The Influence Of Language Experience On Tone Perception By Vietnamese And Mandarine Learners

Both Vietnamese and Chinese are tonal languages.There are six tones in Vietnamese and four tones in Chinese.There are a lot of similarities as well as differences between them.It is considered by lots of studies that the ones including both disparities and resemblance are the most difficult to learn.Therefore,some mistakes have inevitably happened in Chinese learners of Vietnamese language or Vietnamese learnersof Chinese.Hopefully,this study is the acoustics of the ordinary languages in two countries from the perspective of tone perception.In addition,through the experimental study of Vietnamese students and Chinese students make a research on a topic:whether second language(L2)experience affects the learners' perception of tones.Afterward,find and recommend suitable teaching methods to help learners in both countries overcome the tone bias.Evidence indicates that the perceptual assimilation shows different results on L1(mother tongue)and L2 listeners.In this examination of perceptual assimilation of lexical tones,25 native listeners,whose L2 is Mandarin or Vietnamese,along with another 46 native listeners of the two tone languages without L2 experience performed a mapping-rating assimilation task in which they first identified which L1 tone sounded most similar to the L2 tone they heard.The inexperienced listeners assimilated L2 tones to L1 tones with the most similar acoustic properties,i.e.,F0 height and contour.The experienced listeners were additionally influenced by phonological tone changes in Mandarin.In particular,falling rising tones were assimilated to the rising tone in Vietnamese.These findings are discussed in relation to current conceptions of perceptual assimilation.This studyembraces four chapters,namely as following:The first chapter includes the introduction,the reasons for choosing the topic,the research on tones and tone perception in our own countries andoverseas,the research ideas,research methods and prediction of results.The second chapter does analysis of the acoustic characteristics of Vietnamese and Chinese tones.This part shows the comparison and survey of these two languages.Then,according to the results of the analysis,the acoustical comparison between Vietnamese and Chinese is pointed out.The third chapter is the most important part of this thesis.It is an experiment of tonal perception.It includes Vietnamese learners with Chinese experience and without Chinese experience,along with Chinese learners with or without Vietnamese experience.Based on the results of the experiment from the second language experience,give affirmation if it affects learners' tone perception.The last chapter Conclusion.In the current study,this fourth chapter focuses on how second language experience impacts on students' perception of tone,the root causes of inference and tonal teaching ideas.In the end of this study,some data and references which used during research is attached.