Mandarin Chinese Tone Pair Drills

[sinosplice]

I recently put up a new feature on my site designed to help beginner to intermediate learners with tone combinations. I really believe that mastering tone combinations is the key to mastering tones. It has audio, and it's downloadable. I'd love it if you all could check it out and give me some feedback...

Mandarin Chinese Tone Pair Drills

(Sorry for the self-promotion, but I think it's relevant here.)

-John

[bomaci]

I actually studied tone pairs for a while when I first started playing around with chinese. However I really don't feel they helped that much. I think a much better idea would be to use the method described in this thread.http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/8213-near-native-foreign-accents

In my view practicing entire sentences will do much more to get you a native like pronounciation than practicing tone cominations will.

[leosmith]

I actually studied tone pairs for a while when I first started playing around with chinese. However I really don't feel they helped that much.

Chorus repetition of full sentences is an excellent way to learn pronunciation, IMO. But in the very beginning, I think it's good to start with initials & finals, move on to syllables, then words (perhaps using the new sinosplice tools). The sentence is the final product, and the most important, but it seems critical to make sure everything else is correct at some point early on in my studies.

I've got the initials, finals and syllables down pretty well, so I'll start on the tone pair drills within the next few days. I'll let you know how it goes. Thanks John!

[bomaci]

I am not so sure I agree. The thing is that learning full sentences from the start makes you aware of the rhythm of the language which I believe is very much overlooked in chinese pronounciation instruction. If you get the rhythm of the sentence down it is so much easier to get the tones right. Granted you may have to practice the first couple of sentences many many times before you get them right, but I think this method works better then working on individual syllables. Another advantage of this approach is that it gets you away from thinking consiously about tones. This latter thing is very important if you ever want to speak chinese fluently. If you practice alot of sentences using this method, the rhythm and intonation of mandarin will become second nature to you and you can start relying on just imitating what you hear from native speakers instead of needing to figure out what tones they are saying.

I am planning to learn cantonese in the future, and when I do I will definetely start with individual sentences right from the start. I will also consciously avoid any tone explanations.

[djwebb2004]

The tone pairs on Sinosplice site are good, but they are reinventing the wheel. Every textbook of Chinese has tone pair practice. Check out Practical Chinese Reader book 1 and the section called "tone discrimination and conversation practice".

[CathaySpecific]

djwebb2004

 

 

The tone pairs on Sinosplice site are good, but they are reinventing the wheel. Every textbook of Chinese has tone pair practice. Check out Practical Chinese Reader book 1 and the section called "tone discrimination and conversation practice". 

 

It may be the case that textbooks pay lip service to or even emphasize tone pairs, but it seems the message isn't getting through.  The concept of tone pairs should be more prominent, and be ingrained in every Chinese learner's psyche.  Yet all you hear when you ask a native speaker about tones is the tired old cliche mā má mǎ mà - which reinforces some of the most common myths about Chinese:  1) that characters can be studied in isolation, and 2) that knowing the 4  basic tones is all you need to master Mandarin pronunciation.

 

I wrote an article on this topic - let me start a separate thread on it, and hopefully generate some good discussion.

[889]

"It may be the case that textbooks pay lip service to or even emphasize tone pairs, but it seems the message isn't getting through."

 

A big reason, I think, is the unwillingness to put serious time into drills, because they seem boring to both teachers and students, and are at odds with modern teaching theory, which apparently holds that keeping the students interested is paramount.

[imron]

Drills are boring, but if they are done correctly and mindfully they are one of the best ways to improve your skills - not just tone drills but other drills for other skills also.

[CathaySpecific]

Here is the article I referred to above.

 

http://www.digmandarin.com/tones-prefer-company-part-ii-an-exciting-new-audio-visual-way-to-practice-to-practice-mandarin-tones.html

 

The idea of tone pairs is not new, the novel concept here is to group vocabulary words into buckets by their tone pairs, such as the "airplane bucket" (1-1 pair) or "strawberry bucket" (3-2 pair), using whatever mnemonic works for you to help internalize these phonetic patterns.