What does the Future Hold for Chinese Teaching & Learning? Interview with Hacking Chinese Founder Olle Linge
I'm Learning Mandarin
The Importance of Knowing Your Own Pronunciation
The pronunciation of the third tone in Chinese is heavily dependent on the rate of speech. Many teachers mistakenly teach it as a dipping tone instead of a low falling tone. This leads to confusion for students and causes them to feel tone deaf. It is important for teachers to understand phonetics to avoid misleading students. There is still controversy in the Chinese learning community about the importance of tones, but they are crucial for being understood at the intermediate to advanced levels. Listening comprehension involves both bottom-up processing, extracting information from sounds, and top-down processing, interpreting based on existing knowledge. Overall, accuracy in pronunciation, including tones, is important for effective communication.
