“Vowel ups and downs”. Teaching vowel height of Portuguese to Mandarin Chinese native speakers
Ensinando a altura de vogal do português a falantes nativos de chinês mandarim
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21814/diacritica.6506Keywords:
Pronunciation teaching, Teaching materials design, Portuguese as a Foreign Language, Chinese learners, Phonological system, Vowel heightAbstract
Given the needs of teachers and learners of Portuguese as a Foreign Language in China and based on knowledge about teaching pronunciation, this article proposes a resource for teaching vowel height to such learners. This resource: (1) consists of a Powerpoint presentation that combines the strategies of Color Vowel® Chart and Vowel Elevator and therefore explores different levels of pronunciation instruction; (2) can be integrated into a broader and more communicative approach to teaching pronunciation; (3) aims to help forming cognitive categories for the (novel) Portuguese vowels; (4) includes a comparison of vowel phonological systems in Portuguese and Mandarin Chinese. The presentation of this didactic material and the respective scientific-pedagogical basis also contributes to the training of foreign language teachers in the teaching of pronunciation.
References
Água-Mel, C. (2016). Manual elementar de português falado e escrito. The Commercial Press.
Alves, U. K. (2015). Ensino de pronúncia na sala de aula de língua estrangeira: questões de discussão a partir de uma concepção de língua como sistema adaptativo e complexo. Revista Versalete, 3(5), 392–413.
André, C. A. (2016). Uma Língua para ver o mundo. Olhando o português a partir de Macau. Instituto Politécnico de Macau.
Barbosa, J. M. (1994). Introdução ao estudo da fonologia e Morfologia do português. Almedina.
Best, C. T., & Tyler, M. D. (2007). Nonnative and second-language speech perception: Commonalities and complementarities. Em O. Bohn & M. J. Munro (Eds.), Language experience in second language speech learning. In honor of James Emil Flege (pp. 13–34). John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/lllt.17.07bes
Boersma, P. (2007). Some listener-oriented accounts of h-aspiré in French. Lingua, 117(12), 1989–2054. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2006.11.004
Boersma, P. (2011). A programme for bidirectional phonology and phonetics and their acquisition and evolution. In A. Benz & J. Mattausch (Eds.), Bidirectional optimality theory (vol. 180, pp. 33–72). John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/la.180.02boe
Boersma, P., & Hamann, S. (2009). Introduction: models of phonology in perception. In P. Boersma & S. Hamann (Eds.), Phonology in perception (pp. 1–24). Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110219234.1
Castelo, A. (2017). Ensino da componente fonético-fonológica: uma síntese e um exemplo de português para estrangeiros. Linguística. Revista de Estudos Linguísticos da Universidade do Porto, 12, 41–72. https://hdl.handle.net/10400.2/12000
Castelo, A. (2018). Fonética e fonologia para o ensino do Português como Língua Estrangeira. Instituto Politécnico de Macau.
Castelo, A. (2021a). Exercícios práticos de fonética do Português Língua Estrangeira. Instituto Politécnico de Macau. https://cpclp.mpu.edu.mo/fonetica/
Castelo, A. (2021b). Sons da fala e sons do canto: música para ensinar fonética do português. Volume 1: Música de Portugal. Instituto Politécnico de Macau. https://cpclp.mpu.edu.mo/sons-da-fala-e-sons-do-canto-volume-1-musica-de-portugal/
Castelo, A., & Freitas, M. J. (2019). Produção de vogais orais tónicas do PLE por falantes nativos de chinês mandarim. Orientes do Português, 1, 47–58. https://doi.org/10.21747/27073130/ori1a5
Castelo, A., & Sun, Y. (2020). Retrato actual do ensino e certificação de PLNM no ensino superior da China. In Y. Zhang, I. P. Lopes & A. Castelo (Eds.), Livro azul - Relatório sobre o ensino do português em Instituições de Ensino Superior da China (1960–2020) (pp. 21–71). Instituto Politécnico de Macau.
Castelo, A., Zhou, C., & Amorim, C. (2021, outubro 28–29). Aquisição das vogais médias do português na China: os desafios de um desenho experimental [apresentação de póster]. XXXVII Encontro Nacional da Associação Portuguesa de Linguística, online / Coimbra, Portugal.
https://hdl.handle.net/10400.2/13196
Celce-Murcia, M., Brinton, D. M., Goodwin, J. M., & Griner, B. (2010). Teaching pronunciation: a course book and reference guide. Cambridge University Press.
Derwing, T. M., & Munro, M. J. (2005). Second language accent and pronunciation teaching: a research-based approach. TESOL Quarterly, 39(3), 379–397. https://doi.org/10.2307/3588486
Duan, H. (2021). Aquisição da altura em vogais orais tónicas por falantes chineses aprendentes do português europeu como língua segunda [Dissertação de mestrado, Universidade de Lisboa]. https://hdl.handle.net/10451/51266
Duanmu, S. (2007). The phonology of Standard Chinese. Oxford University Press.
Elliott, N. (2018). Teaching tip: the vowel elevator: a visual-kinesthetic way to expand the vowel space. In J. Levis (Ed.), Proceedings of the 9th Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching conference (pp. 239–244). Iowa State University. https://apling.engl.iastate.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/221/2018/09/PSLLT-Proceedings-9_9-14-18_2.pdf
Ellis, R. (1997). The empirical evaluation of language teaching materials. ELT Journal, 51(1), 36–42. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/51.1.36
Ellis, R. (2005). Principles of instructed language learning. System, 33(2), 209–224. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2004.12.006
Escudero, P. (2005). Linguistic perception and second language acquisition: explaining the attainment of optimal phonological categorization. LOT.
https://www.lotpublications.nl/Documents/113_fulltext.pdf
Escudero, P., & Boersma, P. (2004). Bridging the gap between L2 speech perception research and phonological theory. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 26(4), 551–585. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0272263104040021
Escudero, P., Boersma, P., Rauber, A. S., & Bion, R. A. H. (2009). A cross-dialect acoustic description of vowels: Brazilian and European Portuguese. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 126, 1379–1393. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.3180321
Flege, J. E. (1995). Second-language speech learning: theory, findings, and problems. In W. Strange (Ed.), Speech perception and linguistic experience: issues in cross-language research (pp. 229–273). York Press.
Flege, J. E., & Bohn, O-S. (2021). The revised Speech Learning Model (SLM-r). In R. Wayland (Ed.), Second language speech learning: theoretical and empirical progress (pp. 3–83). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108886901.002
Foote, J. A., Holtby, A. K., & Derwing, T. M. (2011). Survey of the teaching of pronunciation in adult ESL programs in Canada. TESL Canada Journal, 29(1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.18806/tesl.v29i1.1086
Gordon, J. (2021). Pronunciation and task-sased instruction: effects of a classroom intervention. RELC Journal, 52(1), 94–109. https://doi.org/10.1177/0033688220986919
Grant, L. (2014). Prologue to the myths: what teachers need to know. In L. Grant, D. Brinton, T. Derwing, M. Munro, J. Field, J. Gilbert, J. Murphy, R. Thomson, B. Zielinski, & L. Yates, Pronunciation myths. Applying second language research to classroom teaching (pp. 1–33). University of Michigan Press.
Grosso, M. J., Zhang, J., Gaspar, C., & Teixeira, M. (2021). Referencial de ensino de Português Língua Estrangeira na China. Centro Científico e Cultural de Macau, Universidade de Macau.
Hashemian, M., & Fadaei, B. (2011). A comparative study of intuitive-imitative and analytic-linguistic approaches towards teaching English vowels to L2 learners. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 2(5), 969–976.
Hristovsky, G., & Andrade, E. (2007). Why do Bulgarian and Portuguese unstressed vowels behave almost in the same way? In B. E. Cieszyńska (Ed.), Iberian and Slavonic studies: contact and comparison (pp. 332–345). CompaRes.
International Phonetic Association (IPA) (2026). International phonetic alphabet in IPA Kiel. IPA. Retirado a 13 de abril de 2026, de www.internationalphoneticassociation.org/IPAcharts/common_files/pdfs/pdfs_IPA_charts_E/IPA_Kiel.pdf
Lai, N. I. (2025). Aquisição fonológica do português europeu por aprendentes bilingues cantonês-mandarim: restrições fonotáticas ou vantagens do bilinguismo? [Dissertação de mestrado, Universidade de Lisboa].
Lin, Y. H. (2007). The sounds of Chinese. Cambridge University Press.
Mateus, M. H. M. (2003). Fonologia. In M. H. M. Mateus, A. M. Brito, I. Duarte & I. H. Faria, Gramática da língua portuguesa (pp. 987–1033). Caminho.
Mateus, M. H. M. (2014). O comportamento das vogais nas variedades do português. Lingüística, 30(2), 19–43.
Mateus, M. H., & Andrade, E. (2000). The phonology of Portuguese. Oxford University Press.
Mora, J. C., & Mora-Plaza, I. (2023). From research in the lab to pedagogical practices in the EFL classroom: the case of task-based pronunciation teaching. Education Sciences, 13, Artigo 1042. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13101042
Nagle, C., & Baese-Berk, M. (2022). Advancing the state of the art in L2 speech perception-production research: Revisiting theoretical assumptions and methodological practices. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 44, 580–605. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0272263121000371
Observador (2025, 18 de abril). Mercado saturado pode levar universidades chinesas a rever cursos de português. Observador. https://observador.pt/2025/04/18/mercado-saturado-pode-levar-universidades-chinesas-a-rever-cursos-de-portugues/
Odisho, E. Y. (2016). The weight of phonological vs. phonetic accent in teaching pronunciation: Implications and applications. Linguarum Arena, 7, 31–48.
Pires, M. D. J. (2025). Uma leitura quantitativa do ensino de português na China: desafios e reflexões. Orientes do Português, 7, 91-100. https://doi.org/10.21747/27073130/ori7a6
Taylor, K., & Thompson, S. (2018). The Color Vowel® Chart (5th ed.) [Imagem interativa]. Color Vowel®. https://colorvowel.com/teachers/interactive-charts/
Taylor, K., & Thompson, S. (s.d.). Teaching spoken English with the Color Vowel Chart. U.S. Department of State. https://americanenglish.state.gov/files/ae/resource_files/teaching_spoken_english_with_the_color_vowel_chart_webinar_presentation.pdf
Veloso, J. (2007). Schwa in European Portuguese: the phonological status of [ɨ]. In O. Crouzet, & J. P. Angoujard (Eds.), Actes des JEL’2007. Schwa(s). 5èmes Journées d’Études Linguistiques (pp. 55–60). Université de Nantes.
Veloso, J. (2010). Central, epenthetic, unmarked vowels and schwas: a brief outline of some essential differences, Linguística. Revista de Estudos Linguísticos da Universidade do Porto, 5(1), 193–213.
Veloso, J. (2012). Vogais centrais do português europeu contemporâneo: uma proposta de análise à luz da fonologia dos elementos. Letras de Hoje, 47(3), 234–243.
Veloso, J. (2016). O sistema vocálico e a redução e neutralização das vogais átonas em português europeu contemporâneo. In A. M. Martins & E. Carrilho (Eds.), Manual de linguística portuguesa (pp. 636–662). De Gruyter.
Veloso, J. (2024). The phonology of Portuguese oral vowels. In A. Zampaulo (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of Portuguese phonology (pp. 22-42). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003266648
Wang, Z., Chen, Y., Ng, M., & Yao, L. (2020). Acoustic analysis of Mandarin Chinese vowels produced by young adults. Rehabilitation Medicine, 30(3), 183–191. https://doi.org/10.3724/SP.J.1329.2020.03004
Zhou, C. (2021). L2 speech learning of European Portuguese /l/ and /ɾ/ by L1-Mandarin learners: experimental evidence and theoretical modelling [Tese de doutoramento, Universidade de Lisboa]. https://hdl.handle.net/10451/55523
Zhou, C., & Hamann, S. (2020). Cross-linguistic interaction between phonological categorization and orthography predicts prosodic effects in the acquisition of Portuguese liquids by L1-Mandarin learners. Proceedings of Interspeech 2020. https://doi.org/10.21437/interspeech.2020-2689
Zhou, C., & Hamann, S. (2024). Modelling the acquisition of the Portuguese tap by L1-Mandarin learners: a BiPhon-HG account for individual differences, syllable-position effects and orthographic influences in L2 speech. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics, 9(1), 1–39. https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.9692
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Adelina Castelo, Clara Amorim, Chao Zhou, Qinxue Li, Chenlin Zhang, Liliana Soares
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
