On May 24th, 2023,distinguished Professor Marcus Taft from the Base was invited to give a fascinating academic lecture for faculty and students of our school. The lecture was titled "SomeThoughts on ChineseTones: MentalRepresentation andSecond-LanguageTeaching". The lecture was presided over by Dr. Tao He, a full-time researcher at thebase, and more than 40 faculty and students attended.
Professor Taft's presentation is divided into two parts: Part 1is using multiple speech production and phonological judgment experiments, Professor Taft introduces the "Mental representation of tone". Part Twois thatProfessor Taft introduced tone learning in the teaching of Chinese as a second language, and shared his own TAFT system, which uses letters to represent tone signs, such as Yihng, Yiwng, Yiyng, corresponding to the second, third and fourth tone respectively. The professor's follow-up research showed that for Chinese second language learners, the TAFT system helped them remember tonesmore easily.
During the Q&A session, the attending faculty and students actively asked questions, and Professor Taft provided comprehensive and detailed answers. The content of the presentation was rich, vivid and interesting, greatly expanding the academic horizons and research ideas of the attending faculty and studentsand has strong academic inspirations.
