ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses teaching Chinese lexical tones, a prominent linguistic feature of the Chinese sound system, to adult learners. The chapter includes three sections. The first briefly introduces the linguistic properties of Chinese lexical tones. With a focus on the most difficult Tone 3, the second section reviews a few research findings on second language (L2) acquisition of Chinese tones in order to shed light on tone teaching. It may be not difficult for learners to differentiate Chinese tones in a contrastive environment and to imitate tones during instruction (at a phonetic level). However, a major challenge for L2 learners is that they usually lack the stable mental (phonological) representation of the tone system that allows them to accurately reproduce the same sound patterns in connected speech later. Therefore, the third section of the chapter offers two types of pedagogical suggestions regarding 1) the establishment of the phonological representation of Chinese lexical tones, and 2) the development of motor skills for tone implementation. In addition, three sets of sample tone training materials are offered as well as a few notes to instructors at the end of the chapter in order to facilitate effective tone teaching and learning.
