| Summary: | This paper reports on an empirical study examining the relationship
between beginning-level CFL students’ tonal production and their
awareness of lexical tonal categories. Additionally, it investigated CFL
learners’ views about the relationship. A mixed method approach was
adopted to collect and analyze both quantitative and qualitative data
from 23 beginning-level English-speaking adult CFL learners. The
quantitative results show that the participants’ accuracy of lexical
tonal production was statistically significantly correlated to their
awareness of tonal categories and their tonal production was
statistically more accurate than their awareness of tonal categories.
The qualitative findings show that the participants didn’t rely on their
awareness of tonal categories when conducting the production task.
However, the participants stressed the importance of awareness of
tonal categories in their tonal production, particularly when
producing unfamiliar characters. Based on the discovered unique
relationship, pedagogical suggestions for beginning-level CFL tonal
development are offered.
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