Presentation

The Use of Visual Feedback to Train L2 Lexical Tone: Evidence from Mandarin Phonetic Acquisition

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Abstract

Acquisition of L2 lexical tone has proven to be difficult for L1 speakers of non-tonal languages, resulting in potential issues for intelligibility, comprehensibility, and accentedness. Recent studies have suggested that visual feedback is a useful method for tone training. However, the potential for generalizability of improvement from the word level to the phrasal level has yet to be systematically investigated. This study explores the use of visual feedback to teach tone to L1 English learners of Mandarin. Four L1 English–L2 Mandarin beginning-level learners participated in a visual feedback paradigm with a pretest, intervention, posttest design. Stimuli included disyllabic words in isolation and embedded in phrases. Results suggest improvement in tone production following the visual feedback paradigm for words in isolation, although with different outcomes for different tones. Furthermore, there was little suggested generalizability to the phrasal level, potentially owing to greater crosslinguistic interference from L1 phrasal level intonation.

Keywords: Mandarin tone, visual feedback, L2 phonetic acquisition

How to Cite:

Zhou, A., & Olson, D., (2023) The use of visual feedback to train L2 lexical tone: Evidence from Mandarin phonetic acquisition. In R. I. Thomson, T. M. Derwing, J. M. Levis, & K. Hiebert (Eds.), Proceedings of the 13th Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Conference, ­­­­­­­­held June 2022 at Brock University, St. Catharines, ON. doi: https://doi.org/10.31274/psllt.15715