Trouble Remembering Tones, How To Overcome?!?

[Zomac]

I'm not good at memorizing tones too so I often avoid practicing putonghua when I'm not in China.

In native environment, my putonghua will naturally evolve to a level that makes me survive well because native speakers have a sharp ear to tell all the difference. Outside of China, everyone, including a teacher, is too great to understand my putonghua no matter how bad it is.

[doraemon]

Remembering tones is quite hard at times, I usually try and sounds the words out which I'm not sure about, and also try to remember where I've heard the word(s) before.

[Kenny同志]

I used to memorise the usage of English words in isolation, nearly totally ignoring the context and combinations they are in. After a period of time, I found I had not improved much, which was a big frustration, so I decided this was not a good way and shifted to another method, that is, memorise the usage of a particular word in the given context and pay special attention to the frequent combinations it forms. I made noticeable progress after practising this some time. I think this may also apply well to the study of tones of Chinese characters as some frequently-used characters are found to have two or three or even four tones, or even three or four different pronunciations at worst, like the usages of an English word.

[freipole]

I was planning on starting to try to learn words for some songs in Mandarin that I like and try to sing along, but now I'm not sure:

I've read that there are no tones when singing, so if I try to sing along I'll be actually learning a "toneless" version. I'm pretty much a beginner, so I'd hate to learn it wrong, it'd be hard to relearn later. So, what do you think, will it really be detrimental to learn to sing along?

[renzhe]

You're right, Mandarin is generally toneless when singing, especially pop.

I don't know whether it would be detrimental to sing along, but I've found that the best way to remember tones is to remember the pronunciation clearly, which you can get by parroting and lots of listening. So whether you learn some songs for singing along or not , you will want to listen to the proper spoken pronunciation a lot.

I don't think that learning a few songs will hurt you, after all you don't usually start singing when somebody asks you a question

[gougou]

One thing I've been noticing recently (after installing Anki and the plugin that automatically adds pinyin with tone marks for your Chinese words) is that tones don't seem to stick as well anymore as when I was depicting them with numbers. It seems because the numbers are much more prominent in the word, they stick much more easily (I guess I'm a lot of a visual learner, so for other people the difference might not be quite so pronounced).

So even though the tone marks look much slicker, I'll probably change back to numbers to get that beneficial effect again.

[wushijiao]

Here are a few suggestions (and I realize other people have also mentioned these):

- do tons and tons of listening practice per day (1-3 hours per day, if possible)

- speak to people as much as possible

- try your best to intellectually know the tone (ie. whether it's 1,2,3,4...etc)

- review flash cards

- do tone drills every once and a while.

One drill that I have mentioned, is take some audio (preferably made in a natural way, and preferably from a conversation, where the speaker/actor has a decent amount of emotion), focus on a single sentence or two in which you know all the words. Write the words down. Put the tone marks on the words (or do that in your head). Then listen, try to find which syllables are stressed. Listen to the audio several times, and especially focus on the important stressed syllables - and their tones. (Of course, if you are an observant person, you can also do this when speaking to someone in Mandarin. However, if you're not fluent, you might be struggling too much mentally to pick up the basic meaning of the sentence to pay attention to details of pronunciation. Therefore, I think this sort of drill is best done with audio (ie. on an iPod) since you can listen as many times as you want.

Another similar, simple drill that you can do is to take a dialogue or text that you have (preferably with pinyin and tone marks on). Before listening, choose a few words (perhaps one word per sentence) to especially focus on. As the audio goes along, wait for that word - and then notice how the speaker says the word and the tones - and try to sear it into your memory. After listening, choose a few different words in the same dialogue, repeat. Do this a few times, concentrating almost exclusively on how the speaker hits the tones. Then later, perhaps while walking on the street or while jogging, listen to the dialogue again and again, but mainly focusing on meaning. Subconsciously, though, you should be reinforcing the tones of those particular words.

I think these sorts of drills can help, because in my experience, you'll only pronounce tones correctly if you can recall how they are pronounced (not just what the tone marks are on paper/in flashcards).

- Other drills that you can do might involve reading a text, and having a native speaker grill you on every exact tone, until you get it perfect and can recite it well. (I think it's not a coincidence that some of the best Chinese speakers have gone through the rigors of preparing speeches or cross talk skits, in which they practiced specific dialogues to perfection).

On other thing: as a person who has been learning Chinese now for close to a decade (and as a person who has done a ridiculous amount of listening over the years) when I hear other foreigners mispronounce a tone of a word, it now simply sounds "wrong". But even a few years ago, when I could read books/newspapers with a certain degree of confidence and I could have conversations with people with little problems, I couldn't really speak with tones very well, and when I listened, I mainly relied on hearing the pinyin of the word. Based on my own experience, I've developed a hypothesis that the amount of time one is exposed to Chinese (especially after one has become fairly proficient) is a key factor in getting tones right. For example, I know quite a few foreigners here in HK who are fluent in Chinese and have been speaking Chinese for 10-40 years. When listening to them, it's interesting to note that their tones are considerably better (although not perfect) than my friends back in Shanghai (who were mainly laowais who were in their mid-20's and had been studying for only a few years. My Shanghai friends were often quite good conversationally, but their tones weren't always that good). One reason for this could be, I suspect, is that once you can understand 95% or above of any conversation/audio, your mind can pay more attention to peculiarities and idiosyncrasies of a person's speaking style. Another reason could be, after many years, you might have accumulated lots of experience listening to southerners (ie. a few of my co-workers) who might say, 让 lang4, 是 si4, 支持 zi1ci2...etc, and by focusing on the tones when listening to "mis-pronounced" Putonghua, one can also get better at tones by default.

For me at least, when studying Chinese, eventually you get to a point of diminishing returns. To what extent did my vocab increase from year 8 learning to year 9...very hard to say. But at least for listening and tones, I believe you consistently get subtly better as time goes on. (Although, I'd be very interested to hear what people who have been studying for over 10 years or so say on this point).

So, I guess the point is, if my thinking is correct here, that it simply takes a lot of time and exposure to get tones right. You can employ certain strategies to speed up the process, but at the same time, you don't need to be overly concerned if you have troubles with tones, especially in the first few years of studying.

[roddy]

is that tones don't seem to stick as well anymore as when I was depicting them with numbers

I've said a few times on here I think (quite possibly on page one of this topic) that for English at least, those silly little things on the top of the actual words just get ignored. Something actually 'in-line' with the word is a lot more prominent.

[hunchi]

I'm really worried about developing bad habits.. I　don't live in China but i've learned a lot already. I watch a lot of tv shows and I can understand a lot but people tell me that my tones are off on a lot of words when I talk. Hopefully I can go to some Chinese speaking place for College or just after high school, but you don't think I should worry and it will just correct itself if I talk alot?

[renzhe]

Try repeating common phrases exactly the way you hear them. I found this very helpful.

[abcdefg]

I'm really worried about developing bad habits...but you don't think I should worry and it will just correct itself if I talk alot?

I had a “tone crisis” earlier this year. Got a new one-to-one teacher (studying in China) who was stricter and more energetic than my previous teacher. She had a good ear and lots of courage and told me in no uncertain terms that many of my tones were off even though I could generally understand others and be understood in “street-level” conversational situations.

Frankly it irritated me at first to be stopped in my tracks and corrected on “such a trivial thing” as incorrect tones. Shouldn’t have; but it did. I respected her because she didn’t just let it slide and was willing to work with me to make improvements.

One of the exercises I began at that point was making tone marks (in pencil) right above almost all the (Hanzi) words in my textbook and then looking them up so see if I had remembered the tones right. Went back and changed the one’s I had remembered wrong. (Book didn’t have Pinyin.) Found I missed an appallingly large percent; even basic words I’d known and been using a long time. It surprised me (unpleasantly) and underlined the importance of her “wake up call.”

Subsequently implemented some of the strategies cited above in Wushijiao’s excellent post (number 27.) Almost all my reading from that point on became “reading out loud.” Previously I tended to read mainly for meaning and then just move on. I no longer did that. Took the time to pronounce everything right and do it several times. Could have kicked myself for getting into such sloppy habits in the first place. I knew better, but it happened anyhow.

I also began paying more attention to the phrasing and where to put the emphasis in the passages I was reading out loud. But that’s another subject.

[roddy]

Teachers like that are worth their weight in gold.

[abcdefg]

Teachers like that are worth their weight in gold.

You're absolutely right!