Guiding Students to Perfect Their Mandarin Pronu...
We cannot possibly discuss all our tone/pronunciation drilling class worksheets and activities in this paper，but we strongly argue that building on the initially established Mandarin pronunciation mechanism is essential and an ongoing process necessitating an allocation of long-term teaching commitments.As already explained in this paper，we introduced the initiative on tone acquisition in the introductory period of the tightly prescribed curriculum.Our task was to design more tone specific listening and Putonghua pronunciation exercises，focussing on tone pronunciation，within class materials and activities integrated into our established teaching and learning system.Listening to model soundtracks or audio texts had traditionally been regarded as the easiest way to improve Mandarin pronunciation，but we found that this was not effective.We formerly led students in reading aloud new vocabulary and texts at the start of a new lesson.This is no longer the case.Now we read aloud all new words and students use the specially prepared worksheets(new words in pinyin without tone marks)to mark the tones they have heard，then discuss，compare and correct their choices with fellow-students and，finally，read the pinyin spellings that they have just completed out aloud.Students’reading of character texts also follows this procedure.Implementing these processes does not necessarily require extra class time but has enabled students to practice Mandarin pronunciation on their own.Our new reading aloud routines are designed to continue developing students’sensitivity in tone identification and pinyin pronunciation skills.
Fig.11.2 IT advancement to enhance tone acquisition
It is encouraging that we have a better understanding on the nature of Mandarin tones as shown in Fig.11.2，which is extracted from a paper(Chun，Jiang，andÁvila，2012).In comparison to Fig.11.1，which has been available for a long while，we can now provide a detailed description of the four tones.This chart illustrates a typical native speaker’s fundamental frequency values(in Hertz)and duration(in seconds)of the tones.The chart explains the tones in measurable units to non-tonal background students and offers a visual aid to help students understand the voice movements in pronouncing a tone(tone contours).Notwithstanding this，we still have difficulty in instructing students to produce the target pitches(fundamental frequency values).The advancement of technology may provide a solution to this dilemma since we now have more means at our disposal to assist students in fine tuning their Mandarin pronunciation.Molholt and Hwu(2008)have advocated using acoustic analyses of speech rather than the simple descriptions or graphic representations that have traditionally been used in instructional materials.Equipped with studies of L2 learning on non-tonal languages，Chun et al.(2012)has argued that when learners see acoustic visualizations of native speakers compared with their own pitch curves，the learners improve their pronunciation.Software programs are available which will convert students word pronunciation recordings into sound waves and pitch curves as shown below.From a lay person’s perspective，students can visualize discrepencies in both the graphs on tone pitches(top parts)and tone contours(bottom parts).This should help students to improve their pronunciation.These advances in our understanding of the tones and the application of new equipment to enhance students tone acquisition have been achieved by linguistic departments in language labs.We，on the other hand，are a group of frontline practitioners with scant linguistic training and without assistance from modern technological equipment.To this extent，perhaps it is appropriate to conclude that the experimental learning processes and procedures outlined in this paper are unique and unprecedented.
Fig.11.3 Native speaker’s bùhē(left)and student’s pre-test bùhē(right)