The past two decades have witnessed a growing importance of Mandarin, particularly in Hong Kong. Tone, as an essential component of Mandarin, is considered difficult by Hong Kong learners. In fact, several approaches to teaching Mandarin tone, such as explicit instruction, integration of learner corpus, provision of visual feedback, have been promoted in recent years. Meanwhile, intelligent computer assisted language learning (ICALL) has attracted considerable attention. For example, Zhou and Chen (2022) developed a Mandarin tone assessment tool using an AI-based platform Teachable Machine in order for Hong Kong learners to facilitate their learning of Mandarin tone. However, there is a lack of studies on the effectiveness of the training both infused with the AI element and other effective approaches.
The purpose of the present study is threefold: 1) to design an e-Mandarin tone teaching package for Hong Kong learners; 2) to examine the effectiveness of the innovative Mandarin tone training; and 3) to investigate the attitudes of Hong Kong learners towards the training. The e-package was comprised of three parts: 1) a self-made introduction video for explicit instruction; 2) a corpus-based perception activity to raise learners' awareness of both incorrect and acceptably correct tone pronunciation produced by Hong Kong learners; and 3) a production activity using two web-based platforms of pitch visualization including AmPitch and WASP2 and a customized AI-based assessment tool. In this study, 20 university students with Hong Kong Cantonese as their first language were involved. They were taking or had taken a Mandarin course and self-reported their Mandarin proficiency level as intermediate. Of all the participants, 10 were assigned to an experimental group receiving training with the e-package and 10 to a control group receiving no additional training. Both groups of participants were required to read monosyllabic words before and after the training and to fill out the questionnaire regarding learning of Mandarin tone. Participants who received the training also conducted a 5-minute self-reflection on the use of different approaches to Mandarin tone. The production of Mandarin tone was analyzed both perceptually and acoustically. The results indicated that the training improved the participants' pronunciation of Mandarin tones and the improvement also transferred to new stimuli, and that there were inconsistent views among the participants towards the use of different approaches.
Overall, the study provides empirical evidence for the effect of the use of the e-package of teaching Mandarin tone on the acquisition by Hong Kong learners of Mandarin. It is expected that this study could shed new light on the integration of different proven-effective approaches into language teaching. It is also hoped that a larger-scale study which takes learners' proficiency level into consideration could be conducted in the future.
Zhou, X. N. & Chen, H. C. (2022, June 25-26). Innovative Use of Teachable Machine Infused with Corpus Data to Enhance the Acquisition of Mandarin Tone [Paper presentation]. 19th International Conference on Teaching and Learning Chinese in Higher Education, Milton Keynes, UK.
