How this learner went from believing he was "tone deaf" to nailing Chinese tones

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Mar 19, 2024

In this podcast, Ryan, a friend of the podcast, shares his journey from struggling with Chinese tones to mastering them. The episode introduces Peak Mandarin, a new platform offering masterclasses and online programs for Mandarin learners. Ryan emphasizes the importance of constructive criticism and daily practice in improving language skills, with a focus on mastering tones through feedback and effective learning techniques. The podcast highlights the transformation from struggling with tones to confidently identifying and pronouncing them, showcasing the value of resilience and hard work in language acquisition.

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Introduction

00:00 • 2min

Uncovering and Addressing Tone Difficulties in Chinese Learning Journey

02:24 • 2min

Embracing Constructive Criticism for Chinese Language Development

04:17 • 2min

Mastering Chinese Tones: A Journey of Persistence

06:23 • 13min

Overcoming Tone Deafness: A Journey to Progress in Mandarin Learning

19:34 • 3min

Links:

Peak Mandarin Masterclasses: https://www.peakmandarin.com/masterclass

Tones Masterclass: https://www.peakmandarin.com/challenge-page/tones

On today’s episode, I interview a friend of the podcast, Ryan, and announce the launch of my new Mandarin learning platform, Peak Mandarin.

Over the past year, I’ve been working with YouTuber Will Hart, to run a series of live Mandarin Masterclasses teaching you how to overcome specific challenges on your journey to Mandarin fluency.

These live sessions proved popular. So we decided to develop them into a series of step-by-step online programs that you can complete at your own convenience.

Each of our Masterclasses contains video, text, and image presentations in English, along with native Chinese audio clips.

We’ve got one on how to nail tones, another one on how to go about sentence mining as well as a Masterclass on how to train yourself to think like a native Chinese speaker.

Plus we’ve also created two new mini-Masterclasses, teaching you how to make perfect Anki flashcards and how to overcome fossilised pronunciation mistakes.

We’re currently running a limited launch offer giving you 20% off when you buy our Peak Mandarin Masterpack containing all five Masterclasses.

And if you’re not satisfied with your purchase we have a 30-day money-back guarantee on any Peak Mandarin product, so you can rest assured your purchase is completely risk-free.

Interested? Go to https://www.peakmandarin.com/masterclass to get your Masterclass or click the link in the description below!

Back to today’s podcast guest.

Ryan is a language teacher and Mandarin learner who’s made a couple of appearances on the podcast in the past. I first met him three years ago when he attended one of my language exchange sessions.

At the time. Ryan was adamant that he was tone-deaf and incapable of even perceiving Mandarin tones, much less producing them himself.

But thanks to patience, dedication and a little help from his friends, Ryan has now largely overcome his tone issues and is well on his way to becoming a confident Mandarin speaker.

In this episode, we catch up on his Chinese learning journey and discuss how I helped him go from thinking he was tone-deaf to having no problems producing tones accurately in natural speech.