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<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Cambria', serif; color: black;">A major challenge of learning Mandarin Chinese is mastering lexical tones. Conventional methods of teaching Mandarin tones assume that, for speakers of non-tonal languages, lexical tones are a &lsquo;strange&rsquo; concept. Our small-scale pilot study drew on pedagogical theories of cross-linguistic transfer (CLT) to frame lexical tones as &lsquo;familiar&rsquo; by modelling Mandarin pitch contours on English intonation patterns. We compared an experimental group with a control group, within a first-semester university Chinese language course. All participants completed a pre-test and a post-test (perception and production of tones), and a pre-survey and post-survey (attitudes towards learning). After 30-40 minutes of additional training, students in the experimental group demonstrated no significant improvement in perception or production of Mandarin tones vis-&agrave;-vis the control group but differentiated themselves in some interesting attitudinal ways. The results of the study suggest that it would be worth conducting further research into the new pedagogical approach on a larger scale.</span></p>

ltrq.2026.56.06.pdf

Original Research 

ltrq.2026.56.06.xml

Reframing the ‘Strange’ as ‘Familiar’ – Teaching Mandarin Chinese Tones to Speakers of Non-Tonal Languages