Is tone of voice difficult for beginners of Chinese? Let's have fun learning with "Voice Tone Master," where you can see the four tones!
The first major obstacle for beginner learners of Chinese is the pronunciation symbols in romanized Chinese called pinyin and the four tones (tone of voice), which indicate the raising and lowering of sounds.
The most common example of tone is the sound "ma" (ma). If the intonation changes, the sound is the same but the meaning is different, as in " Mum (mother)", " Ma (hemp)", " Ma (horse)", and " M (scold)".
Our Chinese integration software "ChineseWriter11 Learning Premium" includes a learning tool called "Tone Master" in addition to the convenient functions of "Tong-Standard" such as Chinese input, dictionary, and Chinese character pinyin conversion.
With "Tone Master," you can visually compare the intonation of your own voice with a sample native Chinese voice. Furthermore, you can correct your own recorded pronunciation to the correct tone, making it an excellent tool for listening to accurate Chinese speech in your own voice.
(Screen of tone master. You can check your own tone.)
This software has been installed on computers in language support classes at universities throughout Japan.
I once conducted a workshop for first-year students of Takushoku University on "Chinese Proficiency Test Past Question Web " and "ChineseWriter," and the most exciting part was the pronunciation practice session on the "Tone Master" software.
The most exciting part of the session was the "Tone Master" pronunciation exercise, where students boasted to their friends that their tone graphs matched the model, or re-selected simple sentences due to the length of the example sentences, or reversed the high and low tones, etc. The atmosphere was very lively and lively.
Sometimes it was difficult for the teacher to convey the errors in intonation in the Chinese spoken by the students, even after verbal instruction, but it was obvious when the "Voice Tone Master" was used by the students. The students were convinced and were seen checking the voice and graph of the model to try to get close to the model, and then going to the microphone to try again.
It is said that in order to learn a language, it is important to acquire a balance of the four skills of reading, listening, writing, and speaking.
In terms of improving one's Chinese communication skills, "Voice Tone Master" is a very valuable and excellent tool, as there are few teaching materials that allow one to check pronunciation by actually speaking out loud and using one's eyes and ears.
By listening to the model audio and then repeatedly moving your mouth to produce the sound, you can unknowingly train yourself and naturally acquire a pronunciation that sounds like Chinese.
[Extra]
"Chinese" is also called "accuracy of automatic translation". What is the meaning?
The key to both is "tone of voice".
Hat tip
