Step 1. Collect all the errors.

Initials (consonants) Finals (vowels) Tones

Step 2. Categorize the errors based on the dimensions CONSONANTS:

1. Both of the times she says , the nasal at the end of the syllable disappears; only the vowel yu is left. 2. becomes . The consonant she produces is palatal, but it is a fricative and not an affricate. 3. becomes in the phrase . She is aspirating the sound even though it shouldn't be aspirated. 4. When the spacer pronounces the world the alveloar fricative [s] changers to an alveolar affricate [ts]. The sound becomes more v-like. 5. The world should be pronounced using a voiceless palatal fricative consonant, which is a sound absent from english. She instead substitutes the english sh sound making the word sound distinctly foreign like.

VOWELS:
1. When she pronounces the world it sounds more like . She is substituting the medial + mid back vowel combination in [tuo] for the single high back vowel in [tu]. 2. When she pronounces [i] in (a hight front unfound vowel) she adds an english /y/ sound, as in the word yee. She is perhaps opening her mouth slightly more than she should be to produce this high vowel sound.

3. When speaking [p!"] , the schwa vowel is substituted for a sound which sounds close to the vowel in the english word pay. Again, her mouth is probably opening too much. 4. The vowel in [xou] sounds similar to the vowel component in [xau]. Her tongue is too far forward in her mouth.

TONES
The third tone seems particularly challenging for this speaker. Each time she speaks (though her speech is certainly slow enough to fully articulate the 214 pattern) it carries a weak second tone; if any tone at all. The same occurs with ; it is not a third tone. The first tone is frequently lost as in the words and . Her general problem is simply dropping the tones on the syllables.

SUMMARY:
What is interesting about this persons speech is that she seems fully capable of correctly articulating the tones, she just does not do so consistently. For example, in the phrase , the fourth tone is perfect. Also, in the phrase is articulated perfectly. The speakers problem is inconsistency, and changing tones to the incorrect ones. Recording herself speaking, listening to a native recording, and then rerecording herself could certainly aid in fixing this issue. Also, her consonants seemed to have more problems than her vowels. This makes sense as english has all of these vowels with the exception of [y], which is simply a rounded version of [i], not a problem for an english speaker to pronounce. The consonants she articulated incorrectly are absent from english. For this, I would suggest she gets specific instruction on where to put her tongue for making these sounds. Doing so could significantly reduce the number of mistakes she makes after some practice!