This paper addresses issues that concern both learning Chinese as a foreign languageand the didactics of teaching Chinese as a foreign language. It reports an experimental study thataims to establish the basic facts regarding the production of Mandarin tones by Swedish learners.10 Swedish learners who have studied Chinese for 3 to 4 terms were recruited to read monosyllabicChinese words and their pronunciation was subjected to both statistical and acoustic analyses, in orderto examine the students’ pronunciation (especially tones) and assess the levels of difficulty posed bythe four lexical tones respectively. It was found that Tone 3 is most challenging to Swedish learners,and Tone 1 is easiest for them to pronounce correctly. Moreover, Swedish speakers were most likelyto mispronounce Tone 1, Tone 3, and Tone 4 as Tone 2, and mispronounce Tone 2 as Tone 1. Threetone-error types were identified through acoustic analysis, and their distribution pattern lends furthersupport to the claim that level tone is easier to learn than contour tones. Based on these findings,pedagogical implications are addressed and recommendations for Chinese language teachers areformulated.
While existing cross-language studies on the perception of non-native tones primarily focus on naïve listeners, this study addresses an obvious gap by investigating learners from diverse language backgrounds. Specifically, it investigates Mandarin tone perception in two groups of learners from Nordic languages, Swedish (a pitch-accent language), and Danish (a non-tonal language), as well as in a group of native Chinese speakers. Analysis of their performance in tone identification task revealed a slight advantage for Swedish learners, implying the influence of their pitch accent background in learning Mandarin tones. However, both Swedish and Danish learners who excelled in the tone identification task exhibited similar perception of within-category tonal variations but differed from native Chinese speakers. Additionally, the study found that the presence of length contrast, a prosodic feature in the learners’ native languages, significantly influences their perception of Mandarin tones.
Technology is playing an increasingly important role in language education, and today most teachers of Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) probably embrace at least a few digital tools to enhance their work. In this workshop, an overview will first be presented of a range of digital tools currently used in CFL teaching and learning, such as Adobe Connect, Adobe Presenter, online language learning sites and apps on smart phones. The workshop then proceeds to a structured discussion on these tools; common practices, further possibilities, and potential problems will be considered, drawing partly on the participants’ own experiences.
In recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of students enrolled in Chinese language course in Sweden – in high schools as well as universities – due to the increased relevance of China within a Swedish context. As may be expected, one of the major challenges for Swedish students is the tonal system of Mandarin Chinese. Further understanding of the production,perception and acquisition of Chinese tones by Swedes is therefore crucial in order to develop effective teaching methodology and, potentially, optimized learning strategies for speakers of Swedish. The current study investigates the perception and production of Chinese tones by Swedish students. The first goal is to characterize the errors made by Swedish students and assess the levels of difficulty posed by the four lexical tones respectively. The performance of 30 students enrolled in beginning-level Chinese courses at Dalarna University, Sweden, is investigated. Participants completed an identification task and a speaking task at the beginning of the course and after one month of study. The results are reported and analyzed on the basis of accuracy percentages,confusion matrices and error patterns. The second goal is to explore the role and potential of Swedish tone-accents for the teaching of Mandarin tones. Swedish is characterized as having pitch accents – a significantly more marginal tonal phenomenon than lexical tones but nevertheless involving pitch contrasts (Bruce, 1977; Thorén, 1997). Previous studies have shown that learners whose L1 (native language) is a tone language (e.g. Thai, Cantonese) may benefit from their L1 in identifying and producing Mandarin tones, compared with learners whose L1 is non-tonal (e.g. English) (Gandour and Harshman, 1978; Gandour, 1983; Lee et al., 1996; etc). It is conceivable that the pitch-accent background of Swedish students may be an advantage in the acquisition of Mandarin tones, which could potentially be utilized in future teaching strategies. The present study contains a preliminary assessment of this issue, through a comparison of Swedish students’ performance in perception and production tasks with those of American students reported in previous studies (Shen, 1989; Miracle, 1989; Hao, 2007).
Models of cross-language perception suggest that listeners’ native language plays a significant role in perceiving another language, and propose that listeners assimilate non-native speech sounds to similar sounds in their native language. In this study, the effect of native language on the perception of Mandarin tones by Swedish learners is examined. Swedish learners participated in an identification task, and their performance was analyzed in terms of accuracy percentages and error patterns. The ranking of difficulty level among the four lexical tones by Swedish listeners differs from that found among English native listeners in previous studies. The error patterns also reveal that Swedish listeners confuse Tone 1 and 2, Tone 3 and 4, and Tone 2 and 4, the first two pairs rarely being confused by English listeners. These findings may be explained with the assimilation account: Swedish learners assimilate Tone 3 and 4 to Swedish pitch accents, thus they exhibit a unique pattern when perceiving the tones in Mandarin.
Little research has been carried out on the perception of tones by Swedish listeners previously. This study examined the perception of Mandarin tones by Swedish learners, with the focus on Tone 1-Tone 2 contrast. In addition to the four-alternative identification task, a two-way identification task with Tone 1-Tone 2 continua of stimuli with incrementally varied pitch contour was also carried out. The results show that Tone 1 and Tone 2 are more challenging for Swedish learners to identify correctly than the other two tones. Among Swedes who can identify Tone 1 and Tone 2 with a high accuracy score, native speakers of Swedish perceived the fine tonal variations differently from native Chinese speakers. The syllable duration is found to affect the perception of tone contrast, especially for Swedish learners. Possible auditory enhancement accounts for the effect of the duration are offered to explain the Swedish learners’ performance.
In this study the intra- and inter-gestural timing and coordination in English closed syllables and Taiwanese checked syllables is examined. Kinematic data elicited from a repetition task reveals that the vowel is co-articulated with the onset and coda consonants to a greater extent in Taiwanese checked syllables than English closed syllables; for Taiwanese greater overlap is observed between the hetero-syllabic coda and onset consonants. The different gestural overlap patterns in Taiwanese and English are accounted for with reference to the language-specific gestural pattern.
This study aims to compare English closed syllables and Taiwanese checked syllables regarding both 1) intra-syllabic coordination: the timing relations between onset and coda consonants within the syllable, and 2) inter-syllabic coordination: the temporal overlap between hetero-syllabic coda and following onset consonant. Tongue, lip and jaw movements of four speakers of Taiwanese and six speakers of American English were recorded by means of EMMA in a repetition task. Analyses of articulatory data suggest that Taiwanese checked syllables differ from English closed syllable in that: 1) Taiwanese displays much greater consonant-vowel co-articulation within a syllable than English; and 2) greater overlap is observed between hetero-syllabic consonants in Taiwanese. These different patterns will be discussed with respect to the gestural composition of coda consonant in Taiwanese and English, as well as the language specific regularities of gestural coordination.
This paper presents an acoustic analysis of front rounded vowels (FRVs) in the dialect spoken in the Shetland Islands, the northernmost locality of the British Isles. FRVs are typologically marked and estimated to occur in only 6.6% of the world’s languages [I. Maddieson, in Haspelmath et al. The World Atlas of Language Structures (2005)]. Their occurrence in the Shetland dialect is, at least partly, attributable to a Scandinavian substratum language. There is significant variation across the archipelago regarding several aspects such as (1) the number of lexically contrastive FRVs, (2) phonetic quality (close to half‐close), (3) contrastive length, and (4) lexical distribution and support. This paper presents an investigation of three speakers from one locality in which FRVs have retained firm lexical support. The issues addressed concern the dialect’s overall acoustic vowel space (based on F1, F2, and F3), the position of FRVs within the acoustic space, and what the contrasts among FRVs and other adjacent vowels appear to rest on acoustically. Special focus is directed to phonetic contexts that support the greatest number of vowel contrasts and display the most crowded acoustic vowels spaces.
This paper reports a cross linguistic study thatcompares the coarticulation patterns betweenconsonant and vowel (CV) in Mandarin Chinese andSouthern Swedish. Kinematic data were collectedusing the Electromagnetic Articulography (EMA) forboth languages and were subjected to three types ofCV time lag measurement, based on more or lessequivalent landmarks on lips and tongue, andpartially adopted in previous studies [1, 2, 3]. Wefound rather consistent CV coordination patterns inthese two typologically different languages with boththe velocity-based and the acceleration-basedmeasurements on the lips and the tongue body. Themost striking result to emerge from the data is thesame effect of gender on the variation of CVcoarticulation in both languages, which has not beenreported previously. In addition, only when genderwas added as a factor, did we find the languagedifferences on the CV time lags.
There has been increasing research effort and specialization in the topic of translanguaging (Canagarajah, 2011; Li, 2018). The term translanguaging has been researched over a wide range of disciplines in humanities and social sciences. In the field of bilingual education, this term is considered as an ideology, a theory, and a pedagogical stance (Mazak and Carroll, 2016). Nevertheless, very little work is done on examining the role of translanguaging and the practices in a digitally mediated learning environment. This study aims to obtain ethnographic data from remote intermediate-level Chinese foreign language lessons in a multilingual classroom in a Swedish university. Initial observations from analysis of classroom data collected from two groups show that translanguaging is a prevalent phenomenon in virtual classroom, and the teacher initiated translanguaging more often than students. The teachers’ translanguaging practices can be categorized into at least five categories, such as providing managerial information, providing explanations, repeating important content, providing assistance to individual student, and facilitating students’ performance, but the students’ practices are limited to fewer. Additionally, the study finds that the teacher’s practices are mainly motivated by two pedagogic considerations to increase classroom efficiency and enhance students’ motivation in the virtual classroom. These findings are particularly relevant for language classroom translanguaging research in an era of increased mobility and would contribute to improve pedagogy in Chinese as a foreign language classroom.
Speech errors in Taiwanese are investigated by means of a speeded repetition task. Our results show that the intrusion bias is also attested for word pairs with mismatched onsets, whereas in the alternating coda condition, reduction errors are the most frequent error type. This cross-linguistic difference can be attributed to language-specific implementation of stop codas.
The local dialect spoken in the Shetland Isles constitutes a form of Lowland Scots. It has been suggested that stressed syllables in Shetland Scots tend to contain either a long vowel followed by a short consonant (V:C) or a short vowel followed by a long consonant ( C:), and furthermore that this pattern constitutes a trace of complementary quantity in Norn, a Nordic language spoken in Shetland approximately until the end of the eighteenth century. The existence of such a pattern has also been supported by acoustic measurements. Following a summary and overview of Norn's demise in the Shetland Isles, this paper presents a regional survey of the relationship between vowel and consonant duration in stressed syllables in Shetland Scots. Based on acoustic data from 43 speakers, representing ten separate regions across the Shetland Isles, the inverse correlation between vowel and consonant duration is assessed. The results reveal that the inverse correlation is strongest in the northern part of Shetland and weakest in the south, and displays a general north-to-south decline across Shetland. The results are thus generally consistent with predictions that follow from regional variation concerning Norn's death; evidence suggests that it survived the longest in the northern parts of Shetland.
This paper presents a study of the pronunciation of English by speakers from Yunnan Province in Southwest China. Eight non-English major undergraduate students participated in three tasks: an informal interview, reading a text, and a dialectological-style questionnaire. The degree of rhoticity was assessed based on auditory analysis, with an inter-rater agreement of 97 per cent. The results revealed significant inter-speaker variation: two informants were virtually non-rhotic whereas the remaining six were rhotic to a considerable degree. Intra-speaker variation among these six was furthermore systematic: the degree of rhoticity was lowest in the interview, intermediate in reading, and highest in the questionnaire. These results are discussed with reference to several factors, including the level of formality and attention to speech triggered by the tasks, potentially emerging norms for rhoticity, and the stage of development of a local form of ‘Yunnan English’.
The Shetland Isles, the northernmost part of the British Isles, were colonized by Vikings from about 800 AD, and belonged to Norway and later Denmark until 1469, when they were ceded to Scotland. A Nordic language, first Old Norse and later Norn, constituted the dominant language for nearly 800 years, and native speakers of Norn could be found as late as the 18th or even early 19th century. While the modern Shetland dialect constitutes a form of Lowland Scots, the exact 78nature and extent of its Scandinavian trace features remain a topic of continuing inquiry. One of the most significant claims concerns its syllable structure. Catford (1957) suggested that stressed monosyllabic words contained either a long vowel followed by a short consonant, or a short vowel followed by a long consonant. This, in his view, constituted a trace of the complementary quantity that probably existed in Norn, and which is still found in Swedish and Norwegian: Sw. hat ‗hate‘ V:C vs. hatt ‗hat‘ VC:.This suggestion was previously examined on the basis of acoustic measurements (van Leyden 2002). The results indicated that the inverse correlation between vowel and consonant duration in Shetland Scots was weaker than in Norwegian but stronger than in mainland Scotland or the Orkney Isles, which are situated considerably closer to the Scottish mainland. A stronger correlation in Shetland than in Orkney is consistent with the timing of Norn‘s demise; it survived longer in Shetland.There is significant linguistic variation within the Shetland Isles (Mather & Speitel, 1986). This is partly attributable to the fact that they constitute an archipelago of over 100 islands, where interisland travel was at times limited. A recent regional survey of Shetland Scots therefore included an investigation of the relationship between vowel and consonant duration. 10 localities from the entire archipelago were included. In each locality 2 men and 2 women between the ages 55-75 were recorded, all of whom were born and had lived most of their lives in the locality in question. The present study focuses on the vowel system before /t/, as this context facilitates a comparison across regions, has revealed geographic variation previously (van Leyden 2002), and constitutes the primary context of Catford‘s original claim. Monosyllabic target words (feet, beat, bit, etc.) were produced (2 repetitions) by the informants in a carrier sentence. Vowel and consonant duration was measured, and the relation between the two was assessed on the basis of correlation measures.The results reveal a clear north-to-south cline in the strength of correlation within the Shetland archipelago: the pattern is strongest in the northern isles, decreases through the Shetland mainland, and becomes weakest in the southern part of the mainland and Fair Isle. This pattern is generally consistent with the timing of Norn‘s death; Norn is reported to have survived the longest in the northern parts. However alternative interpretations, involving more recent dialect leveling, are also discussed.
Motivation among students has long been a central focus in educational research and is widely acknowledged as a fundamental element of teaching and learning (Ferlazzo, 2013). Prior investigations have consistently demonstrated a strong positive link between students' motivation and their academic achievements, both in traditional higher education settings and within online learning platforms (Steinmayr et al., 2019; Ferrer et al., 2022). Significantly, motivation has emerged as a critical determinant of success in foreign language acquisition (Gardner, 2010). This paper presents a study that examines the motivation levels of CFL (Chinese as a foreign language) students who engaged in distance education at a Swedish university.
One of the main objectives of this study is to explore the complexities of student motivation, with a specific emphasis on understanding the unique contributions of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in the context of CFL. Intrinsic motivation refers to the internal drive to engage in behaviors for the inherent pleasure, satisfaction, or excitement they provide, while extrinsic motivation involves seeking outcomes that are separate from the inherent satisfaction of the behavior itself (Ryan & Deci, 2017). Another objective is to investigate the correlation between students’ motivation and their academic achievements in the context of distance CFL education. Various types of motivation may have differing impacts: intrinsic motivation is correlated with student success and overall well-being, while extrinsic motivation is strongly linked to persistence and academic performance. However, there is limited research conducted on CFL students in the Nordic region, especially within an online learning context.
The Chinese Department at Dalarna University has accumulated nearly 15 years of experience in offering Chinese courses in the form of web-based online education. The department offers a full range of Chinese courses, ranging from beginner levels to bachelor thesis courses. This study utilizes a quantitative research approach, employing an online survey to gather data from the current cohort of 150 students. We anticipate that approximately 50 students will complete the survey. Statistical analyses will be employed to analyze the collected data. The findings from this study will contribute to a broader understanding of the dynamics of motivation among students learning Chinese as a foreign language. With an optimistic outlook, we also aim to offer practical recommendations for CFL teachers to enhance student motivation and develop interventions and instructional strategies aimed at fostering a more conducive learning environment for distance CFL learners.
Teaching the Chinese ideographic writing system in web-based education has become the biggest challenge to the Chinese instructors, in terms of teaching technology and pedagogy. This paper presents the outcome of a research project that aims to overcome the technological obstacles and develop an optimized pedagogic method for teaching characters.