A Study of the Nature and Impact of Shona and Chinese Rhyming Words/Phrases

Pairs of rhyming words/phrases in Chinese and Shona were investigated in an attempt to bring out the effect of such words to the teaching and learning of Chinese language. The pairs were grouped in accordance to their effects and nature of relationship. The selection of the words was based on samples obtained during classroom teaching. Students’ reaction to Chinese words automatically tells the story of the effect of such rhyming words. For instance, for embarrassing rhyming words learners naturally shy out to pronounce the words or they laugh instead of imitating the teacher. It is clear that the study of rhyming words/phrases across languages in the field of second language teaching is as important as the study of transfer errors. The research was however limited in terms of its scope, more focus was placed on the perspective of Chinese words from a native speaker of Shona language’s point of view. It was suggested that future researches should engage speakers of other languages and further explore effects of rhyming of words across other languages.