Do you have a hard time memorizing Chinese tones?

                                                                                                                              Florina Wang

                                                                                                                              March 23th, 2017

Description：Based on well-researched strategies for moving short term memory to long term memory, this method is used by professional training applications.

In Mandarin Chinese there are four basic tones, they are changes of the pitch of syllables. When a syllable is pronounced in different tones, it has different meanings. It sounds very hard and complicated, but tones are very important. Use them in the right way from start to build a solid foundation of learning the language.

My students often ask me how Chinese people can memorize the tone of so many words. This is an interesting question because native Chinese speakers never have a hard time remembering the tone, it just comes to mind effortlessly. When Chinese is learned as a second language for English speakers, it is difficult for them to carry the tones well because in English, tones usually define, not the words, but the feelings behind the words.

For me, it`s like English verb tense, which often drives me crazy. When I speak, I need to constantly think about which of the sixteen tenses I should use. But I don’t have enough time to think about it and I make mistakes all the time. As I practiced more, I became better and better. It became natural.

So I realized I needed to find a special way to help my students to memorize new words and their tones. In the book,Peak by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool, they discuss ways that we bring things, in our minds, from short term memory to long term memory. This gave me an idea.

So my student and I did a lot of deliberate practice and studied ways to learn tones.English speakers have nothing like tones in their language, and no easy way to remember tones. English speakers, though, can remember colors. We found that using different colors to help remember tones would were helpful when the student studied the new word for the first time. Instead of trying to remember unfamiliar tones, the student remembered familiar colors associated with the word. People naturally handle familiar things easily.

There is an article about innovating that introduces the principle of MAYA (Most Advanced Yet Acceptable). It suggests that connecting something unusual (tones) to something usual (colors) improves the chance of success. We assign colors like this,

1）  Red 1st tone

2） Green 2nd tone

3)    Blue 3rd tone

4)   Purple 4th tone

As we studied other study language tools, we found that the popular language App Pleco also uses the different color to show the tones. That makes for an easier way to learn Chinese. After my student pronounced those words in the right way a few times, by associating them to colors, the tones were imprinted in his long term memory. The word’s sounds became habit as they moved from short memory to long memory. Then he didn’t need the color anymore. His speaking became more natural. And don’t worry if you start slowly, the important thing is doing it the right way from the start. Otherwise, if you use the wrong tones and practice every day, it is just repetition of a bad habit and may hold you back.

If you are interested in learning more about this, log onto the italki.com website and search for me, Florina at https://www.italki.com/teacher/1559763