The effectiveness of tonal spelling in learning Mandarin Chinese

"Students frequently have difficulty in remembering tones of Chinese words accurately. Many textbooks use ""Pinyin,"" (the romanization system of mainland China) which uses superscript marks to indicate tones. Yuen Ren Chao (1964, p. 11) asserted that using spelling to indicate tone served as a more powerful tool for tone recall, and he consequently developed Gwoyeu Romatzyh (""G.R."") for instruction. G.R. has not enjoyed widespread popularity because of its complexity and its lack of correspondence to Pinyin. Therefore, I developed a hybrid romanization, ""TSP"" (Tonally Spelled Pinyin), which vastly simplifies the number of rules governing tonal spelling conventions and eases the inevitable transition to Pinyin. Research tracked two sections of Beginning Chinese, one using Pinyin, the second using TSP. Based on the three exams given throughout the semester, the TSP section performance averaged 86.9% while the Pinyin section's averaged 70.9%. A t test analysis indicated a significance beyond the 0.010 level."

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Education

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2011

Author dc:creator

• Lundelius, Jay Osborn

Contributors dc:contributor

• MacDonald, William

• Language, Linguistics
• Language, Modern
• Education, Language and Literature

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 1991 Lundelius, Jay Osborn

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

AAI9136671
(UMI)AAI9136671

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/22931