Chinese Tones Practice Rain or Fish with audio

Chinese tones practice rain or fish.   We are looking at two commonly used Chinese words and we have them in two sentences.

Children enjoy listening to songs.  When they hear songs they hear intonation.  Mandarin is a tonal language like many Asian languages.  If you sing you have experience with tones.  So, the more you and your child listen to songs, sentences, and stories the better you are familiar with tones in Mandarin.

Listen and listen more.  That’s a simple way to practice a target language.

What are the phrases you know in Spanish?  How about in Chinese?  People always respond with an expression that they hear the most.  That is the power of listening.

I don’t teach young children tones separately.  When they hear a new word or a new sentence the more listening input they have the better they say it.  You don’t need to have your child repeat what she hears right away.  Repeated input (listening) first then output (speaking) comes along.

Chinese Tones Practice Rain or Fish.  Let’s hear the two words and two sentences.  What do you hear?

For parents, you can look at the tone card as a reference when you listen to the audio.

Have fun with the tone card.  Use the words and sentences you’ve heard in the audio whenever you have a chance.  There is rain today.  Or, there is fish today.  Let your child show you on the card.

Do Chinese children learn tones separately?  Not really.  Tones are learned as a whole.  I See Numbers is a simple story and you can hear all four tones and the neutral tones in Chinese.  Listen to it with your child together.  Ask your child a few questions after listening, such as:

• Does it sound interesting?

• Is it different from English or your family language?

• Say a word or a sentence from the video to your child and ask her if it sounds pretty.  (Well, you might get a giggle or a surprising answer.)

Chinese Tones Practice with audio

Mom or Horse

Soup or Candy

Dumplins or Sleep