Hi there,
I am just about 3/4 way through the Say It Right series and it is helping me a lot with pronunciation. I was curious if there is any collection of all the lesson drill videos together. I would love to take them with me on the go!
Thanks
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So pleased to know you like our series. ä¹å¾é«å
“ē„éę们ēčƾēØåÆ¹ä½ ęåø®å©ļ¼
Frederic
Hi DAXU laoshi, thanks a lot for your excellent teaching. I even
re-viewed a second time the series and could improve a lot my accent as my
chinese teacher here in Berlin remarked. BTW did you write a book? Please let
me know.ē„ęØ
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Hello Wande, thanks for your response, and I appreciate your support very much!
Sorry, I have not written my book yet. But I promise, you will be informed the publishing day. ; )
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Hello, Ms./Miss/Mr. 688688191!
Actually, I donāt suggest Mandarin learners to learn the 3. tone with a rising-up tail first, because itās a lower frequency form (emphasis pattern). And if a learner says the form too early and too much, which often makes him not able to say 3. Tone naturally, but mix up with 2. tone or just sound strange.
Regarding to the basic idea of 3. tone, please watch the episode 6 and 7, you will find our brand new explanations about 3. Tone and 2. Tone. You might also go through the other episodes about tones, you could get some more important breaking-through and practical ideas.
Best Regards,
Frederic (Xu Laoshi)
Was really useful and interesting, I am not a native english speaker so i didnāt exactly face the same challenges but it helped so much anyway.
I got a (very specific) question, how do you pronounce åÆ Åg ?
Thank you so much for this series!
Hi there. Fiona has made a short video with some ways of pronouncing the character åÆ (en)
Enjoy
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As for me, I use Mozila and it doesnāt workā¦
Where are you based? If youāre in China, you might like to try a VPN.
As a young language instructor - I teach Spanish to English-natives & vice versa - I found this series so helpful. Iāve been lucky enough to have acted in plays & films & taken music lessons (voice, piano, guitar, drums, composition) since the age of 6-7; after almost two decades of theatrical & musical training - training in sensitive & discerning listening & communicating - Iāve come to naturally hear & quickly adapt to the nuances of rhythm, tone, & pronunciation in dialects. I also have synesthesia, so I can absolutely attest to the four tones having ācolorsā 
This is obviously great for me when Iām learning languages, but Iāve found I often take it for granted & sometimes have a real blind spot as a teacher when my students have different ways of learning & intuiting, of listening & then processing what they hear. As a teacher in the heat of the classroom, I can find myself getting frustrated: āWhy would I need to tell them where to put their tongue or tense their lips? Canāt they just listen & recreate the sounds they hear?ā Being able to take a more detached position from behind the computer screen, to watch from a distance as Karl & Gwilym work through a lot of these more difficult sounds in Chinese - & find their own unique ways from very different English accents (US v. UK) toward more native-sounding speech - has been instructive. I think now I have a better sense of how to effectively incorporate those mechanically-oriented muscle-placement tips into my own teaching, especially for those amazing - &, to me, rather mysterious - students with the more technical, so-called āleft-brainā approach to learning. Thanks guys, youāre making me a better Mandarin speaker & a better teacher at the same time!
Also - Xučåø rocks!
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For anyone interested, hereās a pronunciation tip (for any L2) that Iāve found helpful for, Iād say, on averageā¦ 3/8(?) of my later stage, more intermediate students (usually the more histrionic, outgoing, āclass-clownā types). Disregard it if you find it unhelpful or disagree with the approach. That is: when speaking the target language, you can try to almost comically over-exaggerate the native accent youāve gotten used to hearing, so that maybe to you or your [insert native language here]-speaking friends, it would sound like youāre actually making fun of the native accent the way a comedian might. In my 13 years of learning & speaking Spanish, Iāve been amazed to find that when I try to just sound like my natural self when speaking Spanish with native Spanish-speakers, Iām often misunderstood - my accent becomes too slack, colorless, & North American. But when I take on a sort of persona or character voice (for me I actually imitate the used-car dealer from El Salvador I always hear on the Spanish-language radio station in my hometown here in the US), the native speaker almost always compliments me on my near-native accent. To them it doesnāt sound comical or āstereotypicalā but rather confident & polished. I recently tried this over Skype during an English-Chinese language exchange with a native Mandarin-speaker (doing my best impression of å·§čēēøēø from the kidsā cartoon), & she 100% agreed that it didnāt sound to her like an āimpressionā at all but actually quite native. Maybe give it a try with a native-speaker & ask for their thoughts.
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Rockinā that S. Pellegrino in the back. Come elegante!
I am doing my 2nd walktrough to the series now.
In my humble opinion it is the most valuable content on ChinesePod at the moment .
I would like to see Frederic again with more pronunciation teachings.
Are there any plans of further cooperation with him?
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Iām certainly enjoying the series! Itās helping cross a few hurdles as a newbie and allowing me to approach pinyin with ease. Iām a few lessons away from completing Say It Right, but Iām noticing that thereās no specific lesson for the mandarin ārā? It feels like one that should be in there, unless it pops up in these last few. All around, though, this is a wonderful series.
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Iām about half way through the Say It Right Series and this has been REALLY helpful. JiÄnĆ”dĆ was a total killer for me until I watched the video with the 2nd and 4th tones. My 2nd tone was starting way too low and I couldnāt make the 1st+2nd+4rd+ transitions sound smooth. Tacking on rĆ©n made it that much harder. Now itās a piece of cake! 
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What a fantastic series - currently up to lesson 12 of the 22 provided, but the highlights for me are:
-Great discussion on tone 3 as low crackle and on where to to put the time duration and vowel emphasis.
-Really helpful comments on emphasis pattern styles and the fact that it is more prevalent when speaking single words - which explained why I was hearing conversations different from textbox.
-Never heard the neutral tone comments before,. ie that the tone varies dependent on the previous character or on whether is emphasis style - really helpful.
You have a great choice of external tutor in Xu Laoshi - he must be greatly admired by his students, and I found his comments on mouth shape and vowel improvement to be directly applicable to my speaking.
The only puzzle is why you made the series so hard to find - I saw your whats new comment and went looking for it. Using the search words of āsay it rightā or ātonesā did not find it. Looking under lessons, series, playlists or shows did not find it, and there are no other options on the android app to find it.
It was only when I went to the web site, I found it had its own special listing at the top which I had overlooked. (How come the android app does not show these lessons?)
I think the series is a real treasure, and a key learning experience, and so I suggest you add a duplicate access point under series,and under playlists,and under lessons, and probably under both elementary and newbie categories.(summarise as basically everywhere that it might help a learner).
You should make it really easy to find and adding it in the searchable lesson database would really help other learners to find it early which then makes your site stand out from others that seem similar.
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Wow, just finished watching the Tones 2 video (5) and as a learner of Chinese for the last 15 years (on and off) I have never come across such a clear and fascinating explanation and modelling of the tones. I feel like I have got to the stage where I can mimic a lot of the sounds and as long as use them in context I can be understood but I am not always confident I have the tones correct especially if it is new vocabulary. I think the ChinesePod team are doing a fantastic job and Iām looking forward to watching more. If only something like this had existed when I started out!! Thanks CP team for this series.
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Hello, I am new to Chinese Pod, and I have been watching the say it right series to start. However, I am nervous about making wrong pronunciations because I do not have anyone to hear and correct me if I am speaking incorrectly. I will continue with the videos and drills, but I canāt afford a private teacher because I am a college student. I would appreciate any suggestions you can provide! Oh, and thank you for the great content.
DorothycowlingkĒi, for characters I am finding this book very useful:
Tuttle Learning Chinese Characters: (HSK Levels 1 -3) A Revolutionary New Way to Learn and Remember the 800 Most Basic Chinese Characters
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Hi Jacob,
Please do not worry in the beginning stage. I am thinking now, if in our forum we can leave voice messages! Well, now you can see I am no IT person here.
One of the first ways to practice your pronunciation alone is to record yourself and listen to yourself. First start with reading one character with the four tones, like ma(1), ma(2), ma(3), and ma(4). You say this four characters many times until you can hear yourself differentiating the tones in your recording. Then you can move on playing with the next combination that comes to your mind, say, ba(1), ba(2), ba(3), ba(4). And so on. The main goal of this activity is to train yourself to hear that you actually are saying different words! When you say enough of the four tones, using very simple pinying, to the point that you can easily discern you are saying different tones, then you have achieved differentiating the tones.
Now the question is, did you say the tone right? Just like when we are singing, we can say do ri mi fa so la ti, but not exactly sounding the right tone. If you find yourself in this situation, then you can go back to the say it right series to match your 1st tone with the teacherās. That way, you can hear how āoffā you are from the correct pronunciation and you can do some work to try to match it. Now a small reminder: everyone speaks in a different range, and the teachers speak in a specific range (think Soprano) which is maybe not at all your normal speaking range. (Think a Soprano singer and a tenor speaker). In this case, itās actually very hard to match the tones and this is where having a friend or speaking buddy can be really helpful.
Please let me know if this helps?