跟述練習應用在華語初學者上之成效：提升日本自學者的聲韻感

Evaluations of Shadowing Exercises for Novice Chinese Learners: Phonological Performances of Japanese Self-learners

在日本，「跟述練習」常應用於同步口譯的訓練中，近年，其應用在英語教育上的成效也逐漸受到矚目，亦有不少研究提到跟述練習應用在外語學習時，不僅可以提昇聽力、矯正發音，更可以加強閱讀能力、提高語彙數，在加強各方面的語言能力上均展現出其效用。在日本的英語教育中，跟述練習之成效備受矚目，但在其他國家對其並不熟悉；再反觀日本國內，除英語教育外，也鮮少被實施在其他外語教育中。此外，跟述練習所帶來的成效，在英語教育上已廣泛的被研究，但應用於其他語言上的研究則少之又少。筆者認為跟述練習應用在學習其他語言時，也應能帶來同樣之學習成效，故認為有必要依語言分別來驗證跟述練習之效果。 本研究以華語作為本次學習之外國語言，並驗證跟述練習的效果。且將研究重點放在驗證學習者的聲韻上(rhythm, accent, intonation等)。參考文獻中提到跟述練習在提升聲韻感上有相當的成效，那麼在個別音位的習得及矯正上又有何效果呢？本研究由1)聲韻成分2)個別音位3)流暢度4)理解度四個項目來分析跟述練習的成效，實驗結果發現相對於對照組，每天持續進行跟述練習的實驗組學習者在上述四項比較項目中皆顯示出正面的成長數字。因此，本研究不僅肯定跟述練習有助於習得華語，也相信其成效亦有可能反映在聲韻以外之能力提昇上。

“Shadowing,” a training method originally used for simultaneous interpretation, has gained much popularity in the field of English education in Japan. Many studies have been carried out to investigate the effects of shadowing ranging from improvement of listening comprehension and articulation of speech to reading comprehension, vocabulary acquisition and language acquisition in general. Despite its soaring popularity in English learning, shadowing seems to be little known or practiced in the field of other foreign language learning at home and abroad. In contrast to a great amount of research done regarding the acquisition of English, studies on the effects of shadowing on the acquisition of other languages are scarce. Although we can anticipate that shadowing would do more good than harm when learning other foreign languages besides English, educational venues await further studies to elucidate the role of shadowing in learning a particular language. This study attempts to shed light on the effects of shadowing on learning Chinese as a foreign language. Although shadowing is claimed to have an effect in multiple areas in language learning, this paper focuses on improvement in the phonological sphere, more specifically prosodic performance, which has been widely agreed upon in the literature. Previous studies have emphasized the effectiveness of shadowing in brushing up learners’ prosodic sense, such as rhythm and intonation in particular. This leads to an assumption that shadowing should be even more effective in Chinese learning as prosody plays a vital role in this tonal language. Is the effect of shadowing limited to prosody as claimed in previous studies, or can the effect be observed in other areas in phonology as well? To explore this question, this paper investigates the effect of shadowing in the following four areas: 1) prosodic elements, 2) individual phonemes, 3) fluency, and 4) intelligibility. The results of the experiments show that the experimental group, who practiced shadowing on a regular basis, improved significantly in all of the four phonological aspects. Also, it was confirmed that in all these areas the experimental group outperformed the control group, who did not practice shadowing at all. The findings of this study lend further support to the effectiveness of shadowing in improving learners’ prosodic sense, and also suggest its potential of contributing to other phonological aspects as well.