Knocking tones off their perch: investigating the intelligibility of Anglophone beginner learners of Mandarin Chinese at two secondary schools in the North of England

Abstract

Knocking tones off their perch: investigating the intelligibility of Anglophone beginner learners of Mandarin Chinese at two secondary schools in the North of England Robert Neal Abstract Set within the context of teaching and learning Chinese at two secondary schools in the North of England and adopting a case study research design, the aim of this PhD study is to explore the intelligibility of young Anglophone beginner learners of Chinese in order to make a contribution towards the creation of a more evidence-informed Chinese as a Second Language (CSL) pedagogy. Data collection activities included recording the spoken Chinese of 20 L2 learners during a variety of speaking tasks – from reading aloud single words and sentences to speaking extemporaneously in role plays. 40 L1 raters were subsequently interviewed as they tried to comprehend the learners’ randomised speech samples. I also made use of stimulated recall interviews in which learners listened to selected audio extracts of their own L2 Chinese spoken data and were invited to comment upon any perceived pronunciation errors. Distinguishing between the key constructs of accentedness, comprehensibility and intelligibility, I found that heavily accented tones did not necessarily lead to lower levels of comprehensibility and intelligibility. Furthermore, many intelligibility breakdowns – i.e. when raters failed to correctly transcribe the learners’ intended utterances - could be traced to problems with individual words which usually implicated segmental sounds as well as tone. All learners demonstrated low levels of awareness of their own pronunciation errors both during and after speech production while learners who were more intelligible were generally more aware of their own pronunciation errors. The majority of findings were interpreted in terms of indicating a need for more explicit forms of instruction, particularly in light of the low levels of awareness surrounding learners’ own pronunciation errors. Nevertheless, I also recognised the need to provide a healthy balance of more implicit forms of instruction to cater for more incidental learning. In light of the case study nature of the research design, the pedagogical suggestions were framed with reference to the learners who participated in this study. However, it is hoped that they will also be useful for wider application within the context of teaching Chinese as an L2 to young beginners in Anglophone settings. In terms of methodology, the coding systems developed to investigate listeners’ responses to the L2 Chinese speech signal and the learners’ awareness of their own pronunciation errors provide a new tool for other researchers in the field.