Tonal Error Analysis Of Vietnamese Students In Learning Chinese

Learning Chinese languages could be challenging for foreigner,especially for beginners' students.It is because learning foreign language is strongly influenced by the learner‘s first language and the role of the first language in second language performance seemed as a negative transfer and possibly produce error.Moreover,Chinese pronunciation consists of three parts,namely;vowels,consonants and tones,and it makes foreign students find more difficult in pronouncing and mastering Chinese.In hence,the researcher conducted a research aimed to find out tonal error performed by beginner level of Vietnamese CSOL(Chinese for speaker of other language)students in learning Chinese;compared Chinese and Vietnamese tones;pointed out the similarities and differences between Chinese and Vietnamese tones,analyzed the causes of errors,and put forward some teaching suggestions.This research employed an experimental research design.The purposive sampling technique was used to collect the research subject data on Vietnamese college students in China.The research instrument was used voice recorder and applied PRAAT in recording and analyzes the voice of Vietnamese students when pronouncing and speaking Chinese.This Research focused on the use of Chinese'monosyllable,disyllabic and sentences.The result of this research found that;from the four types of Chinese tones,Vietnamese students found more difficult in pronouncing “first tone” and “second tone” than “third tone” and “fourth tone” of Chinese monosyllable.Then,further analysis on the use of Chinese disyllabic or words,this study found that pronouncing Chinese “articulation”,“neutral tone” and “tone sandhi” are more difficult for Vietnamese students.This is because of the effect of students' mother tongue.So,it can be concluded that the role of mother tongue showed significant effect for Vietnamese students when they speak Chinese.This also could influence the students' Chinese competence in a certain way.