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If you are looking for a book to learn Mandarin pronunciation, look no further. Mandarin Chinese Pronunciation Crashing is the one you really need. This book is comprehensive, covering all aspects of Mandarin pronunciation, and practical, providing unique methods and adequate exercises. 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.
As a beginner, you may think Mandarin is difficult since it sounds so different from English. However, Mandarin and English pronunciations share many similarities that are clearly identified in this book. 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 articulations (the voice organs and their positions and movements to produce a sound) for Pinyin (the phonological system of Mandarin) sounds.
This strategy can be used to pronounce Mandarin sounds that share no similarity with English. Pronunciation is a sophisticated matter since it involves the combination and cooperation of different parts of our vocal system, such as the teeth, tongue, and lips. 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 of the vocal parts and their movements in pronouncing every Pinyin sound. Diagrams for the articulation of most Pinyin sounds are also provided. Furthermore, video demonstrations for every Pinyin sound are also prepared. The Mandarin sounds feel so alien to you can be pronounced correctly with the help of these text and graphic instructions and video demonstrations.
3. Applying enunciation—practicing of 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 learner’s just begun studying the language. Consequently, the crucial enunciation stage is omitted, which often leads to either wrong or thickly accented pronunciation. So, the remedy to the problem is to restore the stage of enunciation. The recordings for this book are done more clearly and slowly than the normal speaking speed. Learners imitate the recordings and pronounce the sounds clearly and slowly and get on the right path to Mandarin fluency.
4. Providing adequate exercises.
Though this strategy sounds a bit cliché, since everybody knows you have to practice to learn pronunciation, it addresses an existing problem with foreign language learning in general and pronunciation learning in particular—insufficient practice. Learning pronunciation is a process of acquiring basic skills to pronounce sounds. Like developing skills in cooking, drawing, or playing a musical instrument, gaining the skills of pronunciation requires a huge amount of practice. The goal of this book is to help you pronounce Mandarin properly instead of just gaining knowledge about Mandarin pronunciation. As such, explanations are given as precisely as possible, and more content is dedicated to different types of exercises.
5. Practicing tongue twisters.
Tongue twisters are a very effective yet somewhat neglected way to practice pronunciation, especially for foreign language learners. Tongue twisters are widely used by professional speakers, such as broadcasters, actors, and politicians to improve pronunciation in their native languages. In this book, we introduce them as a tool to train English native speakers’ Mandarin pronunciation. After finally pronouncing a sound correctly by carefully following the pronunciation instructions and imitating native speakers, new challenges emerge. Over time, you cannot remember the correct pronunciation 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. Muscle memory is developed by repetition. Tongue twisters are designed to practice pronunciation in a concentrated and repetitive way, and are proven to be a more effective, efficient, and pleasant way to develop your muscle memory of a sound in language. We have collected ninety-seven tongue twisters to in this book, and every initial, final, or tone (the three major components of Pinyin) is covered by more than one tongue twister. All the tongue twisters in this book are recorded in both slower and normal speeds for learners to imitate.
6. Linking pronunciation with real-life oral communication.
The main goal of learning pronunciation is to improve oral communication abilities in real-life situations. Pronunciations of single syllables are like parts of a product, and the pronunciation of a conversation or a speech is the product itself. To have the final product, you need an efficient assembly line to put the parts together. To maintain a fluent conversation or speech, you need the skills to put the sounds of single syllables together, make the syllables that are supposed to be pronounced more strongly louder, change the tones of the syllables when the context requires them to change, and so on. Your speech would sound awkward or incomprehensible to native speakers if you don’t make these adjustments. The sixth strategy trains the skills of assembling the sounds of single syllables into a smooth flow of conversation or speech.