Chinese_tonestudy

Practice on listening to syllables and decide the tone.

The tonal feature of Chinese language poses a particular challenge for a beginning learner of Chinese as a second language. In this project, we test learning hypotheses based on the assumption that attending to the critical features of the tonal contour facilitates learning.

We designed three training conditions in which we trained students to perceive tones using: 1) visual waveforms that depict the acoustic information of the tones, together with Pinyin spelling of the spoken syllable; 2) numerical numbers that represent the tones in traditional classroom instruction, together with Pinyin spelling of the spoken syllable; 3) visual wave forms, without Pinyin spelling. In each condition, there were hints available and the students always received feedbacks for their performance.