Study on Elementary and Intermediate Mandarin Learners' Perception of Their Own Tone Categories

To explore whether mandarin learn ers have their own tone categories and in what forms if any, three elementary and three intermediate learners of Chinese are recruited to take part in both pronouncing and perception experiments. Research priority is given to whether the decision outcomes of a tone from the subjects cohere with their actual tone. The results show that the perception of their own tone categories has nothing to do with learners' levels. Among those who already have stable mandarin tone categories, some of them are adept at tones so that their tone perceptual categories are similar to standard mandarin tone categories. However, others use specific perceptual strategies such as the length or the strength of the tone and so on.