Knocking tones off their perch: investigating the intelligibility of Anglophone beginner learners of Mandarin Chinese at two secondary schools in the North of England
type: CreativeWork
description: 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. Nev…
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. Nev…
author: Neal, Robert
language: eng
keywords: Chinese as a second language, Pronunciation, Intelligibility, Implicit awareness, Explicit awareness
license: https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/127268a8-5ac4-4c61-8fcb-bbd6fe680c5d/download
license: https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/
date published: 2020-04
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:18Z
provider: Cambridge University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Cambridge

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.17863/CAM.61921