Analysis Of Italian Middle School Students’ Acquisition Errors In Single Characters Of Mandarin Tones

This thesis studies eight Italian students with elementary or intermediate level of Chinese proficiency, who are studying in the Chinese class at Ulisse Dini middle school, Pisa, Italy. This thesis analyzes their intonation errors in pronouncing single Chinese characters, within acoustic area. By means of in-class observation, interview, and acoustic experiment, the causes of such errors are found, and corresponding teaching solutions are proposed.Chinese intonation is significant in differentiating meanings of the Chinese language and is one of the criteria to assess the accuracy of one’s Chinese pronunciation. Learning Chinese as a second language, the extent to which learners have acquired the intonation determines whether they can speak fluent Chinese in verbal communication. Therefore studying intonation plays a vital role in the process of Chinese learning. While teaching at Ulisse Dini, the writer found that the students had great problems learning intonations and uttering them. That is why this study took place.Experiment analysis, in-class observation, and after-class interview are chosen as the methodology to investigate Italian students’ errors in learning intonation of single Chinese character. Praat is used to acoustically analyze the pronunciation recordings, to normalize the fundamental frequency of single character tone, to extract data, and ultimately, to make a comparison between the data and standard Mandarin. Afterwards, the experiment findings are incorporated with the in-class observation and the after-class interview on the eight speakers in order to summarize why their mistakes occur.It is found that students mainly encounter the following difficulties in learning and practicing the four intonations of single characters. They have the greatest problem reaching the standard phonetic value of the second tone, and following the third tone. They are inclined to confuse these two tones. The first tone and the fourth tone are relatively easy for them. That has a bearing on Italian learners’ mother tongue, learning environment, and listen-and-tell ability.Accordingly, teaching proposals are made with respect to raise intonation awareness, emphasize the sequence of teaching intonations, improve textbook descriptions of intonations, and intensify the use of computer as teaching assistance, etc. Hopefully, targeting at Italian middle school students’ studying, this paper can help to verify predecessors’ findings, and comes up with effective teaching approaches for Chinese learning.