Matt Schiavenza

As I’ve said before, I believe mastering tones is the most difficult aspect of learning Chinese. Most people I know- even good speakers- typically don’t bother learning them; after awhile you intuitively figure out which tones to use because they “sound right”. This mainly only works for the most common words. For example, most Chinese speakers know that å¼€ is first tone, because this is a word we use constantly. But what about less common words?

A friend of mine recently suggested a new way to integrate tones into one’s study of Mandarin. Cut and paste an article or story into a Microsoft Word document. Instead of using the numbering system (for example, “kai1″ for å¼€), highlight each character with a color, depending on its tone. I tried doing this and it worked well- after a couple of read-throughs I was getting nearly all of the tones correct.

I’m now going to integrate highlighting into the mattschiavenza.com official study guide to Chinese. Here, to reiterate, is the method:

1. Find an article that interests you, whether it be news, culture, literature, technology, or politics. Choose an article that isn’t too long, maybe three or so paragraphs. Also, be cognizant of your level. If you’re a beginner, don’t choose an article that’s too difficult. Copy the article and paste it into a Word document, and do the same in a new Wenlin window.

2. Using Wenlin, read the article slowly. When you see an unfamiliar character, click on it and carefully read through Wenlin’s notes. It also helps to figure out which other Chinese words include this particular character. You can even open a separate Word doc to use as your vocab list, though I prefer to do this on pen and paper so I can write the character by hand.

3. Again using Wenlin, read the article aloud without worrying about tones. Make sure that you can identify each character that you read. Be wary of characters that look alike and are often confused (人 and 入, for example).

4. Using the highlight function on Word, select colors to represent each of the tones. Highlight the article.

5. Read the article aloud (on Word) using the correct tones. As your accuracy improves, pick up the pace.

6. Translate the article into idiomatic English. This takes a bit of creativity- but it’s more important to make it readable than to make it 100% accurate.

7. Write the article by hand.

Yes, this method is tedious, often boring, and not entirely easy, but it does work. Trust me. You only need to do one paragraph per day, and within a week or two your Chinese will be noticeably better. Much better.