The Transfer Of English Intonation On CFL Learners' Tones

Chinese tones have long been considered one of the greatest challenges to learning Chinese.This is especially true for American learners of Chinese as a Foreign Language(CFL).This paper explores some of the reasons native English speakers might have difficulty learning Chinese.It first reviews previous research related to the topic,specifically the research done up until now on Chinese tones and the theory of transfer of the mother tongue when learning a new language.After reviewing previous research,this paper further investigates the impact English intonation has on Chinese tones,specifically negative transfer from English intonation to Chinese tones.The research conducted a survey and recordings of Americans speaking Chinese to analyze the impact of English intonation on Chinese tones in statements,exclamations,and questions.Additionally,a few of the research participants were interviewed further regarding their experience and difficulties learning Chinese tones.Their answers to the questions offer insight into the reasons why Chinese tones are so difficult to American people.The participants were American CFL learners of various backgrounds.Some were beginners,having only studied Chinese for one semester.Others were advanced,having lived in China for an extended period of time.They first completed the survey about their background learning Chinese and noting the difficulty level of different aspects of Chinese pronunciation.Afterwards they completed a recording of 60 sentences,20 of which were statements,20 were questions,and 20 were exclamations.Four Chinese native speakers were recruited as judges to listen to all the recordings and marked the errors made by the speakers.From this group of 29 American CFL learners,six were chosen to complete a follow up interview.The interview consisted of a few questions regarding the difficulty of tones,possible reasons for those tones,the effect of negative transfer of their mother tongue,and how to utilize positive transfer in teaching Chinese tones.The results of the survey show that individual sounds and tones were not rated very highly,but that differentiating between similar sounds and similar tones could be more difficult for American CFL learners.The survey results also show that American CFL learners have great difficulty memorizing the tones of words.The results of the analysis of the recordings of American CFL learners reading Chinese statements,questions,and exclamations indicate that the third tone gave the research participants the most difficulty.It is also found that the occurrence of tone errors was higher in questions than in other types of sentences,possibly indicating that the English intonation patterns common in questions interfere with Chinese tone production of native English speakers speaking Chinese.Additionally,this paper suggests some teaching methods for teaching Chinese tones and how to utilize positive transfer to aid English speakers when learning Chinese tones.