| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 華語文教學系 === 103 === Alveolar and retroflex consonants have always been the major difficulty for foreign students learning the pronunciation of Mandarin Chinese; native Turkish speakers are no exception. Based on the contrastive analysis between Mandarin and Turkish consonants, all fricative and affricate consonants of Mandarin are divided into alveolar consonants (/ts/, /tsʰ/, /s/) and retroflex consonants (/ʈʂ/, /ʈʂʰ/, /ʂ/), while there is only one group of fricative-affricative contrast in Turkish: palate-alveolar consonants (/dʒ/, /tʃ/, /ʃ/). However, the places of articulation of these consonants are close to each other but they are individually different in articulations and in sonic traits.
The result of this research points out the following features existing in the false articulation of Turkish learners: 1) They lack occlusive motion in speech organs which confounds affricates with fricatives. (/s/ vs. /tsʰ/) 2) The insufficiency of aspiration that confuses the aspirated consonants with those of non-aspirated ones. (/tsʰ/ vs. /ts/; /ʈʂʰ/ vs. /ʈʂ/) 3) The inappropriate position of tongue tip that causes the obscurity of alveolar and retroflex consonants. (/ts/ vs. /ʈʂ/; /tsʰ/ vs. /ʈʂʰ/; /s/ vs. /ʂ/) According to the interview with Turkish learners, the similar written form for Pinyin and Turkish language (both based Latin alphabet) and their exaggerating imitation of the tones are indicated to be the major accounts for the inaccurate articulation.
Based on the result, I propose some instructions conforming to learners’ language ability; that is, starting with a phoneme that already exists in their native language - /s/. With demonstrations of the distinction between these consonants as the initials of every Mandarin syllable, teachers may gradually adjust the variables of articulation by adding occlusion first (making /s/ into [tsʰ]), then to shorten the aspiration (making /tsʰ/ into [ts]), and last to shift the tongue tip backwards (changing /s/, /tsʰ/, /ts/ into [ʂ], [ʈʂʰ], [ʈʂ]). These methods should effectively reduce the difficulties in acquiring an accurate articulation of these Mandarin consonants.
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