Post a sample of your pronunciation here!

[heifeng]

Cool, more and more peeps are interested. Great thread Mandarina.

Of course we have to try to help each other out as part of the constructive criticism & train our listening as well as speaking:mrgreen:

Here's my friend's recording for reference (she's a native speaker, well other than the fact she's lived in the US for a while) that I suckered her into today. She pointed out my iffy u vs. v and over emphasis on it in the recording, and I pointed out her 二，and lack of distinction b/t -n and -ng )

Did you people actually rehearse this beforehand or did you just read it off the bat?

I had to practice it a bit, just like Imron. My friend also had to record it a few times too.

p.s. also what is this PSC thingie that everybody keeps talking about?

In addition to the trasnscripts link, my personal favorite psc stuff is on tudou, for example here with this reader. But there are a ton of resources everywhere, you should check 'em out if interested!

Q: Hey, Imron, why do my files seem so big...hmm. I keep having to break them up to post 'em, but everyone else's are so small.

mmread1.mp3

mmread2.mp3

[imron]

Try setting it to a lower bitrate when saving the mp3 files. I used 64bit, yours is currently set to 128bit.

[Hofmann]

A shorter text? The only short texts I can think of are poems. They don't have -r or 5th tone.

Or you could just read the tables of initials, finals, erhua finals, 4 tones, 4 tones plus 5th tone.

[imron]

I don't necessarily think HerrPetersen meant a shorter text, just a simpler text without so much advanced vocabulary.

[HerrPetersen]

Yea - exactly. Just reading syllables might be very "to the point" for pointing out mistakes - but it would be also no fun ;). I have a song text sung by Cai Qin in mind right now, but I still hope someone comes up with something better.

Thanks for the link though Hofmann, looks like a good resource.

[imron]

The thing is, none of us really know your level and therefore the type of article that is going to be suitable - "above newbie-level" doesn't really give much away. It would help if you provided some information about the type of things you currently feel comfortable reading.

Did you have a look at the thread linked to above? Although that article is significantly longer, it contains quite simple vocab and grammar structures.

[HerrPetersen]

The text posted in the link above is about my level. So this is what I consider "above-newbie" .

Alright, I took a shot at the above text (only one minute of it). I read it twice before recording and marked four words I did not not. I read it in Hanzi and it shows. Anyhow be gentle But true

kram.mp3

[mandarina]

hey, pretty good for above-newbie level! When I was at your level all I could utter was: 白先生，你好？ （we focused more on writing and reading:)

I think what you need to do is: concentrate just on the words first, make sure you get the tones right, you need to correct your pronouncation ofwords like 下班， 儿子， 发现， 可以 etc.

After you know all the words, concentrate on the phrases， make sure they run smoothly, for example:问一个问题， on the last stage you should do the whole sentences: 爸，我可以问您一个问题吗？

pay attention to the third-second tone combination: 小时，美国，小孩儿，旅游...

and lastly, correct the pronounciation of 下 in 下班 and 经 in 已经, you pronounce the x and j too soft, in my opinion.

加油!

[HerrPetersen]

Thanks for looking into it. After rehearing myself I really seem to not have a clue what I am saying. I pretty much understand the text, am just still pretty slow deciphering hanzi. *goes back to practicing reading with the above criticism in mind*

[heifeng]

Cool, it's pretty good for a beginner. Seriously, I understand everything you said! Now, how to make it a real kick tailfeather reading:

1) Go through and figure out what characters need to be read together. Words like 可以，儿子，小时，多少. This is mainly what made the reading choppy. This will get better w/ time and more reading.

2) 儿化：孩+儿needs to be read together here. Sometimes 儿 is read as a separate syllable, but not in this case.

3)轻声：characters like 了，着，need to be read w/ a neutral tone, as do the 2nd characters in the following words 儿子，多少，父亲。

5) Tone: some words were a bit off, but it seemed to me at least that you knew what the tones should be, but had some issues when you said them, especially some tone combinations and tone change. (Mandarina already wrote this above). Also here are some native readers of this text which should help with all of the above. guy and girl

now go listen to recordings, practice, record, listen to self and repeat as needed and post here again!

Practice makes perfect...or at least pretty close to to it:mrgreen:

[imron]

I think Heifeng and Mandarina have pointed out the biggest problems. Here is the method I would use to fix them.

Download the native recording of this from

here. It's better to do this than use the tudou ones (sorry Heifeng), as by downloading it you can have more control over selecting and listening to certain portions.

If you haven't already, download and install something like Audacity.

Start with the first sentence, 一天，爸爸下班回到家已经很晚了, and make sure you understand all the grammar and vocab.

Load up the mp3 in Audacity and highlight this portion of the recording.
Listen to it on loop several times, following along with the written text as you do (not necessarily out loud, but just reading it to yourself). Initially it might be a bit difficult to keep up, but after multiple attempts you should be ok with it.

Record yourself speaking the exact same section, trying to copy and match the native speaker's pauses and phrasing and also pronunciation of tones etc.

Compare your recording to the native speaker, note the places that were obviously different. Record the sentence again making a conscious effort to fix the mistakes. For this, it's usually best just to concentrate on fixing one mistake at a time. Continue doing this until you can say the sentence fluently and there is a minimal number of noticeable mistakes.

Move on to the next part of the sentence 他很累也有点儿烦 and repeat the above process. When you've got that down pat, then try putting them both together.

Once you can do that, move on to the next part 他发现五岁的儿子靠在门旁正等着他. Repeat again, first doing the individual section and then practice combining that with what you've done previously. Repeat for the rest of the article.

When choosing the next part to practice, it's important to a) select something reasonably short (divide and conquer) and b) to choose a reasonably complete semantic unit.

This is a slow, laborious process. You might find that you can only do one or two sentences a day before you get too tired or bored. However the trick is not how much you can do in one day, but rather how many days you can continually practice it for. If you can, try to put in 20-30 minutes a day every day for a month (when you finish this article, there are plenty of others at the same links). Mark the days off on the calendar as you go, or use something like this, or my own 100%.

If you keep at it, you will find that gradually you will be able to choose longer and longer sentences, and that your initial reading of new sentences will be much more natural and fluent.

That's basically the method I've been using to improve my reading and speaking. The end result is what you can hear in my earlier post.

[heifeng]

It's better to do this than use the tudou ones (sorry Heifeng), as by downloading it you can have more control over selecting and listening to certain portions.

haha no worries! That's a great write up (as usual) Imron!

[HerrPetersen]

Wow! Thanks for the posts. I guess I really did not get the meaning of the thread. I listened to the first mp3-postings (mandarina and imron?) and thought "alright I will do this too". Then I looked into the text linked above, read it a couple of times and went for it.

Really the whole point of people looking into your pronounciation is giving as much effort as possible and then, once no improvements by oneself are possible, post your stuff.

So this is what I am doing.

Until maybe the weekend I will do the text again - having mandarina's and heifeng's corrections in mind and applying imron's learning suggestions (I already have audacity) - having a better mic handy and post the really best possible recording. (if it takes longer, it takes longer)

Again thanks.

Edit: messed up trying to link to some nonexisting stuff.

Edited January 22, 2009 at 08:09 AM by HerrPetersen

[imron]

listened to the first mp3-postings (mandarina and imron?)

Nope, I was number 4.

Then I looked into the text linked above, read it a couple of times and went for it.

Much the same here. Where I was talking about the end result, I wasn't referring to using this process for doing my above recording, but rather on having done a large amount of this sort of stuff over the last few months with the end result being that I can read things a lot more smoothly than I could several months ago.

I think really the point of threads like this is firstly motivation through peer pressure, as it's much easier to continue working on monotonous things like this when there are others going through the same process, and secondly its good to share ideas, techniques and experiences for how to improve your speaking. Not to mention, being able to pick out problems with other people's pronunciation will help when you record yourself and need to pick out problems with your own

[roddy]

I'm increasing the limit for mp3 attachments to 3MB or thereabouts to save people having to break stuff up, but please do try and things keep at a reasonable size.

Am attaching a reading of the 一天爸爸回到家 piece - this is from about a year ago when I was a few months into nine months of being mercilessly bullied by a very nice lady who trained Chinese folk for the Putonghua Ceshi. Learn it properly at the start folks, because it's misery going back and correcting it all later

Excellent thread by the way!

baba.mp3

[imron]

Am attaching a reading of the 一天爸爸回到家 piece - this is from about a year ago

Bah, that's cheating. We want to hear a new recording of the article at the top of the thread

[yersi]

Imron, I've been looking for a systematic way of improving pronunciation similar to the ones I have for vocab and grammar and your method sounds absolutely fantastic, thanks for doing the write-up.

[imron]

Be sure to come back in one month with another recording

[Scoobyqueen]

Thanks for the tips Imron. Well summarised.

I have used this approach also for speeches. It works like you said, sentence by sentence paying full attention to contents. Initially one gets tired but plug on and it works.

Additionally, I have found it useful synchronising my speech to that of the native speaker as he reads out, ie you try to speak at the same time as him in order to achieve the right pauses. But you could of course also achieve this by playing both recordings simultaneously. I find the process a bit laborious (and quite often boring for want of a better word) but it certainly does work.

[HerrPetersen]

I don't know, if you were adressing me or roddy - I will get to it pretty soon, had some stuff to do over the weekend.