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Teaching Mandarin Tones to Adult English Speakers: Analysis of Difficulties with Suggested Remedies

For adult English speaking students of Mandarin, tones pose a very difficult hurdle to pass over. This paper first identifies some sources of difficulties, then classifies and analyzes them. Suggestions to remedy the difficulties have also been made as follows: (1) a new determinancy of the low- dipping contour of the 3rd tone as the norm with other contours as derivations from this norm; (2) new tone drill materials written on music scales, which help the learner to transform from tonemic abstractions to phonetic realities. Tests and experiments have been carried out from 1980 to 1983. The results have confirmed the effectiveness of these suggestions.