The present survey seeks to find out Zimbabwean student’s perception of Chinese sounds. The survey was carried out in 8 different schools in Harare, the capital city of Zimbabwe. 23 Chinese words with different initials representing all the consonants in Chinese language were used for the survey. During the survey Chinese words were read to students who had never studied Chinese and the students were asked to write down what they hear using Latin letters. The results of the survey shows that Zimbabwean students in Harare have either English influenced perception or Shona influenced perception. However, there were some instances where random pattern was observed, this could be due to the uniqueness of the given Chinese sounds. We concluded that when teaching Chinese or any other foreign languages a pre-survey is required in order to establish the prevailing influential language. In Zimbabwe any local language at any given place can be more influential in terms of shaping students’ perception towards the target language.
Published in | International Journal of Language and Linguistics (Volume 3, Issue 2) |
DOI | 10.11648/j.ijll.20150302.18 |
Page(s) | 102-109 |
Creative Commons |
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Copyright |
Copyright © The Author(s), 2015. Published by Science Publishing Group |
Sound Perception, Chinese Language, Zimbabwe, Second Language Learning
[1] | Brown C. (1997). Acquisition of segmental structure: consequences for speech perception and second language acquisition. Unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec. |
[2] | Brown C. (2000). The interrelation between speech perception and phonological acquisition from infant to adult. In Archibald, John (ed.) Second language acquisition and linguistic theory. Oxford: Blackwell. Pp.4-63. |
[3] | Gong J, Cooke M & Lecumberri MLG. (2011).Towards a quantitative model of Mandarin Chinese perception of English consonants. In Magdalena Wrembel, Malgorzata Kul and Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kolaczyk (eds.). Achievements and perspectives in SLA of speech: New Sounds. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. |
[4] | Hall J L. (2003). Predicting Perceptual Success with Segments: A Test of Japanese Speakers of Russian. In Juana M. Liceras et al.(ed), Proceedings of the 6th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Conference, pp190-198. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. |
[5] | Fitzek, H. & Salber, W. (1996): Gestaltpsychologie. Geschichte und Praxis. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. |
[6] | Fitzek, H. (2008): The Gestalt-Psychological Principles of the Concept of “Organizational Culture”. Gestalt Theory, 30 (4), 487-494. |
[7] | Kadenge M & Mabugu P. (2009). The Phonological Characteristics of Shona Loanwords from English. Nawa Journal of Language and Communication, 3(1). pp. 101-116. |
[8] | Käfer, D. (1982). Die Methodenprobleme und ihre Behandlung in Goethes Schriften zur Naturwissenschaft. Köln: Böhlau. |
[9] | Mayo LH, Florentine M, Buus S. (1997). Age of second-language acquisition and perception of speech in noise. Journal of speech, language, and hearing research, 40(3):686-93. |
[10] | Mushangwe H. (2012). Comparative Analysis of Chinese and Shona Tones. Journal of Comparative Literature and Culture, 2(2): 102-116. |
[11] | Mushangwe H. (2013). A Comparative Analysis of Chinese and Shona Vowels. Journal of Arts and Humanities, 2(11):77-86. |
[12] | Mushangwe H. (2014). Comparative analysis of the Chinese and Shona language’s consonant system. Journal of Advanced Linguistic Studies, 3(1-2):118-135. |
[13] | Ndlovu E. (2013). Mother tongue education in official minority languages of Zimbabwe: A language management critique. Unpublished Dissertation, University of the Free State: South Africa |
[14] | Pajak B, Sarah C, Creel, & Roger Levy. (2012). “Can native-language perceptual bias facilitate learning words in a new language?” In N. Miyake, D. Peebles, & R. P. Cooper (Eds.), Proceedings of the 34th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 2174–2179). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. |
[15] | Sandra. (2013). Perception is reality marketing. http://www.infusefive.com/2013/04/17/perception-is-reality-marketing/. |
[16] | Todorovic D. (2008). Gestalt principles. Scholarpedia, 3(12):5345. |
[17] | Merrian Webster Online Dictionary. (2015). Definition of Perception. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/perception. |
[18] | Wikipedia. (2015). Perception. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception. |
[19] | Zhu L. (2014). Attention, perception, and production of the English voiceless interdental fricative by Chinese learners of English. Masters’ Thesis, Michigan State University. |
APA Style
Guo Fuliang, Herbert Mushangwe. (2015). Zimbabwean Students’ Perception of Chinese Sounds. International Journal of Language and Linguistics, 3(2), 102-109. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20150302.18
ACS Style
Guo Fuliang; Herbert Mushangwe. Zimbabwean Students’ Perception of Chinese Sounds. Int. J. Lang. Linguist. 2015, 3(2), 102-109. doi: 10.11648/j.ijll.20150302.18
AMA Style
Guo Fuliang, Herbert Mushangwe. Zimbabwean Students’ Perception of Chinese Sounds. Int J Lang Linguist. 2015;3(2):102-109. doi: 10.11648/j.ijll.20150302.18
@article{10.11648/j.ijll.20150302.18, author = {Guo Fuliang and Herbert Mushangwe}, title = {Zimbabwean Students’ Perception of Chinese Sounds}, journal = {International Journal of Language and Linguistics}, volume = {3}, number = {2}, pages = {102-109}, doi = {10.11648/j.ijll.20150302.18}, url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20150302.18}, eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ijll.20150302.18}, abstract = {The present survey seeks to find out Zimbabwean student’s perception of Chinese sounds. The survey was carried out in 8 different schools in Harare, the capital city of Zimbabwe. 23 Chinese words with different initials representing all the consonants in Chinese language were used for the survey. During the survey Chinese words were read to students who had never studied Chinese and the students were asked to write down what they hear using Latin letters. The results of the survey shows that Zimbabwean students in Harare have either English influenced perception or Shona influenced perception. However, there were some instances where random pattern was observed, this could be due to the uniqueness of the given Chinese sounds. We concluded that when teaching Chinese or any other foreign languages a pre-survey is required in order to establish the prevailing influential language. In Zimbabwe any local language at any given place can be more influential in terms of shaping students’ perception towards the target language.}, year = {2015} }
TY - JOUR T1 - Zimbabwean Students’ Perception of Chinese Sounds AU - Guo Fuliang AU - Herbert Mushangwe Y1 - 2015/04/07 PY - 2015 N1 - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20150302.18 DO - 10.11648/j.ijll.20150302.18 T2 - International Journal of Language and Linguistics JF - International Journal of Language and Linguistics JO - International Journal of Language and Linguistics SP - 102 EP - 109 PB - Science Publishing Group SN - 2330-0221 UR - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20150302.18 AB - The present survey seeks to find out Zimbabwean student’s perception of Chinese sounds. The survey was carried out in 8 different schools in Harare, the capital city of Zimbabwe. 23 Chinese words with different initials representing all the consonants in Chinese language were used for the survey. During the survey Chinese words were read to students who had never studied Chinese and the students were asked to write down what they hear using Latin letters. The results of the survey shows that Zimbabwean students in Harare have either English influenced perception or Shona influenced perception. However, there were some instances where random pattern was observed, this could be due to the uniqueness of the given Chinese sounds. We concluded that when teaching Chinese or any other foreign languages a pre-survey is required in order to establish the prevailing influential language. In Zimbabwe any local language at any given place can be more influential in terms of shaping students’ perception towards the target language. VL - 3 IS - 2 ER -