This is THE WAY to master Mandarin Chinese tones, whether you’re just starting out or have studied a bit but still struggle with voicing and identifying the tones.

The 90minute course combines the expertise of native Mandarin Chinese speakers with tricks and methods from nonnative speakers who learned Chinese fluently.

An app version of this course is in the works farther down the line – any updates will appear in this video description.

I hope you find this course useful and helpful.
VERY BEST WISHES FOR SUCCESS WITH YOUR CHINESE STUDIES!

Mike Kitchen


Table of Contents:

0:00:33 — Introduction
0:01:54 — Lesson 1: General Overview and Tips
0:07:16 — Lesson 2: The First Tone
0:13:58 — Lesson 3: The Fourth Tone
0:20:10 — Lesson 4: The Second Tone
0:27:04 — Lesson 5: The Third Tone
0:37:11 — Lesson 6: Single Tone Review
0:38:18 — Lesson 7: Single Tones SelfTest
0:42:02 — Lesson 8: End4 Tone Combinations
0:51:24 — Lesson 9: End1 Tone Combinations
1:01:29 — Lesson 10: End3 Tone Combinations
1:09:42 — Lesson 11: End2 Tone Combinations
1:19:57 — Lesson 12: End5 (Neutral) Tone Combinations
1:23:09 — Lesson 13: ThreeTone Combos and Rules With 不, 一
1:27:55 — Lesson 14: Tone Combination Review
1:29:57 — Lesson 15: Tone Combinations SelfTest


Notes:
* The translations and Chinese characters for some of the words in this course are really just there for reference, and in many cases there are other possible translations.

* My apologies in advance if there’s any confusion over when best to use the “full third tone” and when to use the “clipped third tone.” For beginning students, this course generally recommends using the full tone for singlesyllable words and using the clipped tone when it’s in combination with other tones. That said, Chinese speakers use both (as explained in the course), so try to feel comfortable with both.


Sources:
* The chart of actual pitches for the Mandarin tones (which appears at 0:02:42) is based on the one in Prof. Louis Goldstein's outline of General Phonetics, posted at sail.usc.edu/~lgoldste/General_Phonetics/

* The frequency of the different Chinese tones (which appears at 0:14:30) is from a publicly posted December 2012 study by Kevin H. Lin