present research.The second chapter introduces the basics of the survey on the acquisition of tones at the beginning of the training course, which is composed of three parts: listening test, reading test and questionnaire with a focus on the pronunciation and intonation. All the words in the listening test and reading test are collected and analyzed in terms of error rate and error form.The third chapter probes into the possible reasons for these errors in tones and proposes corresponding teaching strategies, based on the test results of students from Sungshin Women’s University who came to China for intensive summer training. The author believes that the following factors should be responsible: the negative transfer of Korean, inaccurate instruction of local teachers in Korea, learning motivation etc. On this basis, the author proposes the following strategies: enlarge the weight of tones teaching in pronunciation class, cultivate students’ interest in tones of Chinese and boost intensive training in tones.The fourth chapter explores the effectiveness of tone teaching, which involves a post-test on the acquisition of tones, a contrastive analysis and inspirations for future teaching. The author also gives some advice on teaching tones for local Chinese teachers in Korea.The last chapter serves as the conclusive part which is a summary of what has been discussed throughout the thesis.