Introduction To Chinese Pronunciation

Author : Joseph Liu
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781086771336
Total Pages : 178 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (713 download)

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Download or read book Mandarin Chinese Pronunciation Crashing written by Joseph Liu and published by . This book was released on 2019-08-08 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you are looking for a book to learn Mandarin pronunciation, look no further. Mandarin Chinese Pronunciation Crashing is the one you really need. It is designed for all levels of Mandarin learners whose mother tongue is English to get to know, improve, and eventually master Mandarin pronunciation. Six strategies are introduced in this book to ensure reaching your goal of learning Mandarin pronunciation: 1. Building a bridge between English and Mandarin pronunciations. This book identifies many similarities that Mandarin and English pronunciations share. Using these similarities between English and Mandarin pronunciations will facilitate and accelerate your Mandarin pronunciation learning process. 2. Offering text and graphic instructions and video demonstrations on Pinyin (the phonological system of Mandarin) sounds. Pronunciation is a sophisticated matter since all of the different vocal parts have to work together to accurately form certain positions and movements for a sound to be correctly pronounced. This book gives detailed text descriptions and diagrams of the vocal parts and their movements in pronouncing every Pinyin sound. Furthermore, video demonstrations for every Pinyin sound are also prepared. The Mandarin sounds that feel so alien to you can be pronounced correctly with the help of these text and graphic instructions and video demonstrations. 3. Applying enunciation-pronouncing Mandarin sounds in a clear and slow manner. Native speakers' oral fluency in their mother tongue is reached through a stage of enunciation that lasts about four to five years in infancy. One mistake many Mandarin teachers and learners often make is to teach and practice pronunciation at the normal speed of native speakers when the learners have just begun studying the language. Consequently, the crucial enunciation stage is omitted, which often leads to either wrong or thickly accented pronunciation. So, the solution to the problem is to restore the stage of enunciation. 4. Providing adequate exercises. Just like developing skills in cooking, drawing, or playing a musical instrument, gaining skills in pronunciation requires a huge amount of practice. For this reason, explanations are given as precisely as possible, and more content is dedicated to different types of exercises in this book. 5. Practicing tongue twisters. You have learned to pronounce a Mandarin sound but you cannot remember the correct pronunciation over time or pronounce the sound as smoothly as native speakers do in a conversation. This is because you have not developed muscle memory to pronounce the sound automatically. Native speakers develop muscle memory for a sound in their native language by repeating it countless times in daily conversations since birth. Foreign language learners don't have the luxury to learn the pronunciation of a new language at the pace native speakers do. The remedy is tongue twisters, which are designed to practice pronunciation in a concentrated, repetitive, and amusing way, have been proven to be a more effective way to develop your muscle memory. 6. Linking pronunciation with real-life oral communication. Medium- or advanced-level learners may have experienced that they can pronounce single Mandarin syllables well but cannot speak smoothly in real-life oral communication, e.g., having a conversation. The reason is that in real-life oral communication, the pronunciations of single syllables are lined together in a sequence, called "speech flow," like a river. In this flow, the pronunciation of a syllable may be different from the way it is pronounced by itself. The learners who lack the ability to adjust the pronunciations of syllables in a speech flow would sound awkward and even incomprehensible. The sixth strategy trains the skills of adjusting the sounds of single syllables and assembling them into a smooth flow of speech.