An Investigation Into Phonological Problems Faced By Burundian Learners Of Chinese

Discussing about second language acquisition,issues relating to language transfer will emerge.Do the individuals' L1 experiences affect their L2 learning?Numerous past researches dealt with segmental level transfer have contributed a lot of findings,and one of the most significant finding is the Perceptual Assimilation Model(PAM)(Best 1995),which suggests that listeners' native language phonology greatly influences their perception of non-native phones.Listeners perceptually assimilate the non-native phones to their native phonemes.What about language transfer on supra-segmental level such as on tone in Mandarin?Tones in Mandarin lexis are a quite difficult part to learn than other tonal or non-tonal languages,which have been demonstrated by numerous past investigations(Chi 2005,Zhang 2004).This study intended to investigate tonal difficulties encountered by Burundian learners of Chinese.This choice was motivated by the fact that Kirundi and Chinese are both tonal languages and thus might have the same tonal features.However,as Kirundi native speaker,when I was studying Chinese,I encountered difficulties relating to tones,and those difficulties persist.An experiment was carried out on 30 Burundian students in Wuhan,whose mother tongue is Kirundi;all of them had studied Chinese before they began their majors.Participants were asked to read 30 Chinese words carrying different tones while the sounds were being recorded.Chinese native speakers helped to judge the accuracy of their pronunciation.It was found that Kirundi tones affect Chinese tones.Again,the result showed that although Mandarin tones are difficult to learn,yet,if they are started at early age,with a help of local Mandarin teacher and constant practice,students can learn them.