Factors Influencing the Acquisition of Mandarin Chinese as a Second Additional Language Focusing on Phonetics

Year 2021, Volume: 8 Issue: 1, 1 - 27, 01.01.2021

Norma Margaret Nel Soezin Krog

https://doi.org/10.17275/per.21.1.8.1

Cited By: 3

Abstract

Mandarin has been added to the list of second additional languages (SAL) that South African learners can choose from. The researchers proactively conducted research pertaining to SAL (Mandarin) since it is a dynamic phenomenon in South Africa. The research question was formulated as follows: Do factors such as 1) phonemic differences between learners’ mother tongue and Chinese, 2) learners’ cognitive styles and 3) learners’ abilities of singing and tone imitation, influence non-native learners of Mandarin (as a SAL) in South Africa to learn Chinese phonetics? We foresee that our findings will contribute to the learning and teaching of Mandarin (SAL) in South African schools. This article serves as the second in a series of three articles, as a mixed method (quan-qual) design was called for. Hypotheses were formulated and statistics presented to either accept/reject them. We gleaned the conclusions of the quantitative part of the research as a springboard and focused on the qualitative findings derived from interviews, observations and a literature review, which enabled us to identify and arrange the (quan-qual) data according to categories and themes. The quantitative data revealed that there was no significant correlation between learners’ learning preferences and Chinese phonetics performances; singing and tone imitation abilities contributed to initial consonant pronunciation and tone 3 pronunciation; learners with musical abilities performed better at reading the Pinyin phonics table; identified initial consonants, multi-vowels and whole syllables were challenging to read; tone 3 was the most challenging, tone 1 was the easiest and tones 2, 3 and 4 were mispronounced as tone 1. From the qualitative data two themes emerged, namely the challenges of learning and teaching Chinese phonetics, and aspects to consider when learning Chinese phonetics. Based on the integrated quan-qual findings, we were able to contribute to the existing body of knowledge on this topic.

Keywords

Mandarin, Phonetics, Second additional language (SAL);, Second Language Acquisition (SLA)

Thanks

We thank Angela Liu, Deputy Principal (Chinese) at the research school for her input in the manuscript relating to examples of characters and their meanings. Our sincere thanks to the learners and the teacher of this same school, who participated in the study.

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