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

#131

Post by jaco8 » Sun, Dec 22, 2019, 4:33 AM UTC

jacobolus wrote: post #127

tasogare wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

By the way, here’s Krashen (the comprehensible input guy): http://www.sdkrashen.com/content/articles/teaching_grammar_w... > Research on the relationship between formal grammar instruction and performance on measures of writing ability is very consistent: There is no relationship between grammar study and writing (Krashen, 1984). Perhaps the most convincing research is that of Elley, Barham, Lamb and Wyllie (1976). A…

Well , there are 2 different kinds of learners. There are those who need grammar and those who do not. I can remember vocabulary but never remembered the grammar of the 4 languages I learnt over the years.

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

#132

Post by xvilka » Sun, Dec 22, 2019, 4:58 AM UTC

skosch wrote: post #45

dmix wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

There is a huge asymmetry between learning to recognize characters and learning to write them. I've found that learning to read a basic repertoire of Chinese characters is surprisingly doable and a very helpful skill as a learner, to the point where I quickly found it easier to decipher the subtitles than to understand the audio when watching even children's movies. So, to answer your question, yes: it's practical, a…

Learning to writing characters is now largely unnecessary, since most the writing is done in computer/mobile phone/etc, where Pinyin is ubiquitous.

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

#133

Post by usaar333 » Sun, Dec 22, 2019, 5:02 AM UTC

jacobolus wrote: post #38

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…

> 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:…

One problem with comprehensible input methods (like what Rosetta Stone does?) is that it can be extremely boring as an adult and ultimately demotivating.

Studying grammar can be fun - and it feels like an accomplishment to be able to say some pretty complex things in Chinese.

Sure my listening isn't that great.. but on the other hand being limited to a two year old's conversation ability isn't particularly enticing.

Also, fwiw, reading and listening is a way different skill... Thanks to the ability to rewind when reading

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

#134

Post by yorwba » Sun, Dec 22, 2019, 8:40 AM UTC

ximeng wrote: post #130

yorwba wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, but learning grammar before you can even understand the examples used to illustrate a rule is putting the cart before the horse. On the other hand, once you know a few specific instances, it's helpful to explicitly point out that they're governed by the same rule and give an abstract statement of how the rule works. That way you can check yourself without relying on a teacher to point out your mistakes.

Providing a few specific instances and then talking about the general rules is typically how grammar is taught when acquiring second languages.

Being shown a few examples is not the same as understanding them. If the first time you see an example of the rule is during the explanation of the rule, you have to deal with too much new information at once. A good explanation should refer mostly to information the learner is already familiar with.

The first time you see an example of the rule, there's no need to explain the rule yet. You can just memorize the example. The same is probably true of the second and third example. Explaining the rule only makes sense once remembering the explanation becomes easier than remembering the set of examples you need to know.

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

#135

Post by dmix » Sun, Dec 22, 2019, 9:02 AM UTC

james_s_tayler wrote: post #124

dmix wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you found much rewarding Chinese content? In terms of tv shows they don’t bother translating for the west and books/literature? I feel like there are so many great books in English where it probably wouldn’t provide much value to fully commit. But I’m a big fan of China and Chinese. I even watched a stupid Chinese soap opera about rural people moving to Shanghai and was totally fascinated by the lifestyle and gr…

There are some alright dramas that come out of Taiwan.

Yeah from there and Hong Kong there's a lot of more western friendly content (see: translated). But I'm interested in mainland Chinese content that day-to-day people watch there. Like I want to know what their very of "Friends" or even serious stuff like "The Wire" would look like, even if the industry hasn't yet fully matured creatively.

Most of the most popular Chinese sitcoms I've read about seem to be a strange bunch as an outsider. Very much about boy-meeting girl following standard Chinese traditional get a job -> married + boy supporting girl and families. Which I find interesting from a cultural perspective of a maturing middle class economy. That plus a hundred awful period pieces about ancient China, which seems like 50% of their output, especially movie-wise - an easy way to ignore the tough realities of modern China.

But I don't know Chinese and only have a superficial grasp of what they are really like. So I've been interested in learning mandarin.

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

#136

Post by ximeng » Sun, Dec 22, 2019, 9:39 AM UTC

yorwba wrote: post #134

ximeng wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Providing a few specific instances and then talking about the general rules is typically how grammar is taught when acquiring second languages.

Being shown a few examples is not the same as understanding them. If the first time you see an example of the rule is during the explanation of the rule, you have to deal with too much new information at once. A good explanation should refer mostly to information the learner is already familiar with. The first time you see an example of the rule, there's no need to explain the rule yet. You can just memorize the exam…

Good textbooks already do exactly this. Show a few examples of particular sentence structure, using vocabulary and syntax at the level of the learner, and then briefly draw attention to a general rule at the end.

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

#137

Post by comex » Sun, Dec 22, 2019, 10:10 AM UTC

jacobolus wrote: post #127

tasogare wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

By the way, here’s Krashen (the comprehensible input guy): http://www.sdkrashen.com/content/articles/teaching_grammar_w... > Research on the relationship between formal grammar instruction and performance on measures of writing ability is very consistent: There is no relationship between grammar study and writing (Krashen, 1984). Perhaps the most convincing research is that of Elley, Barham, Lamb and Wyllie (1976). A…

The essay you linked is about teaching English grammar to native English speakers. I looked it up, and Krashen has written about second-language acquisition as well, but you're citing the wrong thing.

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

#138

Post by drastorguev » Sun, Dec 22, 2019, 10:23 AM UTC

TheRealPomax wrote: post #92

Please do not block "using the website" until someone gives you access to the microphone. Simply make the parts of the page that rely on the microphone not work, and make it obvious they won't work until people give access to the devices you need access to. And in the mean time let them browse the page as normal, instead of force-hiding the content scroll bar and presenting a full screen overlay modal. If your page e…

Thanks for the feedback! We didn't realise this would pose such a problem. We've updated the website so it asks for microphone permission after people press the 'Record' button.

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

#139

Post by drastorguev » Sun, Dec 22, 2019, 10:25 AM UTC

cddotdotslash wrote: post #97

d33 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, so it's about the computer recognizing the tones, not the other way around? Anyway, some sort of warning would make sense to add.

Yeah, I admit it would be nicer if the page loaded without the request first so you could see what it's about and then request the access once you clicked the record button.

Thanks for the feedback! We've done just that.

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

#140

Post by drastorguev » Sun, Dec 22, 2019, 10:35 AM UTC

yellow_lead wrote: post #75

It's not really working for me or my girlfriend (native speaker). We can't get past 喝(hē) (tone 1). It keeps thinking it's a third tone.

Hi, yes unfortunately at the moment the classifier can be quite inaccurate sometimes, especially if your microphone is catching some background noise. We will work on improving this.