Are there any apps for helping correct one's pronunciation?

[Friday]

I want to work on improving my pronunciation so that people can understand me better. But private tutors cost ￥200 in my area. Is there any app that can help with this?

[jobm]

WaiChinese is very good!

[Flickserve]

Praat

[chinesemaster]

Try out HelloChinese app. It has a feature integrating speech recognition tech which helps to correct your pronunciation.

The process is like this:  

listen to standard native voice -> you repeat the sentence -> the app labels your correctness character by character  

Repeat this process 20 minutes a day and your pronunciation would be better.

[LiMo]

As a supplement, remember to listen to as much Chinese as possible. It may be rubbish, but I'm convinced that my strong appetite for Chinese dramas, which I watch even in my spare time, really helped me passively improve my pronunciation. It's by no means perfect, but considering I never really took proper classes or focussed exclusively on pronunciation, it's还不错 if I do say so myself. 

[Shelley]

As someone who is always keen to find new things to help with my speaking ( which is terrible as is my not so good listening skills) I went and had a look at hello Chinese.

 

First thing is to make sure you get the right app, after a couple of false starts with apps that did not have the speaking part I found the right one its actually called Learn Chinese - HelloChinese.

 

I am pleasantly surprised. It covers all aspects, reading, writing, speaking, listening. It is like a cross between Skritter, Rosetta Stone, a grammar book, and text book.

 

I suggest trying this even if you think it might be a bit too basic it does say it goes up to HSK 3, so it starts a the beginning, but there are skip points so you can jump to another level, and it asks at the start if you know pinyin and if you say yes it skips teaching you that.

 

I am going to give a chance, its free, its ad free, once you download the lesson you don't need to be online, it seems so far to work very well, smooth and quick and it is a good looking app, you do have to make an account, which is simply an email and password.

 

You can get daily reminders, you can set days and times for or you can turn that off.

 

After I have had chance to use it for a week or so I think I may do little review for my blog.

[歐博思]

When I tried HelloChinese, I was disappointed to find out the speech engine can't distinguish proper tones, but it can do the vowels and consonants.

 

If I were OP I would look for a simple to use recording app and record myself shadowing (repeating after) TV actors. 

[chinesemaster]

If I were OP I would look for a simple to use recording app and record myself shadowing (repeating after) TV actors. 

 

 

That means you are an advanced learner.  For total beginners, I think it's more important to make them open mouths and speak.

"speak syllables with vowels and consonants, make simple conversations" -> "correct their tones and other mistakes" , such learning curve usually makes more sense.

My friend is a Mandarin teacher in Beijing language and culture university, and she told me that >95% students spoke with bad tones after 1 year's study. One of their solutions is arranging some intensive training classes to correct tones for the advanced learners.

[歐博思]

Don't get me wrong -- I think this app could be of great help to a beginning learner. But I specifically wanted to try it for the speech recognition. Like you mentioned I've been learning Chinese for a while now, so I'm probably expecting too much out of an ad-free, unpaid app. However, I wish the app would be more upfront about the speech recognition software's limitations, because it could be giving beginning learners false confidence in their tones specifically. 

 

I can totally understand your teacher friend's experiences with, basically, limited classroom time to correct many students. While I have an opinion about that, I don't want to mention it right now.

 

Even with the seeming trend to only teach tones for the first few classes, I think the ideal piece of speech recognition software that can drill tones would be a perfect aid to beginner students. There's definitely a market for that, IMO.

[Chong]

 

 

After I have had chance to use it for a week or so I think I may do little review for my blog.

 

 

Hi,  Shelley,

 

HelloChinese is made by me. Very glad that it's helpful for you!  Expecting your review.  Any feedback is strongly welcome!

 

btw, I already composed a post to forum  "Resources for Studying Chinese" to fully introduce my App. Seems it's still waiting for approval.