The Effectiveness of Audio-Visual Feedback for L2 Chinese Sentence Stress Perception and Production

This study investigated how auditory and audio-visual feedback impacts the improvement of sentence stress for learners of Chinese as a second language (L2). Eighteen Korean learners of Chinese participated in question-answer sentence tasks designed to assess both their perception and production of sentence stress. The experimental materials consisted of sixteen sets of sentences that varied only in the location of stress (initial, middle, or final). Visual-auditory feedback was provided using the ProZed[1] plugin of Praat[2], which displays pitch movement and timing together. In contrast, the auditory feedback followed the same procedure but without the visual display. The findings revealed that the group receiving visual-auditory feedback showed greater improvement in both perceiving and producing correct sentence stress compared to the auditory-only group. Notably, the perception of middle stress improved significantly with audio-visual feedback, while final stress did not show improvement in either group, highlighting the challenge of acquiring final stress for Chinese L2 learners. The results, supported by evidence from other studies, suggest that audio-visual feedback is a highly effective tool for enhancing the intonation skills of Chinese L2 learners.