Topic > The Tonal Language: Chinese - 1302

Some aspects of the Chinese phonological system cause difficulties for English language learners. One of the most common difficulties is accent and intonation, which are different between Chinese and English. Chinese is a tonal language. This not only means that tones make up Chinese words, but also means that the meaning of the Chinese word is determined by different tones. American students also use tone-like patterns of stress and intonation, even if they don't realize it, to express different feelings through variation. In Chinese, the reason we have tones is that there is much less variation in the sounds than in most other sounds. languages, such as English. The source of difficulty in learning tones has generally been attributed to the interference of first language features, with knowledge of the function of pitch in English stress and intonation systems strongly influencing listeners' perception of Chinese tones Americans (White, 1981; Broselow et al., 1987). English speakers use intonation and stress to identify words or to highlight important words in a sentence. There are two situations: the first is that no matter how English speakers change the tones of a word without context, the meaning itself does not change at all. For example, education↗ in a rising tone and education↘ in an autumnal tone express the same meaning. Another situation is to change the intonation of the entire sentence in context to convey different feelings and different meanings. A sentence can be understood in different ways due to the variation in intonation. For example, the phrase "she's going back to China" is usually pronounced as a statement like: "she's going back" to ↘China. We might hear it in another informal way: She's going back' to... middle of the paper. .. k the low level trainee students read the exercises and ask the inter-advanced level students to answer which word they heard and translated the meaning. Then offer some sentences that include variations of the Chinese tone that pose a challenge to the students, ask students to practice how to pronounce them. Help students pronounce the sentence correctly. To fix the tonal pattern in students' minds, ears, and speech habits, I will ask them to repeat the sentences together and then individually until they sound. them perfectly natural. Differentiation: Students in the class are all American students but with a different cultural background. Student is low intermediate and medium intermediate. I will separate students with different language proficiency levels into two groups so that students do not find it harder or easier to pronounce and recognize tones.