Show HN: Mandarin Tone Trainer – A ‘Helping Ear’ for Mandarin Pronunciation • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Mandarin Tone Trainer – A ‘Helping Ear’ for Mandarin Pronunciation

#31

Post by bayesian_horse » Sat, Dec 21, 2019, 6:06 PM UTC

faitswulff wrote: post #26

bayesian_horse wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Listening comprehension, IMHO is the last skill to develop in learning a foreign language. The reason is that it's "all or nothing". You either know and recognize all of the words in a sentence, or you can't cope with the sentence at all. The first phase of language learning is mostly theory. Mostly vocabulary and grammar. The second phase is mostly reading, reinforcing the theory, forming a good understanding of how…

The Pimsleur Method inverts those phases and focuses on speaking and listening first. I've found it to be quite effective.

Hm, I'd say the Pimsleur method is quite good at teaching every-day language. Which is a worthwhile task, but the range of words is quite limited.

I would suspect that in order to get up to HSK4 or even HSK5, just the audio portions of course, you'd need like double or triple the amount of lessons, which would be impractical.

Of course, most people will start speakind and listening, in various forms, in phase 1 and 2. And that is actually necessary. But I think you won't be able to really grok "random" speech before having a good grasp at pretty much all the vocabulary you would encounter.

Re: Show HN: Mandarin Tone Trainer – A ‘Helping Ear’ for Mandarin Pronunciation

#32

Post by bayesian_horse » Sat, Dec 21, 2019, 6:11 PM UTC

dmix wrote: post #28

bayesian_horse wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Listening comprehension, IMHO is the last skill to develop in learning a foreign language. The reason is that it's "all or nothing". You either know and recognize all of the words in a sentence, or you can't cope with the sentence at all. The first phase of language learning is mostly theory. Mostly vocabulary and grammar. The second phase is mostly reading, reinforcing the theory, forming a good understanding of how…

> The second phase is mostly reading Is that really practical with Mandarin and the crazy amount of Chinese characters? I always assumed learning to speak/understand Chinese alone would be sufficiently difficult.

I think it's necessary. At least my strategy is to memorize the characters and words first. I've used "decipher chinese" to read simple texts, and that is also a great method.

The thing about reading is that it is the fastest way to review and reinforce vocabulary and grammar.

You can read at your own pace and look up anything. You can't do it that easily when listening, speaking or writing. And with a certain minimum level of theory under your belt, reading will be faster than spaced repetition of vocabulary you mostly know already.

Of course, there are different levels of proficiency in Chinese you might want to achieve. If you want to be able to interact while traveling, you wouldn't need the full complement of HSK Level 4.

However, if you want to have more interesting conversations or you want to understand technical texts...

Re: Show HN: Mandarin Tone Trainer – A ‘Helping Ear’ for Mandarin Pronunciation

#33

Post by yellow_lead » Sat, Dec 21, 2019, 6:13 PM UTC

yomly wrote: post #14

From experience of trying to converse with actual fluent speakers of Mandarin, there is a huge gap going from what you learn in the classroom, where you practise the tones in slow-mo, and how people speak and listen in reality. IMO there's no replacement for hardcore practise here - at the end of the day it is most like a physical skill so the learning tools you use for practising an instrument or sports technique ar…

I came to say this as well. Especially the third tone, I think is misrepresented in many texts and classes incorrectly. It's taught as a "down then back up" but in real, normal speed conversation, just sounds like a slightly lower pitch. Unless of course you have certain combinations like two third tones in a row.

Re: Show HN: Mandarin Tone Trainer – A ‘Helping Ear’ for Mandarin Pronunciation

#34

Post by longtimegoogler » Sat, Dec 21, 2019, 6:14 PM UTC

I think more useful, would be to play phrases and ask users to write down the pinyin along with the tones, at least for me.

Re: Show HN: Mandarin Tone Trainer – A ‘Helping Ear’ for Mandarin Pronunciation

#35

Post by moron4hire » Sat, Dec 21, 2019, 6:18 PM UTC

Incidentally, I'm working on a VR app for learning Mandarin. We use 360 photos of Chinese tourist locations and add interactive content to role play scenarios with your teacher (my company does mostly one-one-one instruction). You causally get to take a guided tour of a location with your teacher.

For now, is just a tool we'll be using internally, but eventually it will be expanded to many languages, have a remote class option, and have homework assignments for individual practice, all integrating into our LMS.

Re: Show HN: Mandarin Tone Trainer – A ‘Helping Ear’ for Mandarin Pronunciation

#36

Post by andrezsanchez » Sat, Dec 21, 2019, 6:20 PM UTC

This is a really cool idea, but it doesn't seem to work. I enunciated each of the tones, and the only one it recognized correctly was third tone.

Re: Show HN: Mandarin Tone Trainer – A ‘Helping Ear’ for Mandarin Pronunciation

#37

Post by jcampbell1 » Sat, Dec 21, 2019, 6:21 PM UTC

yomly wrote: post #14

From experience of trying to converse with actual fluent speakers of Mandarin, there is a huge gap going from what you learn in the classroom, where you practise the tones in slow-mo, and how people speak and listen in reality. IMO there's no replacement for hardcore practise here - at the end of the day it is most like a physical skill so the learning tools you use for practising an instrument or sports technique ar…

I built a little tool to help with tone pairs. There are vocab sets to explore all the combinations and a listening exercise. There is a huge jump from knowing the 4 tones from a pinyin chart and listening to full sentences. Learning the flavor of the 16 (19?) combinations is a great stepping stone.

https://chinese.yabla.com/chinese-tones-learn-the-right-way-...

Re: Show HN: Mandarin Tone Trainer – A ‘Helping Ear’ for Mandarin Pronunciation

#38

Post by jacobolus » Sat, Dec 21, 2019, 6:24 PM UTC

bayesian_horse wrote: post #24

yomly wrote: post #14

From experience of trying to converse with actual fluent speakers of Mandarin, there is a huge gap going from what you learn in the classroom, where you practise the tones in slow-mo, and how people speak and listen in reality. IMO there's no replacement for hardcore practise here - at the end of the day it is most like a physical skill so the learning tools you use for practising an instrument or sports technique ar…

Listening comprehension, IMHO is the last skill to develop in learning a foreign language. The reason is that it's "all or nothing". You either know and recognize all of the words in a sentence, or you can't cope with the sentence at all. The first phase of language learning is mostly theory. Mostly vocabulary and grammar. The second phase is mostly reading, reinforcing the theory, forming a good understanding of how…

> Listening comprehension, IMHO is the last skill to develop in learning a foreign language. [...] The first phase of language learning is mostly theory. Mostly vocabulary and grammar. The second phase is mostly reading, reinforcing the theory, forming a good understanding of how the language is used. Additionally writing things, chatting and the like. Third phase is immersion with speaking and listening.

To clarify: This is the way skills develop when people extensively study but barely learn a foreign language, the way typically happens in classrooms. It is a cruel method with poor results.

All of the actual learning of the language per se happens from listening to (or reading) comprehensible input, which should start from day 1 (yes this takes considerable effort for teachers to implement). Front-loading explicit study of grammar is a total waste of time. Memorizing atomized vocabulary words is also relatively ineffective.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_hypothesis

Re: Show HN: Mandarin Tone Trainer – A ‘Helping Ear’ for Mandarin Pronunciation

#39

Post by thaumasiotes » Sat, Dec 21, 2019, 6:24 PM UTC

bayesian_horse wrote: post #24

yomly wrote: post #14

From experience of trying to converse with actual fluent speakers of Mandarin, there is a huge gap going from what you learn in the classroom, where you practise the tones in slow-mo, and how people speak and listen in reality. IMO there's no replacement for hardcore practise here - at the end of the day it is most like a physical skill so the learning tools you use for practising an instrument or sports technique ar…

Listening comprehension, IMHO is the last skill to develop in learning a foreign language. The reason is that it's "all or nothing". You either know and recognize all of the words in a sentence, or you can't cope with the sentence at all. The first phase of language learning is mostly theory. Mostly vocabulary and grammar. The second phase is mostly reading, reinforcing the theory, forming a good understanding of how…

> Listening comprehension, IMHO is the last skill to develop in learning a foreign language.

The skills you develop are the skills you practice. If you practice listening comprehension, you'll develop it. If not, you won't.

That's all there is to the ordering.

Re: Show HN: Mandarin Tone Trainer – A ‘Helping Ear’ for Mandarin Pronunciation

#40

Post by GordonS » Sat, Dec 21, 2019, 6:27 PM UTC

yomly wrote: post #14

From experience of trying to converse with actual fluent speakers of Mandarin, there is a huge gap going from what you learn in the classroom, where you practise the tones in slow-mo, and how people speak and listen in reality. IMO there's no replacement for hardcore practise here - at the end of the day it is most like a physical skill so the learning tools you use for practising an instrument or sports technique ar…

> Focus on shortening the tones you sound (while staying accurate) and focus on combining tones.

I think this is good advice. When I first started learning mandarin, I really emphasised the tones, I guess because my untrained ear found it difficult to distinguish between them, and also because I thought people might understand me better.

But the first time I went to China, it was immediately obvious that people had a hard time understanding my (then rudimentary) mandarin, which I believe was in large part because of the over-exaggerated way I was using tones.

In the 3 weeks I spent in China, my understanding and usage of the tones came on tremendously - way more than it ever could have if I wasn't immersion in the language. Your ear does need to kind of train before you hear and understand tones at a more intuitive level.

To anyone learning Chinese, my advice would be to get yourself out there, even if it's just for a short time.