Learning a Tonal Language by Attending to the Tone: An In Vivo Experiment

Abstract

Learning the Chinese tone system is a major challenge to students of Chinese as a second or foreign language. Part of the problem is that the spoken Chinese syllable presents a complex perceptual input that overlaps tone with segments. This complexity can be addressed through directing attention to the critical features of a component (tone in this case) within a complex perceptual input stimulus. We tested hypotheses based on this feature-focusing assumption in an in vivo classroom setting. First-year students in a Chinese language program at a U.S. university were trained to identify the Liu et al.Learning a Tonal Language by Attending to the Tone tones of 228 syllables learned across eight lessons in the first semester. Three learning conditions were designed to support tone learning by presenting (a) visual pitch contours that depict the acoustic shape of the tones, together with pinyin spelling of the spoken syllables (Contour + Pinyin condition); (b) numbers that represent the tones in traditional computer interface, together with pinyin spelling of the spoken syllables (Number + Pinyin condition); and (c) visual pitch contours without pinyin spelling (Contour Only condition). Analyses of student activity logs (learning curves) and pretests and posttests showed significant effects of learning condition. The results suggested that the Contour + Pinyin condition had more error reduction in tone recognition over the activity log than the Contour Only condition and greater improvement from the pretest to posttest than the Number + Pinyin condition. These findings point at the value of separate support for the two major components (tone and segments) of a tonal language.

Emphasising sound and meaning: pitch gestures enhance Mandarin lexical tone acquisition

“…These pitch contours make Mandarin lexical tones especially conducive to visual depiction. Indeed, English speakers can learn to identify Mandarin lexical tones effectively when their pitch contours are illustrated using static visual depictions in combination with orthographic representations of words containing them (Liu et al, 2011). This finding is consist ent with dual coding theory (Paivio, 1990), which posits that learning is reinforced when information is encoded simultaneously through the visual and verbal modalities.…”

“…Although it has been claimed that lexical tones are particularly difficult for atonal language speakers to acquire (Kiriloff, 1969;Shen, 1989), research has shown that English speakers can be trained to successfully differentiate between Mandarin tones (Wang, Spence, Jongman, & Sereno, 1999;Wong & Perrachione, 2007). There is evidence that visual illustrations of lexical tones facilitate their acquisition (Bluhme & Burr, 1971;Liu et al, 2011), and that meaning-related iconic hand gesture enhances the learning of L2 word-meaning associations (Kelly, McDevitt, & Esch, 2009;Tellier, 2008). To date, however, no research has examined whether gesture can facilitate English speakers' acquisition of Mandarin words differing in lexical tone.…”

Do Explicit Instruction and High Variability Phonetic Training Improve Nonnative Speakers’ Mandarin Tone Productions?

“…At the end of the computerized lesson, participants were again reminded that the pitch or tone of the syllable is important for symbol learning. During the passive listening and shadowing phases of the training, the word's visual tone contour (following Liu et al., ), Pinyin with tone diacritics (following Mok et al., ; Showalter & Hayes–Harb, ), and nonce symbol were all simultaneously shown on screen while the audio was presented over headphones. Figure shows an example of fe2 with its nonce symbol on the right, the tone's rising F0 contour, and the word's syllable–tone written in Pinyin romanization on the left.…”

Hearing and Seeing Tone Through Color: An Efficacy Study of Web‐Based, Multimodal Chinese Tone Perception Training

“…Despite the challenge posed by Mandarin tones, a plethora of perception studies has shown that speakers of nontonal languages can and do learn to perceive tones in a relatively short period of time (Chang & Bowles, ; Lee, Tao, & Bond, ; Liu et al., ; Shi, ; Showalter & Hayes‐Harb, ; Wang, Spence, Jongman, & Sereno, ; Yang, ). In Wang et al.’s () study, eight participants, who were also enrolled in a second‐year Chinese course at the time of the experiment, increased tone identification accuracy by an average of 21% through eight training sessions over a 2‐week period.…”

“…What the studies reviewed here suggest is that as much as Mandarin tone learning is perceptual, it is also multimodal, involving aural (e.g., Wang et al., ), visual (e.g., Chun et al., ), verbal (e.g., Showalter & Hayes‐Harb, ), and even kinesthetic cues, such as when participants physically interact with digital training tools in an online tutor (Liu et al., ). While previous researchers did not explicitly situate their studies in CTML, sensory modality played an important role in all of them.…”