EAPSI: Training tonal awareness in second language Chinese learners

EAPSI：训练第二语言汉语学习者的声调意识

• 批准号: 1414675
• 负责人: Joshua Davis
• 金额: $ 0.5万
• 依托单位: Davis Joshua A
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Fellowship Award
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-06-01 至 2015-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1414675&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: EAPSI; Training; tonal; awareness; second

With the rise of China as a global economic power, Chinese has become a popular second language for students at all levels of education. Despite this growth in popularity, very little time has been spent on refining the pedagogical methods related to Chinese language teaching and even less research has been done to investigate the processes involved with learning Chinese from the second language learner's perspective. One of the key aspects of the Chinese language that western learners often struggle with is the presence of lexical tones: changes in a speaker's voice pitch can change the meaning of a word. This study will investigate methods that can be used to train learners to parse out tonal information in order to facilitate processing in the language learner's mind. This project will be conducted in collaboration with Dr. Connie Qun Guan, a well-known expert on second language reading in Chinese at the University of Science and Technology in Beijing, China.This project will take steps toward understanding the second language learner's experience of tone processing by using a training procedure with a pre-test and post-test. The primary objective of this research is to determine whether learners can be trained to separate segmental and tonal information in the process of reading. The pre-test and post-test will quantify this separation using a homophone judgment task that will allow the researcher to determine the learner's sensitivity to both tonal and segmental information. Participants in this study will include native alphabetic language learners of Chinese who will be compared against a group of monolingual native Chinese speakers to determine the precise nature of tonal processing in the second language group. This NSF EAPSI award is funded in collaboration with the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology.

随着中国作为全球经济大国的崛起，汉语已成为受各级教育学生欢迎的第二语言。尽管这种流行的增长，很少有人花时间来完善与汉语教学相关的教学方法，更少的研究已经做了调查与学习过程中涉及的第二语言学习者的角度。西方学习者经常遇到的汉语的一个关键方面是词汇音调的存在：说话者音调的变化可以改变一个词的含义。本研究将探讨可用来训练学习者解析出音调信息的方法，以促进语言学习者头脑中的处理。本项目将与北京科技大学的著名第二语言阅读专家关群博士合作，通过前测和后测的训练过程，逐步了解第二语言学习者的声调处理经验。本研究的主要目的是确定学习者是否能在阅读过程中被训练分离音段和声调信息。前测和后测将使用同音判断任务来量化这种分离，这将允许研究者确定学习者对音调和音段信息的敏感度。本研究的参与者将包括母语为拼音的汉语学习者，他们将与一组单语母语为汉语的人进行比较，以确定第二语言组中音调处理的确切性质。NSF EAPSI奖是与中国科技部合作资助的。