Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

mandarintonetrainer.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 187 posts

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

#101

Post by kilroy_jones »

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.

As a bit of an introvert I learned to read and type Mandarin before speaking. Just didn't talk to people, but absorbed what I saw in the cities I lived in. Reading menus led to signs led to comics led to books. In fact, my reading is still better than my speaking or listening skills.

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

#102

Post by jaredklewis »

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…

This hasn't been my experience.

My experience has been that listening is basically a way to learn the language with a minimum of effort. Context and non-verbal communication often make it clear what many unknown words in a sentence mean, making it not only possible to understand speech far above one's vocabulary level, but to actually to increase one's vocabulary through listening. These non-verbal cues and context are mostly absent in written texts.

Your method also seems counter intuitive as children learn languages primarily through listening, as they are for the most part illiterate.

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

#103

Post by losvedir »

kenneth wrote: post #49

I'm currently learning Mandarin. My strategy so far has been to take intensive classes with a private teacher (a professional from a language school), 2h every day I'm in town. Each course is 20 classes (i.e. 40h), and after 10 courses you're supposed to be reasonably conversational. Because I only take classes when I'm not out of town, and I'm constantly traveling, I've completed about 3 levels in 6 months. I've dec…

> I often remember vocabulary without the tone.

Then you didn't really remember the vocabulary, did you? It's critical to remember the tone along with the words. I know it feels like you "almost" got it, but if you don't remember the tone then you should treat it as not remembering the word at all, IMO.

FWIW, what helped me was doing a little finger gesture in the air with the syllable, sort of tracing the pinyin tone marker. Then when I talk I'm sort of habitually waving my finger down out of sight, but at least I'm producing the sounds correctly. Basically, treat learning vocabulary as learning {syllable, tone} tuples, rather than trying to learn a syllable with a built-in tone.

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

#104

Post by tasogare »

jacobolus wrote: post #69
EliRivers wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Front-loading explicit study of grammar is a total waste of time. I am far more competent in written Japanese than spoken, both reading and writing it, essentially through understanding grammar. "Total waste of time" seems a harsh appraisal.

If you take two novices and dump one into arbitrarily extensive grammar lessons for 2 years, and the other into spending a couple hours per day listening (i.e. actively focusing attention on trying to understand what is being said) to the language for 2 years, at the end the first person won’t speak the language and the second person will. The first person is going to learn something , but it’s not an efficient use o…

>spending a couple hours per day listening [...] to the language for 2 years, at the end the first person won’t speak the language and the second person will.

It doesn’t work like that. For the student to make any progress he need to be able to understand most of the things in the speech (this is called comprehensible input, and the theory is both applicable to listening and reading). That’s why there are people living in foreign country for years yet cannot speak or understand the language at all.

Also it’s kinda stupid to say that language learning must be either grammar/voc learning or listening: it needs to be both. Classes are needed because they make portion of listening material comprehensible, which is impossible by listening only.

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

#105

Post by nilkn »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #58
jacobolus wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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:…

That doesn't really pass the smell test for me. Even native speakers of a language in its native country are explicitly taught grammar and vocabulary in school. I could believe the Wikipedia article's weaker claim, that there's an extra step between instinctively remembering "了 is the perfective particle" and being fluent in the perfective aspect. But the idea that explicit instruction is useless , that consciously k…

I think the statement was just phrased too strongly. The proposition isn’t that one shouldn’t study grammar at all, but rather that one shouldn’t front-load grammar and theory too much.

Speaking from experience, I gained basic conversational fluency in Spanish from English in a few months by spending a ton of time with LingQ (essentially reading and listening to untranslated passages and creating digital flash cards), obsessively practicing pronunciation, and listening to lyrics in Spanish music for hours on end. I focused on grammar to the extent that I had to, but no more than that. For instance, I learned only those conjugations I actually needed for simple speech. I compiled the ones I needed to study based on what I actually encountered in real passages.

Now, by no means did that render me fully fluent in the language. But, case in point, I took two years of Spanish instruction in school with lots of grammar front-loaded and I gained more or less no speaking or listening ability at all. For me there was a dramatic difference in efficiency between the two approaches to language learning.

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

#107

Post by jacobolus »

tasogare wrote: post #104
jacobolus wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you take two novices and dump one into arbitrarily extensive grammar lessons for 2 years, and the other into spending a couple hours per day listening (i.e. actively focusing attention on trying to understand what is being said) to the language for 2 years, at the end the first person won’t speak the language and the second person will. The first person is going to learn something , but it’s not an efficient use o…

>spending a couple hours per day listening [...] to the language for 2 years, at the end the first person won’t speak the language and the second person will. It doesn’t work like that. For the student to make any progress he need to be able to understand most of the things in the speech (this is called comprehensible input, and the theory is both applicable to listening and reading). That’s why there are people livi…

> (this is called comprehensible input, and the theory is both applicable to listening and reading)

Notice the link I put in my first comment.

Yes, the more comprehensible the early exposure, the faster the student will advance at the beginning. If content is too advanced learning will be much slower.

It would be great if more language teachers and curricula put more significant effort into developing hiqh-quality materials aimed at being largely comprehensible to complete beginners. Many extant materials and courses do a very poor job at this.

> there are people living in foreign country for years yet cannot speak or understand the language at all.

Learning a language takes consistent deliberate effort.

> kinda stupid to say that language learning must be either grammar/voc learning or listening: it needs to be both

Grammar lessons have low marginal value for language learners, and are by no means necessary. Many people learn a foreign language without any formal grammar instruction whatsoever.

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

#108

Post by fiblye »

kenneth wrote: post #49

I'm currently learning Mandarin. My strategy so far has been to take intensive classes with a private teacher (a professional from a language school), 2h every day I'm in town. Each course is 20 classes (i.e. 40h), and after 10 courses you're supposed to be reasonably conversational. Because I only take classes when I'm not out of town, and I'm constantly traveling, I've completed about 3 levels in 6 months. I've dec…

Hanzi are something you can learn on your own time outside of class. It’s really not a good idea to skip them at all. As someone who’s also learning Chinese, hanzi make remembering what I learned easier, since you can see how lots of vocabulary that you learn consists of parts of other concepts synthesized together.

Plus you have loads of homophones, and thinking of which hanzi each word is using makes it far easier to know what you’re talking about.

Example: shí. It means 10. It also means time, as well as dozens of other things. I can’t imagine trying to mentally divide all the overlapping words without the visual assistance of different hanzi when reading. It’d be like trying to learn the differences between they’re/their/there in English as a second language without looking at the spelling differences. It makes it harder.

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

#110

Post by jhanschoo »

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'd like to add that moving from sterile classroom Mandarin to irl Mandarin, you'll notice that

1. You may realize that the tones are realized differently in a variety of ways depending on context, speaker, etc.

2. Just as you can parse a different accent, native speakers can still figure out what you're trying to say if your tones are slightly whack. After all, tonal information in Mandarin is lost when sung.

Post reply on HN