The Influence of Tonal Awareness and Musical Experience on Tone Word Learning

Phonological awareness has been shown to play a significant role in language learning. The present study examined the effect of improving pitch identification ability and tonal awareness on Cantonese tone word learning. A group of native English listeners received three days of Cantonese tone training to first improve their tone perception. They then learned the meanings of 15 vocabulary items distinguished by Cantonese tones (i.e., word identification training), along with groups of native English non-musicians and musicians who did not receive tone training. Both the tone-trainees and the musicians obtained similar word identification proficiency levels by the end of word training and were both significantly better than the non-tone trained non-musicians. These results lend support for phonetic-phonological-lexical continuity, as enhancing listeners’ tonal awareness and identification ability of tonal cues significantly contributed to success in tone word learning.