Asian Students' Chinese Phonological "u,ü" Acquisition And Error Analysis

Through observing the classes and communicating with the students, I found that some students have difficulty in pronouncing the vowels "u " and " ü " properly, especially for the Asian students from the intermediate classes.To find out the causes of the errors and the effective teaching strategies, this paper will conduct the study using the methods of teaching observation, case study and interviews. Praat voice-analysis software is used in analyzing the mistakes the Asian students have made. In the empirical investigation,the analysis of recording shows that the negative transfer of first language and the target language itself are not the only causes of the errors, the teachers ' teaching methods and some other aspects have some influence as well.To study the Asian students' acquisition of "u” and “ ü", the paper uses the SPSS statistical software to make quantitative analysis on the data derived from surveys at first. Then the Praat voice-analysis software summarizes the frequency of the mistakes from the following aspects: the places of articulation, and consonants and the vowels pronunciation. Secondly, concrete analysis of the pronuncing errors is made. The analysis found that the errors are mainly caused by the interference of the mother tongue, target language and teaching methods.The suggestions on improving the teaching of the vowels “u” and “ü” are proposed at the end of the paper based on the study.The innovation of this paper is the using of SPSS statistical software and the Praat voice-analysis software when analyzing the Asian students' mistakes in pronouncing “u” and “ü”. It makes the comparative analysis of the audio material more objective, which is very important for me to draw reasonable conclusions and to propose effective suggestions.