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Phonological Awareness in Mandarin of Chinese and Americans PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS IN MANDARIN OF CHINESE AND AMERICANS Except where reference is made to the work of others, the work described in this dissertation is my own or was done in collaboration with my advisory committee. This dissertation does not include proprietary or classified information. Min Hu Certificate of Approval: Thomas Nunnally Robin Sabino, Chair Associate Professor Associate Professor English English Sue Barry George T. Flowers Associate Professor Dean Curriculum and Teaching Graduate School PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS IN MANDARIN OF CHINESE AND AMERICANS Min Hu A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Auburn University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Auburn, Alabama May 9, 2009 PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS IN MANDARIN OF CHINESE AND AMERICANS Min Hu Permission is granted to Auburn University to make copies of this dissertation at its discretion, upon request of individuals or institutions and at their expense. The author reserves all publication rights. ______________________________ Signature of Author ______________________________ Date of Graduation iii PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS IN MANDARIN OF CHINESE AND AMERICANS Min Hu Doctor of Philosophy, May 9, 2009 (M.A., Auburn University, 2005) (M.A., Sichuan International Studies University, 1998) (B.A., Sichuan International Studies University, 1995) 141 Typed Pages Directed by Robin Sabino Phonological awareness (PA) is the ability to analyze spoken language into its component sounds and to manipulate these smaller units. Literature review related to PA shows that a variety of factor groups play a role in PA in Mandarin such as linguistic experience (spoken language, alphabetic literacy, and second language learning), item type, tone context, musical ability, and talker variability. However, most of previous studies focus on the PA of Mandarin tones; only few studies have compared native speakers of Chinese and of other world languages on all levels of PA in Mandarin. The present study is a factorial examination of the effect of various factor groups discussed above on all levels of PA in Mandarin (syllable awareness, onset awareness, rhyme awareness, and tone awareness) by four groups of participants with different linguistic experience, each group having 10 participants. The first and second groups iv American English with or without learning experience with Mandarin. Participants were given a syllable same-different task, an onset oddity task, a rhyme oddity task, and a tone identification task. Logistic regression and Chi Square analyses were performed on the responses to these tasks to determine the conditioning effect of different factor groups. Error analyses were also conducted to examine error patterns of the tone awareness task. In addition to confirming the heterogeneity of overall PA established in earlier research, the results demonstrate the relative contributions of several factor groups such as alphabetic literacy, item type, and tone context and raises questions about the relevance of several others such as musical ability and sex of talker. It also provides implications for instructional practice. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author would like to thank Dr. Sabino, Dr. Nunnally, and Dr. Barry for the guidance of the present study. The author is truly appreciative of her major advisor, Dr. Sabino. Dr. Sabino has exerted all of her efforts to assist the author in finding the research topic, searching for relevant sources, designing the research methodology, conducting data coding and analysis, and reviewing the dissertation drafts. The author attributes the excellence of her dissertation to Dr. Sabino’s conscientiousness and assistance. The author would also like to thank Qing Lin and Yu Wang for the recording of test items. vi Style manual or journal used: APA Computer software used: Microsoft Word 2003 JMP 8.0 vii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES..............................................................................................................x LIST OF FIGURES...........................................................................................................xi I. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................... 1 II. LITERATURE REVIEW ............................................................................................... 5 Phonological Awareness (PA) ...................................................................................... 5 Spoken Language and PA ............................................................................................. 8 Alphabetic Literacy and PA ........................................................................................ 10 Second Language Learning and PA ............................................................................ 16 Item Type and PA ....................................................................................................... 19 Musical Ability and PA .............................................................................................. 21 Talker Variability and PA ........................................................................................... 22 Chinese and PA ........................................................................................................... 23 III. METHODOLOGY ..................................................................................................... 43 Hypotheses .................................................................................................................. 44 Participants .................................................................................................................. 46 Testing Materials ........................................................................................................ 48 Procedure .................................................................................................................... 51 Data Coding ................................................................................................................ 53 Data Analysis .............................................................................................................. 56 viii IV. ANALYSIS OF DATA .............................................................................................. 59 Analysis of Overall PA ............................................................................................... 59 Analysis of Task 1—Syllable Awareness ................................................................... 62 Analysis of Task 2—Onset Awareness....................................................................... 65 Analysis of Task 3—Rhyme Awareness .................................................................... 69 Analysis of Task 4—Tone Awareness ........................................................................ 72 Analysis of Spoken Language for the Chinese Group with Pinyin Literacy (C1)...... 75 Analysis of Error Patterns for Tone Awareness ......................................................... 77 V. DISCUSSION .............................................................................................................. 84 Overall PA .................................................................................................................. 84 Task 1—Syllable Awareness ...................................................................................... 86 Task 2—Onset Awareness .......................................................................................... 88 Task 3—Rhyme Awareness ........................................................................................ 89 Task 4—Tone Awareness ........................................................................................... 91 Spoken Language for the Chinese Group with Pinyin Literacy (C1) ......................... 93 Error Analyses ............................................................................................................ 94 Limitations and Implications for Future Research ...................................................... 98 Implications for Teaching Mandarin to Non-native Speakers of Chinese .................. 99 Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 101 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................... 103 APPENDICES ................................................................................................................ 120 Appendix A ............................................................................................................... 121 Appendix B ............................................................................................................... 125 Appendix C ............................................................................................................... 129 ix LIST OF TABLES Table 1 Percent correct responses for illiterate and literate Portuguese adults ................. 14 Table 2 Mandarin onsets ................................................................................................... 26 Table 3 Mandarin rhymes ................................................................................................. 27 Table 4 Mandarin words with different tones ................................................................... 28 Table 5 Independent factor groups relevant to overall PA and each
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