Review of Chinese Tones Acquisiton by Non-tonal Language Speakers Taking English as an Example

Abstract

When English speakers learn Chinese, we will find that a very important reason for their non-standard Chinese is that they cannot pronounce the correct Chinese tones.Learning tonal languages can be a challenge for native speakers of tonal languages.This paper mainly summarizes the research on the learning of Chinese tones by native English speakers over the past 20 years, shows the defects existing in the learning of Chinese tones by native English speakers, and confirms that native English speakers can acquire Chinese tones, and difficulty in acquiring Chinese tones.It is hoped that the teaching methods of Chinese tones can be continuously improved, so that it will be beneficial for native English speakers to learn Chinese.