Based on the review above in Chapters 2 and 3, some problems encountered specifically by Chinese learners when involved in a target language speaking environment are considered in this section. Issues of Chinese learners’ mispronunciation and misprosody, which confuse L1 listeners and cause problems of intelligibility, are examined in 3.4.1. Issues of decoding natural English speech are then dealt with in 3.4.2.
3.4.1 Issues for L1 Listeners with Chinese Speakers’ Mispronunciation and Misprosody
‘The more differences there are, the more difficulties the learner will have in pronouncing English’ (Kenworthy, 1987, p.4). Given the considerations examined earlier, there are certain discrepancies between spoken English and Chinese. These disparities can cause problems of intelligibility for English speakers when listening to Chinese learners.
The main problems, based on the analysis of speakers of Cantonese (spoken in Hong Kong) and Hokkien (spoken in Singapore), are detailed by Kenworthy (1987, pp.128- 31). Some of the descriptions are specially emphasised in this sub-section from the point of view of SC, at both segmental and supra-segmental levels.
A. Issues at segmental level a) consonants
Firstly, as also investigated by Ma (2001), SC has neither of the ‘th’ sounds (voiced or unvoiced). Chinese speakers tend to substitute /ò/ for both of them. Secondly, there is no /î/ sound in SC either. It is easily substituted by /ï/ by SC speakers in word-initial position, and also be substituted by /Ñ/ or completely deleted when it occurs at the end of a word. The next problem is in dealing with word-final consonant, some of SC speakers tend to add an extra vowel (Hewings, 2004, p.234) or simply delete it (Ma, ibid.). Furthermore, since there are no consonant clusters in SC as examined in Section 3.2.2, consonant clusters or sequences are clearly a difficult area for many SC speakers, especially when they occur in contractions and grammatical endings (Li, 2007, p.37). Their dominant coping strategy, as Tajima, et al. (1997) observe, is either to
delete one or more consonants from the group, or to insert a short epenthetic vowel between consonants in a cluster at the beginning and the end of words. Another phenomenon also pointed out by Hewings (ibid.) is that Chinese language learners tend to pronounce the strong form of words instead of the weak form when the word should be non-prominent.
b) vowels
Due to the slight differences between English and Chinese vowels, as reviewed in Section 3.2.1, there is no big difficulty for SC speakers in producing these sounds. One problem however is the vowel length. As addressed by Kenworthy (1987, pp.129-30), Chinese speakers tend to shorten a diphthong, and use a similar monophthong instead.
B. Issues at supra-segmental level a) rhythm, stress and intonation
Influenced by the crucial role which lexical tone plays in Chinese phonology and semantics, as mentioned earlier, when engaging in English communication, Chinese language learners usually concentrate on pronouncing individual words, ignoring English intonational patterns. In addition, as Juffs (1990) points out, the syllable structure of Chinese, i.e., the relatively fixed C + V distribution (see details in Section 3.2), also affects stress assignment, and therefore impacts the rhythmic pattern of the utterance. The English stress pattern of a word is part of the stored code of the word’s profile and it is crucial for the word’s identity. For example ‘'record’ and ‘re'cord’ have different word classes depending on where the stress falls. But there are ‘no SC words that are distinguished by stress alone’ (Duanmu, 2002, p.134). Therefore, sometimes Chinese speakers do not stress one syllable more than the others, or stress
the wrong syllable, which easily causes difficulties for English speakers in identifying the mis-stressed word under the wrong stress pattern (Brown, 1990, p.51), or sometimes Chinese learners stress all the words equally, which makes English speakers struggle to recognise the prominent parts of the information.
b) connected speech
Given that the relatively fixed C + V syllable structure and clear-cut word boundaries in Chinese language, as Kenworthy (1987, p.18) points out, ‘Chinese learners often do not use smooth transitions’. Linkage is one of the greatest problems for Chinese speakers. A lack of skills in this area results in Chinese speakers’ speech sounding ‘staccato and jerky’ (ibid.).
3.4.2 Issues for Chinese Learners in Decoding English Speech
Three perspectives are mainly dealt with in this sub-section, i.e., inappropriate pronunciation exposure, insufficient listening and improper listening strategies.
Firstly, Chinese learners are exposed mostly to the English of their teachers during their class time. The English teachers always produce every segment clearly, even unstressed syllables. This kind of pronunciation exposure results in Chinese learners being accustomed to listen to clear articulation of English speech. However, this model, as argued by Brown (1990, pp.46-47), is exclusive to language learners. In reality it never happens between English L1 speakers. Constant exposure to this sort of artificial English speech presents Chinese students with some difficulties in understanding natural spoken English.
A second reason is because of the improper listening goals. As examined in Section 3.3.3, both teachers and students focus on the outcome of listening, rather than the process. 100% correct comprehension is the goal which Chinese students expect in their listening activities. In reality, however, this is not achieved, even between L1 English users. This causes Chinese students to ‘experience panic’ in listening to natural English speech (Brown & Yule, 1983a, p.59).
Apart from an inappropriate exposure to pronunciation and an insufficient listening model, listening strategies are also problematical. As considered in Section 2.2.4, Chinese learners rely much more on the ‘bottom up’ process when listening, and have difficulty in progressing to the L1 ability of ‘top down’ processing of speech. However, due to the nature of connected English speech, it is impossible for Chinese learners to capture every sequence of the signal; thus, the decoding process easily breaks down once they encounter a new word or an unfamiliar expression. This kind of ‘bottom up’ activity is necessary, yet as Brown (1990, p.10) points out, ‘it is insufficient on its own’.
L1 speakers are active both as listeners and processors. They mostly use the top down process to ‘figure out a particular word’ (Kenworthy, 1987, p.15) or ‘repair the defective signals’ (Tatham & Morton, 2006, p.197). This reconstruction process is much more complex than a simple process of straightforward decoding of the signal. In fact, information is not encoded in the signal. The listener merely uses the acoustic signal as a ‘trigger’ to assign meaning to the spoken sequence (Tatham & Morton, 2005, p.105). As for Chinese learners, inadequate exposure results in a poor level of background knowledge and a consequent lack of contextual clues. Consequently, unrealistic hypotheses are made based on their L1 experience, and the understanding process is interrupted. The absence of an ability to assign correct words to appropriate signal
segments based on their personal knowledge is a crucial block for Chinese learners in rendering the speaker’s intentions.
Making inferences is another kind of intelligent guessing ability which L1 speakers use to gain a good deal more information than is actually contained in the original message (Brown, 1990, p.155). The main problem for Chinese learners is that they tend to adhere to the original utterances and not go beyond that, since they are unsure of the shared experience between the speaker and themselves.
3.4.3 Summary
In this section, the main problems encountered by Chinese learners when involved in natural English-speaking community are reported. On the one hand, due to the differences between English and Chinese languages and influenced by L1 transfer, Chinese learners inevitably experience some pronunciation difficulties, which result in failure of intelligibility in their oral English communication.
On the other hand, the relatively poor level of comprehension ability of Chinese language learners is also considered in this section. Given the inefficient pronunciation teaching and listening process in Chinese classroom setting, and insufficient exposure to natural English speech, Chinese learners mostly employ a bottom up approach and fail in arriving at a reasonable understanding by narrowing down the possible expectations and making inferences.