That was YOU? Damn, bob, you lost Peggy an avid student with that move. 
Yup. I’m sure that cost her a lot of “students.” She did it though. And now we await her decision on whether or not to accept direction from the great bob who, as this thread aptly demonstrates, doesn’t “really” know how to direct her. He knows probably about as well as anybody else but one person, and she ain’t talkin.
All in all it’s good, complicated, real life drama though you gotta admit.
You’ve got the wise sage and grand poobah type character remaining aloof, and the over zealous grasshopper pupil out trying to save the world with his new found partial knowledge, and the young misguided youth propelling herself toward certain disaster and the only thing that can save the day is if grashopper can somehow bring grand pobah’s immense knowledge to bear on the problems of today.
At this point I suppose all we can do is pray for a happy ending.
So which one is the giant panda in the silk boxer shorts?
I don’t understand why you would need to.[/quote]
Well, because it might help people to learn to pronounce them properly.[/quote]
Hmmmm… I guess everyone has their own learning style. However, I don’t know anyone who needed to see the tones to learn them. For me, native Chinese speaking input was far more helpful than watching someone wave their arms in the air.
Four questions:
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Do you remember tones easily?
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Do you do the gestures?
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Do you enjoy speaking Chinese?
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Do you have pronunciation that native speakers of Chinese find pleasant?
[quote=“bob”]Four questions:
-
Do you remember tones easily?
-
Do you do the gestures?
-
Do you enjoy speaking Chinese?
-
Do you have pronunciation that native speakers of Chinese find pleasant?[/quote]
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
But you had teachers who performed the gestures clearly and consistently. Is that correct?
I had teachers who spoke the tones clearly and consistently. Never once did they use their limbs to explain/use tones. I think I would have enjoyed class more if they did. 
Hold up Bob. What do you mean “the” gestures? Is this based on research, or some documented pedagogical practice?
I really think tone gestures are a lovely idea, although I don’t remember ever being taught using them. I sometimes find my head moving in the directions you indicate in your description, including the tone 3 gesture, but I think when I want to confirm or clarify a tone with someone. I use my hand going steeply downhill to indicate tone 4, but I can’t quite think why or in what situations.
If there is any pedagogical merit to the whole thing, I’d say there must be some literature on it out there somewhere.
FWIW, I doubt Ironlady thinks of herself as a grand sage or Pooh Bear or a talking turtle. She’s just a professional teacher and translator of Chinese.
OK, here’s the thing:
The gestures should be a visual metaphor for the actual sound of the tone. It should represent the tone so that if a person is listening to a second tone but can’t “hear” it he can at least still see it. Perhaps he can relate it another second tone that he did hear. In any event because he hears it and sees it and performs it it becomes more hardwired. It occupies a greater portion of his nervous system, literally. By doing this, in my experience, I quickly became better able to hear the tone.
I am coming to the sad realization too that there is perhaps no official description of what the tones would look like if they were to be an accurate representaion of the actual sounds.
Such a description “should” exist. Perhaps we can create one.
Haven’t you seen tone contour charts? I’m sure they’re out there but I haven’t got time to track one down now.
Isn’t that what you’re trying to do? Question is, is anyone interested in it? The jury seems to be out, but I know where my opinion lies so far. Here, I’ll do it with a gesture.
Haven’t you seen tone contour charts? I’m sure they’re out there but I haven’t got time to track one down now.[/quote]
I’ve seen the tone contour charts but what I want to be able to describe is the way those charts would be represented physically, by the body. The other problem of course too is that the charts aren’t correct, at least not in relation to the third tone.
I’ll try to say it more precisely. The gestures should be an accurate visual metaphor for the way the tone is pronounced. The vertical axis represents the pitch, the horizontal represents the beginning and end points of the syllable, and the speed of the gesture represents the amount of time it takes to pronounce the word. If a person learns to do this as he speaks he will essentially be learning to move to the music of the language. There is nothing in the world easier to remember than a musical contour.
It’s not like I am reinventing the wheel here. People indicate the tones with gestures all the time. The problem is they do it poorly like it is some big hassle whereas they should be doing it like they are physically responding to a musical element of the language, that is pleasurably.
Haven’t you seen tone contour charts? I’m sure they’re out there but I haven’t got time to track one down now.[/quote]
YR Chao, the guy who invented Gwoyeu Romatzyh, had this scheme for representing tones called tone letters
Pitch (which is basically what tone is) can be displayed in a graphic format, with the help of computers. What is actually being measured (well, estimated really) is the rate of vibration of your vocal cords. The faster they vibrate, the higher the pitch of your voice. On the graphs in the link below you can see output from the program that estimates the pitch. The horizontal axis is time (the time taken to pronounce the Chinese syllable, e.g. “ma”), the vertical axis is pitch (an estimate of pitch, fundamental frequency or F0).
shlrc.mq.edu.au/masters/stud … i_tone.htm
You can see that the graphs look a little tiny bit like the tone marks used in Hanyu Pinyin. They also look a tiny bit like the sort of tone gesturing Bob and Peggy and trying to do.
The Worldbet tone description system mentioned there is actually the work of Chao Yuen-Ren. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_letter describes his method of tone letters, which can also be represented as a standard musical staff with five lines, in the form of the tone icons recognized by the IPA, or like the coloured graphic on the wiki page.
So an idealized “tone chart” is given on the second link, which gives the standard description of Chinese tones. A “chart” of actual usage by speakers at the first link, for reference only. Any system of gestures would probably want to be based on the idealized system of Chao, I would say.
A google turns up quite a bit. You know this could be a research direction Bob. I think you may have hit on something.
Found this chinese-forums.com/showthread.php?t=22801 A question about teaching with gesture, not really answered
and then this:
[quote=“Chinese forums”]As far as I’m aware, the third tone has three different pronounciations.
A. Before 1st, 2nd, 4th tone (I think of this one as “low flat”… others call it “half” 3rd?)
B. Before 3rd tone (rising, similar to 2nd tone)
C. Dipping (at the end of a sentence; before major pause)
Most textbooks/instructors teach C as the general pronunciation, with A and B as special cases. I think that A LOT could be gained from teaching A as the general pronunciation, with B and C as the special cases. This would have helped me A LOT. I think that many non-native speakers make the mistake of thinking that the 3rd tone is intrinsically dipping, and tend to dip it far more often than they should (me included). The fact that pinyin looks like it does doesn’t really help.
Apart from that, heifeng’s advice is excellent. [/quote]
Isn’t that what you’re trying to do? Question is, is anyone interested in it? The jury seems to be out, but I know where my opinion lies so far. Here, I’ll do it with a gesture. [/quote]
You are a musical person. If you had been taught to focus on the musical aspects of the language and to respond to them physically you would probably speak quite good Chinese by now. That didn’t happen. Your Chinese is awful (so you say) and you have nothing of interest to contribute to what has already become quite an interesting discussion for some so yeah, no, your opinion on this one means next to nothing actually.
Let’s save some time.
You’ll likely respond that you don’t care that your Chinese is awful.
I’ll repeat that your opinion on this one means next to nothing actually.
If you want to actually read the thread and try to understand it and contribute something of some value great, but the little digs like that are just stupid.
[quote]If you want to actually read the thread and try to understand it and contribute something of some value great, but the little digs like that are just stupid.
[/quote]
I did read the thread. You want people to teach tones by shoogling their bodies. Nobody else who knows about the subject seems to think its a good idea, including some who are extremely well-versed in the subject of teaching Chinese. Stupid is as stupid does, as someone once said.
I do too.
If you posit the hips and shoulders as the four corners of the standard graph it should be possible to say where the hands should move in relation to those four points. If you have done that you just need someone who can actually move their body in time with changes in pitch, and come in and finish and at precisely the right moment and you should be able to come up with something that looks a little like dance. Or perhaps like a person conducting a symphony.
It is what I have been trying to do for a few years I guess and while I’m probably not probably not quite “on” I’m close enough to enjoy it.
People should sort of dance (with their hands but also from the head and knees a bit) to the Chinese that they speak when they are trying to teach, learn or review it. The dance should be accurate and in time. That’s my theory.
[quote=“sandman”][quote]If you want to actually read the thread and try to understand it and contribute something of some value great, but the little digs like that are just stupid.
[/quote]
I did read the thread. You want people to teach tones by shoogling their bodies. Nobody else who knows about the subject seems to think its a good idea, including some who are extremely well-versed in the subject of teaching Chinese. Stupid is as stupid does, as someone once said.[/quote]
Sandy, you are a funny guy, a great writer, and a phenomenol muscian but I beg you, please couldn’t you please just piss off on this one!
Oh, all RIGHT then. If you insist.
You KNOW I’m right, though.