Mandarin language has generated a global interest among the non-Chinese students in the 21st century. Mandarin language has also become the favorite third language subject among Malaysian university students. However, many non-native speakers of Mandarin often encountered problems in pronunciation in terms of consonants, vowels, and tones. Mandarin is a tonal language, which the meaning of the word will be changed if the tone is pronounced incorrectly. Since identifying the Hanyu Pinyin pronunciation mistakes is essential and should be prioritised by Mandarin instructors, this study aims to investigate the evidence of pronunciation errors spoken by the students as non-native speakers in the area of consonants, vowels, and tones based on Hanyu Pinyin system. A survey was conducted by distributing questionnaires to undergraduates from Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) Engineering Campus. The findings from the data analysis show that most students made a lot of errors in pronouncing retroflex consonants due to mother tongue interference. In addition, the missing of certain vowels in students' first and second languages as compared to Mandarin as well as the difficulty to pronounce the tones correctly have created further hindrance to the students in the process of mastery Mandarin language.
Citation (APA 6th ed.):
Khor, G. S., Mah, B. Y., & Thomas Chow, V. F. (2017). Pronunciation errors in Mandarin among the engineering undergraduates: An analytical analysis. International Academic Research Journal of Social Science, 3(1), 71-76. Retrieved from http://www.iarjournal.com/wpcontent/uploads/IARJSS2017_1_71-76.pdf
