Final Week: More Practice and Summary

Week 13: Summary and Report

 ~~~~~~What I have done~~~~~~~~

During the last week of practice, I tried to keep practicing everyday with the archetype with the following steps:

1. I read the selected poem sentence by sentence, then recorded and compared it with the original sentence in the archetype. I used the trasncription to remind myself of the detailed mistakes and inaccurate tones in the performance.

2. Then I made a list of problem I had in the imitation:

 Consonant

 

n→l 奶奶→lailai、牛奶→liulai、

姑娘→guliang、那多→la多、美女→meilv
r→l 热→le、突然→toulan

Vowels

u→ou，肚子→douzi、绿豆→loudou
e→uo，帅哥→suaiguo、合作→huozuo、一个→yiguo
ui→ei，对头→deidou、退步→teibu、嘴巴→zeiba、璀璨→ceican、随便→seibian
ue→iuo，确实→qiuosi、学习→xiuoxi, (just for q、x)

Exceptions

u：

祝贺→zouhuo
初中→couzong
数学→souxiuo

 

3. As I got more familiar with the pronunciation, I got back to my comfort zone and read after the archetype to correct some detailed vowel and consonant production.

 

4. Every other day, I used the words with target vowel or consonants to communicate with students from Wuhan and kept a list of non-autentic pronunciation in my dialogue:

Overnaslaization of some vowels: e.g  Kang/qiao/zai/wo, If the vowel cluster is the "front, high" vowel, then we don't nasalize it very often

Tones in the speech: The tone system in Wuhan Dialect is different from that in Mandarin Chinese. One of the students from Wuhan sent me an article about the tonal changes, then I referred to the following information for practice.

 

 

5. Here are the online resource I used for practice and imitation:

Poem with Wuhan Dialect: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3eRoGSkTdc 

Wuhan Wiki: http://wuhanlen.com/wiki/index.php/%E6%AD%A6%E6%B1%89%E8%AF%9D%E7%9A%84%E9%9F%B3%E6%A0%87%E7%B3%BB%E7%BB%9F  

~~~~~~~~My Final Recording~~~~~~~

1.Link to your final recording for the semester:Final Recording

2. A comparison of your final recording with previous recordings and a description of the areas where you have and haven't progressed:

 Compared with the previous trials, I think I have been more familiar with the unique vowel and consonants in Wuhan Dialect. When produceing the sounds, I am more confident and "automatized" with the differences. And I also referred to the checklist less frequently than before. However, I do find it difficult to catch the tonal changes since the system in Wuhan dialect is not in one-to-one correspondence with that in Mandarin Chinese.

e..g 

My First tone in Wuhan dialect is ok, since both are flat in the two dialects. But the 2nd tone is like the 3rd tone in Mandarin, with the 3rd tone like the deeper 4th tone in Mandarin. I had to mememorize the Chinese characters and their corresponding tones in both dialects to complete the changes, which is not natural production then.

3. Final Thoughts:

I still need to work on the tones by practicing and referring to more reliable authentic samples, instead of the written analysis and limited input.I think I did a right thing to start from transcripts, which helped me a lot with segmental production. I am also satisfied with the sequencing of vowel/consonant/C+V clusters/single tone/suprasegmentals/general practice, which is easy for me to follow and check my progress.

Once given more chance, I really want to get more authentic materials for automaticity and natural production. I might also choose a monologue as archetype, which is more communicative that a poem.

• final thoughts, including a description of what you still need to learn or refine, and thoughts about what you did right and what you think you should have done differently