Perception and Production of L2 Mandarin Tones by Swedish Learners

This study presents the results of perception and production of L2 Mandarin tones in mono-and di-syllabic words by Swedish learners at the beginner level. Although studies of perception and production on Mandarin tones are many, those by speakers of lexical-pitch accent language such as Swedish are still very limited. The result reveals both discrepancy and agreement between perception and production. Swedish learners perform best in discriminating a level tone (T1) from contour tones (T2, T3, T4) both in perception and production. Discrepancy between perception and production was noted for T3. In perception, the identification of T3 was second best after the level tone (T1), but the production of T3 was found to be difficult.