Mandarin Speakers' Listening Limitations: Focus on Consonants and Vowels
Chia-hsin Ellen Lee
Major Professor: Ruth Johnson, Ph.D.The purposes of this study are as follows: Firstly the study is to investigate the four Mandarin subjects' perception and production limitations by interviewing four subjects, and testing their listening discrimination and sentence transcription. Additionally, the correlation between listening discrimination and overall listening comprehension is investigated.
Secondly, the study is to examine whether or not the subjects' perception and production limitations confirm the researchers' prediction, which was suggested by the analysis of comparing and contrasting L1 (Mandarin) and L2 (English).
Thirdly, the study is to reveal the importance of teaching listening discrimination and pronunciation in the early stages of L2 learning.
Lastly, because of the limited studies of Mandarin speakers' perception and production, this study is meant to contribute to the field as a guide.
Some findings are revealed: To begin with, the subjects' perception and production limitations are in the scope of the researchers' predictions. The subjects experienced difficulties in the production of /
,eI,æ/. Many predicted limitations do not appear because of individual differences; subjects have their own pace, learning experiences and styles.
The study results show that there is a link between the lack of ability in listening discrimination and a lack of ability in listening. From the sentence transcription test, all of the subjects encounter these problems, such as confusion related to /i, I/,/
Comparing the four subjects' perception and production abilities, subject three's overall performance was better than the others. The significant differences between these four subjects are as follows:
Subject three learned English phonemes in the early stages of L2 development. In that stage, she consciously focused her L2 learning on listening discrimination and pronunciation, and spent more time practicing phonemes by using tapes. More importantly, the speaker on those tapes is a native speaker of English and the tapes also come with a book which presents techniques for pronouncing English consonants and vowels. Pictures of tongue positions and mouth shapes are also shown in the book.
Master of Arts Degree in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), presented on April 15, 1999, at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.
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