What role does prosody training play in improving Chinese accent

Prosody training plays a crucial role in improving the Chinese accent by helping learners better perceive and produce the intonation, rhythm, and stress patterns of the target language. Specifically, prosody training targets the suprasegmental features of speech, such as pitch variation, duration, and energy, which are essential for natural-sounding speech and intelligibility.

Key points on the role of prosody training for Chinese accent improvement include:

• Chinese is a tonal language with distinctive pitch patterns that influence meaning, so learners must adjust their pitch and intonation when speaking a non-tonal or differently toned language to avoid transferring native prosodic patterns that affect comprehensibility.
• Prosody training helps learners recognize and produce appropriate stress, rhythm, and intonation patterns, which improves their overall accent clarity and reduces communication barriers.
• Training methods such as imitation, self-imitations, and computer-assisted prosody training have been shown to effectively improve prosodic features among Chinese language learners of other languages.
• Prosodic training also enhances learners’ ability to perceive pitch accents and focus placement, which are challenging due to interference from native syntactic and prosodic structures.
• Incorporating pitch-aware and auditory-image training models further refines learners’ prosodic skills by targeting pitch contours and tonal distinctions relevant for accent modification.
• Computer-assisted and speech synthesis technologies augment traditional training methods by offering visual and auditory feedback on prosody, facilitating more precise practice and improvement.

In conclusion, prosody training is essential for Chinese speakers aiming to improve their accent in other languages by addressing both perceptual and productive aspects of suprasegmental features, leading to more native-like and intelligible speech. ^{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6}

References

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