Tuning into Mandarin Tone Fun
Tonal Challenge
For native English speakers, Mandarin Chinese is a challenge to learn because it is a tonal language. Numerous pedagogical approaches have been developed to aid learners’ Mandarin tone learning with varying degrees of effectiveness and a limited fun factor.
Innovative Approach
This present study is the first phase of our larger project that aims to create an innovative way of gamifying the process of Mandarin tone acquisition and ultimately to produce an app game.
Objectives
We will test the reliability of a novel experiment instrument that we have developed based on theoretical insights culled from the relevant literature on Mandarin tone acquisition. This instrument consists of approximately 1,200 monosyllabic Mandarin sounds, which are arranged in the hierarchy of difficulty in Mandarin tone learning for English speakers.
Research Question
This study is designed to answer a critical research question: To what extent does the empirical data of Mandarin tone perception and production collected from true novice English speakers support the theoretical model of a hierarchy of difficulty used as the experiment instrument?
Experiment Design
Part I: Tone Perception
Two groups of participants (control and experiment) will play a Mandarin tone
perception app, which is designed to assess their
ability to perceptually discriminate different tones in monosyllabic Mandarin Chinese words.
Part II: Tone Production
The same groups of participants will play a Mandarin tone production game, which is designed to measure their
natural ability to mimic monosyllabic Mandarin
Chinese words.
Part III: Tone Production Assessment
Two groups of native Mandarin speakers (trained in linguistics/phonetics and untrained) will assess the accuracy of the novice learners’ tone production utilizing a rubric developed by our research team. The resulting data will help us better understand how Mandarin speakers themselves perceive tones produced by non-native speakers.
Data Analysis
The data resulting from this study will be analyzed through quantitative methods to measure intra-speaker and inter-speaker differences. We will use statistical tests (such as Psychopy, Praat and R. ANOVA and t-test) to gauge the reliability of the hierarchy of difficulty in Mandarin tone learning used as the experiment instrument for the study.
Broader Impact
Based on the data analysis, we will modify the initial hierarchy of difficulty in tone acquisition for the present study. The modified hierarchy of difficulty can be used for a variety of purposes. The next stage of this study is to build a tone learning app game with a level design based on the modified hierarchy of difficulty. This app game itself will serve as an experiment instrument for a larger study, which will also include a feedback system complete with a tone analysis tool.