I am wondering if people study tones through skritter. I have been and am finally starting to remember them, but I don't know if this is all wasted effort and I should just remember the sound rather than the actual tone mark. It's seriously slowing down my skittering as I have so many tone reviews.

Yes, and I have found it very helpful. In fact, I highly recommend studying all four parts. I turned the rest on when the app came out and the additional exposure has helped my memory.

Even I think skritter hardly helps with remembering tones. I get them worn most of the times. I have given up Skritter for tones as that is where I was forgetting most.


Really don't know how to learn them and Skritter is not giving much help in that area as well.

i am still learning tones and i think skritter is pretty helpful cause it forces you to do so.

another helpful methode to remember tones is the method from the tuttle book "learning chinese characters".

the ideas is that for each character you make up a story and for pronounciation purposes there has to be one of the following characters in your story:

giant = 1 tone
fairy = 2nd tone
teddy = 3rd tone
dwarf = 4th tone
robot = neutral tone

i found this an interesting approach which helps in some cases.

I read this article last night (already recommended in the forum by a Skritterer):

http://www.foreverastudent.com/search/label/Learning%20Mandarin

and found it interesting to draw the same prononciation table (1.1., 1.2, 1.3., 1.4 etc.) with the very few words I already knew (I'm a beginner). I found out that some combinations were more frequent than others and that it was helpful to group the words into those categories, that I could remember them better. Then I try to review intensively - only the tones of my vocabulary on Skritter, disabling the other functions, and my retention rate jumped from 79,9 to 85.4.

I guess this method works better when you know very few words, like me, so I'm not sure this will help you. Anyway, I wanted to share my experience.

I think skritter has helped me remember the tone mark for a lot of words but I don't think when I am speaking I will first recall the tone mark and then speak it. I'm thinking it's better to just remember the sound of each word individually. Then just speak the words rather than recalling the pinyin then the tone then saying it. Think I'll try turning it off for a while and see how it goes.

I know Skritter has helped me with me tones. I don't feel it has slowed me down, I usually blast through tones very quickly on first instinct. If I'm wrong, I try to make a quick mental note. So my advice. Don't worry about them, don't spend more than a few seconds on any one and just do them.

I turned off the 'tone' test because I don't mark the 'readibg' test correct unless I get the right tone.

@Sandeep, I had suggested the Matthews system in another thread, it's the same one mentioned by @learninglife here, did you look into it? Are you having trouble pronouncing/hearing the tones, or just remembering them? Do you get much chance to speak the words you have learned out loud?

in the end you just have to find out what works best for you. with some characters for instance that require 4th tone i imagine that i smash it on the floor or throw it off the table ...

its not logic that helps here but creative and sometimes even "silly" ideas.

and of course it helps to be amidst native speakers so you just pick up the "melody" of phrases or often used sentences ...

For many months tones were the thing I forgot the most. I also study all four parts, and now tones have the highest retention rate. What helped me the most was actually speaking and being corrected on the tones. Then I would practice those same things on Skritter, and gradually it clicked. After that, the reviews on Skritter made it easier to remember. Also, when I would be speaking, for a long time I would motion in the air with my hand to signal each tone as I said it. This especially helped with getting that hard slash on 4th, and the gentle rise on 2nd.

yes... they are important. If you get them right they won't pop up as much.

If you *dont* learn the correct tones, then you pretty much won't be able to ever converse - so it really is in your best interest to learn tones...

師　時　使　是

you can argue a little bit about finding words in context, but without the tones you lose a major functional component of the language.

The fun part comes when there's different pronounciations between Taiwan and China >.>

I study tones too, and while they are not easy, I'm getting better. I think it depends what sort of 'brain' you have. One thing I do know about Mandarin is that when I've seen a character, and more so when I've written it, it sticks in my head better than if I just hear it and say it. But when I'm thinking about Mandarin, I do find I 'see' the characters in my head, and this obviously works for my brain. So for me, the aural side comes later.

But, if you have an aural brain, it must be the other way round, and I firmly believe that you should do it however it works for you.

In terms of tones, sometimes when I see the characters in my head I see the tone superimposed on it by skritter - again this is helpful for me, but is about turning something sound based into something picture based. If pictures don't work as well for you, I think that must be unhelpful.

And, to answer the obvious question, I don't do the same for my native English. It's hard to know what I do do for English, but it's not about seeing words. I think this is why it took me some time to realise the approach that works for Mandarin.

I find it useful. My recent strategy has been to learn the tones of new words first, then the definitions, and finally the pinyin.

At the very least, doing the tones gives you repeated exposure to the defintiion and pinyin as well. The more exposure, the better.

I find the tone colours helpful when learning them. Unfortunately you can't see them on the app, and so I learn tones much slower on the app than I do in the web app. If you're finding it difficult to learn them, try using the web app with tone colours.