EACS-2016. Book of Abstracts

Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language 21st Biennial Conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies 28 Hu Guohua (Lund University) Swedish Students’ Perception of the Tones in Chinese DisyllabicWords Key words: word prosody, perception, Chinese tone, Swedish accent, Chinese disyllabic words Segmental categories of native language (L1) influence the perception and production of segmental categories of non-native language (L2). The L2-perception suprasegmental assimilation model has been established recently. However, the model lacks an account for cross-language perception of how segments and suprasegments influence each other. Unfortunately, the word prosodic structure between L1 and L2 is not considered. The present study investigated how L1-Swedes (with tone accent proper- ties) perceive 25 L2-Chinese disyllabic (σ1σ2) words. 71 true Swedish learners without any previous exposure of Chinese participated in the dictation. 1035 misidentified tone responses (T’) were statisti- cally analyzed.The main results are 1) some initial categories cause the misidentified tone responses (T’), which occur only in σ1. For instance, voiced sounds often cause that T2 is misidentified as T3 (T2→T’3) whereas aspirated sounds often results in T3→T’2. This implies that Swedish listeners might unconsciously assimilate their segmental features [±voiced] as perceptual cue to identify Chinese tonal categories. 2) The incorrect responses of the Chinese disyllabic tone patterns are only categorized into two types regardless of the stimulus of disyllabic tone. This indicates that Chinese disyllabic word tones are interpreted either as Swedish tone accents 1 (acute) or 2 (grave). However, it is still unclear whether the tone confusion patterns are caused by the L2-Chinese tonal rules or by the L1-Swedish tone-accent system. These findings suggest that there seems not to exist a simple one-to-one linear relationship, which the previous perception model can not predict. Extended cross-languages speech perception research regarding transfers from segment to suprasegment and word prosody is needed. Consequently, Chinese sounds and word prosody are suggested to receive more attention in teaching practice than training merely monosyllabic words. Kholkina Liliya (The Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration under the President of the Russian Federation) New Approaches to Teaching Chinese in Secondary School Key words: Chinese textbooks, secondary school, methodology, language environment, Unified State Exam This paper is based on a series of Chinese textbooks for Fifth to Ninth Grade Secondary School pupils that we have developed and focuses on the main features for a school textbook of Chinese for usage outside of China. While working on this project, the main goal was developing effective methodology and materials for teaching Chinese in a Russian environment. The key features of the textbook which make it suitable for a Russian secondary school are that it: 1. introduces many facts about Russia and China in Chinese (geography, history, literature, music, cinema, national holidays etc.) and makes comparisons between Russian and Chinese culture and traditions. 2. effectively uses Chinese and Russian in tasks and explanations, including: • An introduction of grammar and lexicon in Russian with the use of grammatical terms known to a school student, which can be read in case of absence or for preparation. • Tasks for the exercises in Russian and in Chinese starting from the 8th grade • Introductory texts for each lesson (in 9th grade — in Chinese). • Additional texts introducing Chinese culture (in 9th grade — in Chinese). • Classroom expressions in Chinese in the Teacher’s Book. 3. develops communicative skills through special projects, surveys, discussions and descriptions of charts and graphs with the data suitable and interesting for the secondary school pupils. 4. contains lots of reference data (dictionaries of basic and supplementary vocabulary and proper names, lists of graphemes with the number of strokes, lists of phonetic components for each grade). 5. complies with Russian Federal educational standard and helps to prepare for the General State Exam (OGE) and Unified State Exam (EGE) type tasks (writing a letter, working with diagrams etc.)