A Study on the long-term retention effects of Japanese C2L learners to distinguish Mandarin Chinese Tone 2 and Tone 3 after perceptual training

In order to help Japanese C2L learners to learn Mandarin Chinese tones efficiently, we have devised a hybrid perceptual training paradigm consisting of adaptive and high-variability training periods. Through the training the 13 participants were able to show improvements in their tone distinguishing accuracy of the Tone 2 and 3 from the pre-test 84.2% to the post-test 94.2% in 6 days. After six months of training, we conducted tests again on 8 of the 13 participants to examine their up-to-date ability to distinguish the same tone pair. The results showed that the accuracy of natural syllable tones increased by 0.2%, while the position of the category boundary had no obvious change compared to the post-test. The accuracy of the generalization tests showed no significant decrease, which only had a 2% declination. This demonstrated that the hybrid perceptual training paradigm could contribute significantly to a long-term modification of an individual´s tone perception.