Multilingual Education
Leveraging CMS-Based Technologies for Teaching Mandarin Chinese Pronunciation
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Weihsun Mao
Pronunciation is one of the most complicated yet important aspects of teaching Mandarin Chinese as a foreign language. Successful communication cannot take place without correct pronunciation, and poorly pronounced speech may disorient the listener and inhibit comprehension. “Pronunciation should be taken more seriously, not just for its own sake, but as the basis for speaking and comprehending.” (Cook 2001) Pronunciation is particularly challenging for non-heritage students of Chinese, who face the double challenge of learning to produce novel sounds as well as mastering an unfamiliar tonal pronunciation system. In Chinese, different levels of pitch and contours of pronunciation engender vastly different meanings; therefore, the role of tonal accuracy in the development of spoken competence in Chinese cannot be underestimated. Combining phonetic and phonological principles with firsthand experience teaching Mandarin online, I argue that properly leveraging built-in technologies in CMS can help learners build a strong foundation in pronunciation at the beginning level, which provides long term benefits. I will discuss how technologies used for Mandarin pronunciation teaching/learning are related to corresponding linguistic theories, and demonstrate how these technologies can support online Mandarin Chinese teaching/learning with a focus on pronunciation. I present a paradigm that links many nuances/features of good Mandarin pronunciation teaching/learning with the technologies integrated in and facilitated by the CMS.
Development of Japanese L2 Content Questions in an English Language Background Child in Australia
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Satomi Kawaguchi, Junko Iwasaki
This longitudinal study examines the acquisition of Japanese L2 content questions in an English-speaking background Australian child between age 7;0 and 8;9 comparing emerging patterns with monolingual (Clancy 1985) and simultaneous bilingual first language (BFL) acquirers (Di Biase & Itani-Adams 2016, Mishina-Mori 2005). Possible Cross-linguistic influence on word order is also examined. Our informant, John, acquired English from birth and learned Japanese from age 6;3 when he was enrolled in a Japanese primary school in Australia, hence he learned his L2 in a naturalistic environment. Using natural conversation and elicitation tasks speech data was collected over 26 sessions, beginning 9 months after enrolment and was examined in terms of the Prominence Hypothesis (Bettoni & Di Biase 2015) within Processability Theory (Pienemann1998). The child produced 373 content questions including nani (what), doko (where), doshite (why), and dare (who). After producing single word questions, content question appeared with copula sentences followed by lexical verbs. Most of them were formed with the question word in-situ. The acquisitional sequence was consistent with the Prominence Hypothesis similarly to the simultaneous bilinguals. However, unlike the error-free acquisition in monolingual and simultaneous bilinguals, John produced errors relating to case particles in his content questions.
Learning Context and L2 Acquisition of Chinese Word Order
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Yanyin Zhang
The one-year longitudinal study compares the L2 acquisition of four key Chinese sentence structures in the foreign language (FL) and the target language (TL) settings respectively. The four sentence structures are a) canonical [SVO], b) Object-initial [OSV], c) Object-preverbal [SOV], and d) the BA structure [S BA-OV]. They are located at three stages of the processability hierarchy according to Processability Thoery (Pienemann 1998, 2005). The study addresses two questions: whether they are acquired in the predicated sequence in both learning contexts; whether the TL context facilitates faster acquisition? The speech data came from 6 zero-proficiency Chinese language learners at two universities: 3 in China and 3 in Australia. The results show no impact of the learning setting on the acquisition sequence. Impact is found in the acquisition rate. The learners in Australia appeared to progress faster as measured by classroom contact hours and by instructional weeks. The findings confirm previous research that the TL learning context does not exert influence on L2 grammar development, and that the FL context is at no disadvantage in this regard.
