Rob Neal Manchester Swire Chinese Language Centre Coordinator
Only 3575 students took GCSE Chinese in 2016 compared to 136,862 entries for French 51 per cent of Key Stage 4 students did not take a GCSE in any language in 2016 (Tinsley & Board, 2017: 16-19) Profile of Chinese learners in English secondary schools ‘remains skewed towards high achievers and those from more advantaged backgrounds’ (Tinsley & Board, 2015: 5)
Creation of a specific Chinese pedagogy (Orton, 2011) More understanding needed of not only how young beginners learn Chinese in school settings, but also what can be realistically expected of them Network with other practitioners
The most fundamental characteristic of successful oral communication General definition – ‘the extent to which a speaker’s message is understood by a listener’ ( Derwing & Munro, 2015: 379) If beginner students cannot make their limited Chinese intelligible to others, they will quickly lose confidence and motivation
Help students develop a ‘comfortable intelligibility’ (Abercrombie, 1949) Accent not seen as problematic but accepted as part of normal variation
Students will need to ‘use accurate pronunciation and intonation in order to be understood by a native speaker However, they will be able to access the highest marks available for each task without a ‘perfect’ command of Chinese’ (p. 12)
Recently estimated 30 per cent of Chinese citizens (400 million) do not speak Putonghua Of the 70 per cent of the population who possess Putonghua skills, only one in ten can speak Putonghua articulately and fluently ( as cited in Mosler, 2016)
Which segmental (initials and finals) and suprasegmental sounds (tones, stress, rhythm, intonation) cause your students the most difficulties in terms of intelligibility?
Extensive variability in pronunciation difficulties even when students share the same language background and are at similar proficiency levels (Shen, 1989; Chen, 1997; Winke, 2007; Tao and Guo, 2008; Neal, 2014)
We need to set aside time to assess students individually Shared problems can be covered with whole- class activities Serious difficulties experienced by one/a few learner(s) should be addressed with individual and small group interventions
Record students reading aloud some simple sentences and taking part in a role play Assess globally through multiple listenings Listen again for individual factors: tones, initials, finals, sentence level intonation Plan instruction with priority given to problems that hinder intelligibility
Pronunciation will not improve to any significant extent under conditions of exposure alone Help students notice the differences between their own productions and more intelligible utterances Explain the nature of the pronunciation error in terms that the student can understand Then provide the students with a model that they can imitate
Encourage peer correction in a friendly atmosphere – can learners correct each other’s pronunciation errors or at least recognise when there’s a problem ? Give clear advice about how to produce the most difficult target sounds – what are you doing with your tongue when you pronounce ‘ sh ’? McGraw- Hill’s Chinese Pronunciation with CD Rom
Use technology – does the voice recognition software on your phone understand your spoken Chinese? Practise with both single words and sentences Acoustic software package Praat Useful pitch tracking device which provides a window on to the pitch changes of the learners’ voices which is closely related to their tones
Encourage exposure to authentic spoken Chinese outside the classroom via online videos featuring both L1 Chinese and L2 Chinese speakers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xpdhbh _2Rc
Ask students to come up with their own names for each of the tones and don’t be afraid to use lots of gestures Spend time pointing out specific differences between pinyin and English – ‘yŏu’ is not pronounced like ‘you’ – otherwise students may assume it sounds just like English which will quickly lead to intelligibility breakdowns
Don’t wait for fossilization to happen Much of the development of a learner’s L2 phonological system takes place within the first year An explicit focus on pronunciation during that first year may help learners to become sufficiently comprehensible that intervention for fossilized patterns several years later may not be necessary
Use songs and raps to make pronunciation teaching fun and remind your students that everyone, including L1 Chinese speakers, has some sort of accent
r.j.neal@mgs.org
Abercrombie, D. (1949). Teaching pronunciation. English Language Teaching, 3, 113-122. Chen, Q. (1997). Toward a sequential approach for tonal error analysis. Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association, 32(1), 21-39. Derwing, T., & Munro, M. (2015). Intelligibility in research and practice: teaching priorities. In M. Reed & J. Levis (Eds.) The handbook of English pronunciation (pp. 377-396). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Edexcel GCSE Chinese (2017). Specification. https://qualifications.pearson.com/en/qualifications/edexcel-gcses/chinese-2017.html Mosler, D. (2016). A billion voices. China’s search for a common language. Kindle edition Neal, R. (2014) ‘Teaching and learning Mandarin tones in an English secondary school’. Scottish Languages Review, 27, 9-20. Orton, J. (2011). Educating Chinese language teachers – some fundamentals. In L. Tsung, & K. Cruickshank (Eds.), Teaching and learning Chinese in global contexts: multimodality and literacy in the new media age (pp. 151-164). London: Continuum. Shen, X. (1989). Toward a register approach in teaching Mandarin tones. Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association, 24 (3), 27-47. Tao, L. & Guo, L. (2008). Learning Chinese tones: a developmental account. Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association, 43(2), 17-46. Tinsley, T. & Board, K. (2014). The Teaching of Chinese in the UK. Retrieved from http://www.britishcouncil.org/sites/britishcouncil.uk2/files/alcantara_full_report_jun15.pdf Tinsley, T. & Board, K. (2017). Language Trends 2016/17. Retrieved from https://www.britishcouncil.org/sites/default/files/language_trends_survey_2017_0.pdf
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