Pedagogical Grammar of Chinese: Content
4.4 Suggested Model for Teaching and Learning
This study recommends that the Mandarin sound system, including tones, initials and finals, be taught and learned simultaneously with Chinese characters. In what follows, I explain why and how this recommendation should be executed.
During the first few weeks of first-year Chinese, teachers may introduce students to a variety of information about the Chinese language: the writing system, pronunciation system, distribution of Mandarin Chinese speakers, and interference with social-cultural norms, etc. They carry on a number of activities, such as practicing tones, initials, finals, and characters. This way, students have a general understanding of the Chinese language and its association with students’
native languages. I believe that if students learn only the sound system during the first few weeks without characters, students will be able to pronounce and read pīnyīn well; however, when it comes to knowing characters, it may take students twice as much time, if not longer, to learn the same number of characters as those who learn characters simultaneously with the sound system. The reason is that once students become comfortable with reading and pronouncing pīnyīn, they tend to separate pīnyīn from learning characters. If this occurs, students may have to go through three or four extra steps to learn a character: (1) learn the pronunciation (pīnyīn), (2) learn how to write the character, (3) learn the meaning of the character, and (4) match the sound (pīnyīn) with the form (character) and meaning. More often than not, students who follow these steps are able to read Chinese correctly with pīnyīn but lose that ability when pīnyīn is not provided.
This makes it problematic to read authentic material in Chinese, such as signs, maps, directions, advertisements, etc.
Each of those four steps requires time to accomplish. It appears that the fewer steps students need to take, the more efficiently students learn characters.
An ideal situation would be for students to learn the sound, form and meaning of characters simultaneously so that when they see a character, they know how to pronounce it and when they say something, they know how to write it.
Furthermore, since pīnyīn itself cannot function as a language because it is not a meaning-bearing system, students have to learn characters eventually. In this case, it is misleading to pamper students with only pīnyīn at the beginning and leave the core learning of characters to a later time.
A typical fifty-minute Chinese lesson during the first few weeks of students’
first Chinese class may be prepared in the following way:
During the first half of class:
• Teacher:
— Introduce a new group of initials, finals or tones;
— Demonstrate how to pronounce these sounds;
• Students:
— Imitate those sounds after a teacher or recording;
— Practice those sounds with classmates (e.g. identification, distinguishing sounds);
During the second half of class:
• Teacher:
— Introduce a group of characters, (especially those having the sounds that students worked on during the first half of the class);
— Demonstrate how to pronounce those characters, how to write them and how to use them in communication;
• Students:
— Listen to the teacher or recording how to pronounce those characters;
— Practice those characters by articulating the sounds, writing the characters, and composing a mini-dialogue using the characters
By learning initials, finals, tones and characters at the same time, students will consciously and unconsciously associate these units; they will make it easier not to separate sound from form (i.e. character) or meaning.
As far as how to teach those confusing and difficult tones, initials and finals mentioned in 4.3 is concerned, teachers may try different methods with different sounds. Let us first discuss the acquisition of tones and then move on to initials and finals. Among the four Mandarin tones, two (first tone and fourth tone) are considered the most difficult because of their wide pitch range and the other two (second tone and third tone) are considered confusing because they both end with a rising pitch as discussed in 4.3. How, then, should teachers explain these tones to alleviate the difficulty and clarify the confusion? My teaching experience suggests that the best way to teach the first and fourth tones is to help students first realize (i.e. accept and understand) the pitch difference between Chinese and students’ native language and then to ask students to imitate the tones and feel the difference. The first tone sustains the same pitch height, whereas the fourth tone falls to as low a pitch as students can possibly reach. As long as students realize and feel the difference, they should be able to pronounce the tones. It would also be beneficial for a teacher to help students realize their own pitch ranges (high, mid and low) before teaching different tone shapes, as suggested by Shen (1989).
Once students become aware of their own idiosyncratic pitch range, they may be able to distinguish the high, mid, and low pitches of their own tones better. An anecdote expresses this well: When learning the character 谢谢 xièxie “thank you”, a student once offered his impression of his teacher’s pronunciation:
“Professor, how come you sound angry when you say xièxie?” After confirming
his correct impression on the falling pitch of the fourth tone, the teacher told him that if he could use an “angry” pitch and still a smiling face attitude when pronouncing xièxie, he would know how to express gratefulness in Mandarin!
The confusion between the second and the third tone, on the other hand, may be clarified by explaining the different pitch values of the two tones as they are realized in natural communication. Using the following mini-dialogue as an example, students can be informed of how tone sandhi applies and how the pitch value of the third tone changes.
(4.1) a: 你好吗？
nĭ hăo ma? “How are you?”
Tone value: 214 +214+0=> 35+21+0
b: 我很好。
wŏ hĕn hăo. “I am fine.”
Tone value: 214+214+214 => 21(4)+35+214
Notice that the lexical tone value of the third changes depending upon its context and its syntactic function. In (4.1a), two tone sandhi rules apply. The first rule applies to the first and the second character and the second rule applies to the second and the third character. As a result, the first character, originally having a third tone, is changed into a second tone (35) because it is followed by another third tone; the second character originally having a third tone changes into a half third tone because it is followed by a neutral tone. What makes the situation even more complicated is that when three third-tones are adjacent to one another; in this case, one has to figure out the syntactic function each of the three characters has, as shown in (4.1b). Since wŏ “I” is the subject and hĕn hăo “very good” is the predicate of the sentence, the tone 3 sandhi rule applies to hĕn hăo (which belong to the same syntactic category), not to wŏ hĕn “I very” (which do not belong to the same syntactic category). This suggests that the tone 3 sandhi rule applies in accordance with the syntactic category of the characters involved. The only time that the third tone’s pitch value is fully realized in natural communication utterance is when it is used at the end of a syntactic category or a sentence as wŏ
“I” and hăo “good” in (4.1b).
At this point, it is not clear whether students confuse the second tone with the third because the third tone changes into the second when applying to one of the tone 3 sandhi rules or because both tones end with the same raising pitch.
Most of our students have no problem identifying or pronouncing individual words or phrases with the second and/or the third tone. However, when those words and phrases are used in sentences, a variety of errors occurs. This suggests that students are confused with the two tones at the sentence level, not at the lexical level. In other words, they know how to pronounce the two tones, but are not sure where to apply tone 3 sandhi and where not.3
One method that seems to be effective in teaching students to apply the tone 3 sandhi rules in natural conversation is to explain and demonstrate that the third tone in most cases reduces its pitch value by half. If a third tone is followed by another third tone, the second half of the tone is pronounced (pitch value 14); if followed by any other tones, however, the first half should be pronounced (pitch value 21). This is to say that the majority of third tones in natural conversation use a low-falling tone, and no rising pitch at all. When students understand this about the tone 3 sandhi, they can apply it with more confidence in natural conversation.
As far as the three groups of initials (retroflexes: zh, ch, shi, palatals: j, q, x, and sibilants: z, c) are concerned, confusion often arises between the retroflexes and sibilants and between retroflexes and palatals. By observing American students’ errors in the last fifteen years, it appears that at least one reason for the confusion is threefold: (1) closeness of place and manner of articulation, (2) similarity in orthography and accompanying finals, and (3) interference of students’ native language.
First, let us compare the retroflexes with the palatals. Both groups of sounds are articulated by placing a part of tongue (using the tip for retroflexes and the dorsal for palatals) against or near the palate of the vocal cord and both groups have a three-way comparison in terms of the manner of articulation: unaspirated (zh and j), aspirated (ch and q) and fricative (shi and x). For native English speakers whose native language does not have either group of sounds, it is indeed difficult to detect the minor difference. However, there is a major difference between the two groups. That is, the palatal sounds only occur before high front vowels, namely i and ü, as in jī, jiàn, qiā, qiáo, xìn, xiǔ, xǜn,etc.,4 whereas the retroflex sounds only occur before the remaining vowels (a, e, u, ι) in Mandarin, such as zhè, zhá, chăi, chàn, shū, shùn, etc.5 This situation is described as complementary distribution by linguists. If we explain this distribution difference clearly to students when introducing the two groups of sounds, along with demonstrations of how to pronounce the two types of sounds, students should be able to identify the difference first, and then practice producing them. Daily practice of these sounds can eliminate the interference from students’ native language (such as confusing the English pronunciations of j, ch, and sh with their Chinese pronunciations because of orthography).
Interestingly, native speakers of Chinese rarely have problems distinguishing the palatal sounds from retroflexes. However, many native speakers either do not or cannot distinguish retroflexes from dental sibilants (z, c, s), such as in words 四 sì “four” vs. 试 shì “try”, 春 chūn “spring” vs. 村 cūn “village,” and 找 zhăo “look for” vs. 早 zăo “early.” When students become aware of this situation, some may ask for the reason why they have to distinguish the two groups of sounds when even native speakers cannot do so. One answer that might convince students to continue to learn and master the two groups of sounds is to explain the difference between acquisition of Chinese sounds by native speakers and non-native Chinese speakers. For native Chinese speakers, they have numerous opportunities to hear the Chinese sounds long before they actually
understand the meaning of those sounds. Hence, when they hear a sound, such as sì, they try to figure out the meaning by looking at its context. Taking the following sentence as an example,
(4.2) tā *sì (shì) rén wŏ yĕ *sì (shì) rén.
he four/is person, I also four/is person
“He is a human being; I am a human being as well.”
(4.3) zhèi bú *sì (shì) *sìsì (shìshì).
this not four/is ?/fact
“This is not true.”
In both (4.2) and (4.3), the shì syllable, which could mean “to be” or “thing”, is mispronounced as sì with the possible meaning “four”, yet native speakers do not have any problem identifying the correct meaning. No native speaker would interpret sì as “four”, or “thing” because it does not make any sense in the given sentences. However, if the same sentences are heard by non-native students who know the distinction of the two syllables, but are not certain of their function in discourse, it is likely that they cannot understand the sentences. In other words, since native Chinese speakers acquire the sounds from natural discourse, so they are capable of distinguishing the two types of sounds and their meanings even if they are incorrectly pronounced. For non-native students, on the other hand, they learn the sounds in classroom, and hence, it is very difficult to develop the same discourse competence that native speakers have unless they live in a Chinese speaking community for a sustained period of time. Even if we do not mention the sheer fact that the distinction between retroflexes and sibilants is made in Standard Mandarin, students of non-native Chinese should learn and distinguish the two groups of sounds in order to understand the standard Chinese easily and to be understood by others correctly.
How can teachers help students distinguish retroflexes from sibilants and discriminate between the three contrastive sounds within each group? I suggest three acquisition procedures: (1) explanation, (2) discrimination, and (3) practice.
The first step, explanation, should be given by teachers. When explaining retroflexes and sibilants, the emphasis should be on the different places of articulation and the different manners of articulation among the three retroflexes and the three sibilants. To help students discriminate between sounds, the following tongue-twister (4.4) works well.
(4.4) 四是四，十是十；
sì shì sì, shí shì shí,
“four is four, ten is ten”
是四还是十，你来试一试。
shì sì haishì shí, nĭ lái shì yí shì.
“(Whether it) is four or ten, you give (it) a try.”
Students can memorize and recite the sentences in (4.4) so that the distinction between retroflexes and sibilants stay in their minds and on their tongues, so to speak. At the early stages of learning Chinese, memorization of short passages containing key linguistic features of the Chinese language benefits students a great deal in their subsequent acquisition of the language. In addition to memorization, other practices, such as imitating or repeating a teacher or fellow students, also helps them identify and discriminate sounds in Chinese.
4.5 Conclusion
An effective way to help students acquire the Mandarin sound system is to explain the characteristics of tones and those sounds, demonstrate how to pronounce them, and practice those sounds with students through comparison, discrimination, and use in natural discourse. Since knowledge of the sound system is very useful to students learning the language, I suggest that students acquire the sounds system along with characters. This way, students learn the Chinese sounds and their meanings and character representations from the very beginning. The ultimate goal of teaching the sound system is to have students hear a Chinese syllable and know its meaning, and to have them see a character, and know how to pronounce it.
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