Acoustic Perceptual Training:Developing Sense an...
As important as it is，listening itself will not help students to overcome their natural tone indifference.What is required，therefore is acoustic perceptual training，comprising listening exercises initially on single-syllable pinyin combinations.Equipped with illustrations from familiar use of English language tones(introduced earlier in this paper)，we require students to perceive what tones are，tell the differences between the tones，and eventually to be able to identify and recognize the tones.“Studies in the perceptual domain have shown that the various acoustic cues are functionally integrated when Mandarin speakers identify the tones”(Moore and Jongman，1997).The hemispheric processing of Mandarin tones reveals that，for native speakers，it is lateralized in the left hemisphere，suggesting that tones are processed as linguistic units，just like the segmental properties.For speakers of a non-tonal language such as English，the processing of Mandarin tones lies in the homologous right hemisphere frontal regions，similar to the processing of pitch as a non-linguistic stimulus.(Wang，Jongman，and Sereno，2006).
Other studies have consistently shown that after shortperceptual tone training，non-native speakers of Mandarin improved both their perception and production of Mandarin tones.(Wang，Jongman，and Sereno，2006).This conclusion sounds vague，however，since it fails to nominate which specific aspects of tone production(single or double syllabic pinyin combinations and patterns of tone pairs etc.)were improved and by what percentage，and which specific tones and tone pairs，e.g.tones 1 and 2，tones 2 and 3 were improved.There is a hypothesis that“not all instances of non-native phonetic production have a perceptual origin.Some segments that are not used in learners’L1 phonetic system may present difficulties for production learning”(Wang，Jongman，and Sereno 2003).With this in mind，we face more questions than answers.How can we translate any improvement gained by a brief acoustic tone perceptual training program into acceptable，if not one hundred percent correct，tone production at an initial learning stage?Historically teachers of Chinese at all school levels have not had an expectation that non-tonal language background beginner students’pronunciation and production of tones will be consistently accurate.In other words，it has been unimaginable for Chinese teachers to expect students to achieve“getting it right the first time”on Mandarin tones.