Hi,

When I first started studying here, I thought writing an reading would be the most difficult part, but it seems, the harder for me, by far, to learn are tones?

I would like to know if this is normal or, perhaps, I should review my methodology. I am going with aprox 90% in writing and 79% in tones.

Thank you!

Luis

No, for me it's the other way round.
Right now, I've got 94.1% in writing and 96.4% in tones. Over the whole year, the numbers are 95.6% for writing and 96.9% for tones.

I'm with 穆儿. For the year, my readings are at 94.8% and my tones are at 95.5% whereas my writings are at 88.2% and my definitions are at 87.9%.

Tones are my highest point, followed by writing and then definitions.

Does anybody else get way more tone practice than anything else? I study three elements, but about 55-60% of my reviews since I started have been tones, even though that's the category in which I have the best retention score. Likewise, in spite of the fact that defs are my worst category, only about 18% of my overall reviews are in it. Is there some weighting going on with SRS, or does it maybe have something to do with the amount of 2's I give in a certain category (how do they factor into retention rate?)?

Tones make me crazy. This may sound like a stupid question, but how much correlation do users find in getting tones right in Skritter and pronouncing them correctly? Also, has anyone tried Chinese learning programs that have speech recognition, and if so would they recommend any particular program for tone practice? I saw one a while back (maybe last year) that I believe was new at the time, which was web based and just analyzed tone contour, not pronunciation. I have also used Rosetta Stone, but I still think my tones are a disaster.

I find Skritters tones prompts remind me of tones, rather than help me learn them. I don't worry about them too much, unless it's a new character I clearly haven't got to grasps with the tone of yet. Similarly, definition prompts I'm not too bothered with. Writing (with hidden pinyin) is the only one I'm harsh on, with Skritter. Works for me.

Well, it seems for most of you tones are not that hard.

From my perspective now, tones are the hardest part of chinese. :(

Thank you and keep it studying hard!!!

@Luis: the next question is "why do some people do better than others?" - one possibility has to do with what we're studying. Do you study mostly individual characters, or lots of words? Do you study readings and definitions as well, or just characters and tones?

@podster I actually stopped practicing with the "tones" mode when the Skritter dudes added reading practice. The "tones" mode has only five possible answers, so you start out with a 20% chance of getting it right just by luck.

James

For me tones are way harder, too. Especially when a word has multiple tones like 'yi'. Just keep trying practicing. Apparently I mostly speak the tones properly naturally, but remembering a characters tone on the spot is still lacking.

I'm fairly new to Chinese and am finding tones to be ridiculously hard to remember. I'm doing fairly well with writing, pinyin, and definitions (by my standards, that is), but tones are killing me. Whether that's normal or not, leave it to the old timers here, but I just wanted to contribute another data point.

I have found tones to be pretty easy to remember. However, I think that's because I live in China, study Chinese full-time, and spend 5 hours a week with a "talk partner." From my limited experience, tones aren't learned in a classroom or through a program. Instead, they are learned by speaking and hearing more Chinese in a natural setting. If you really want to get good at tones, find someone who speaks standard Mandarin and meet with them a few hours a week just to chat. It's helped me a lot.

I know some foreigners over here who have a huge Mandarin vocabulary base and can read/write a lot of characters, but when they speak locals cannot understand them because their tones are so bad. Others get confused very easily because they haven't taken the time to memorize the tones (They get confused with words that have the same pronunciation other than the tones). Unless you're just wanting to be able to write some characters (and not speak), tones are very important.

All that to say... Keep up the good work, Luisonte! I'm sure you'll figure out a way to learn the tones soon enough. It just takes time...

It does seem to vary a lot between people. I found that tones were completely impossible when I started learning Chinese, then after a while (a few months?) it suddenly clicked, 石 no longer felt like it was 'really' the same as 是, and tones started to go faster (though still not always easy).

It was indeed a mission impossible when I started to learn chinese but since I'm using Skritter I don't have any problem; I learn and retains tones quite easily.

Mastery of hearing tones does not come until you get to hear lots of tones. A few months of listening to chinese movies and music and you will be set.

And yes in music the tones often don't come through right, but it did make a huge difference for me.

@董雅各: I actually have gotten very little listening and speaking practice, as I'm not in China and don't watch or listen to much Chinese-language media. I have been mostly practicing writing for the last year or so and my spoken Chinese is terrible. So that doesn't explain why my tone retention is much higher than my writing retention - in fact you should probably predict exactly the opposite.

I remember that when I started with Skritter it was very hard to remember tones, and then after a while it seemed to get easier. I also kind of feel like pinyin practice has helped a lot. But I don't have any numbers to back up those vague memories.

I am very curious as to whether practicing mostly words and phrases instead of individual characters helps with learning tones. I would guess that it would help because you have more context to attach the tone to. For some phrases I remember that the tones are 2 4 2 4; for others I remember "this phrase uses all four tones", etc.

James

@James - there's a difference between learning the tones (ala Skritter) and learning to speak and hear the tones. Even though my spoken Chinese is decent (at times as good as, at times better than written), I still have a tendency to mispronounce tones that I know. I can even think of the correct tone while saying the wrong one. Reading aloud is even worse - I butcher the tones mercilessly because I don't let myself read ahead to get the meaning and context before I rattle off some unintelligible Mandarin. That's not to say that learning tones through Skritter is a waste of time, but that the actual skills of hearing and speaking tonal Chinese are essential to properly use those tones that you've learned.

@FatDragon - I agree, I'm not claiming any sort of speaking or listening ability at all, in fact I think they're both weak. My question is a pure Skritter one.

It is really interesting to hear all your experiences on this.
For me, tones are really hard to learn. I am living in china and it is really difficult to talk with my ayi (but she does not speak mandarin that good because she is from Shanghai).

Do you think it's the case that skritter is not as good for tones?
Maybe there is some lack of context?
For me, watching tv or other things is not that useful. I am not there yet I cannot grab it all and I keep thinking on the words or sentences I understand missing the general prountiation.

of course, maybe it's just a matter of keep studying harder, but it is really nice to share point of views to see if anyone has a method that could be applied.

Keep it hard with your Chinese!!!!

If you have problems with tones, you can try tone-specific mnemonics:

http://www.sinosplice.com/learn-chinese/learning-tones

Haven't tried myself, but my tone retentions are way higher than my others. I wonder if it's because tones are always practiced during reading practice even when not due.

um, Nick, your facility may have come as a result of having a Chinese girlfriend. Tone discrimination comes from speaking and listening which is helped the most by having a linguistic internal motivation such as a Chinese girlfriend.

For those who are already married, I would suggest getting a Chinese 小太太. The less English she can speak, the better.

I'm no tone master, though, and Chloe doesn't speak that much Chinese with me--my Chinese is slightly better than hers (although her tones are better than mine).