The Perception of Fourth Tone Words by English-Speaking Beginners of Chinese

Ting Zhang (张婷)

Seton Hall University

        This paper studies the perception of fourth tone words by English-speaking beginners of Chinese. The research questions are as follows: (1) after students learn the fourth tone and fourth-tone words, how do they perceive them? (2) which tone combinations in two-syllable words are difficult? (3) which combinations are easy? (4) does the position of the fourth tone in the word increases difficulty? I examined the performance of five students by collecting disyllabic words from the Pinyin dictation in the weekly quizzes and one-on-one oral drill practices. In addition, I interviewed them regarding their opinions of learning the fourth tone. By analyzing the data, I found the following results: (1) 64.3% of the fourth tone words were misperceived; (2) the fourth tone at the end of the word was easier than the one at the beginning; (3) a two-fourth-tone word was the most difficult with the first fourth tone relatively easier to identify; (4) the first and the fourth tone combination was the easiest. The research provides some implications on how to teach the fourth tone to beginners.