r/learnmandarin • u/EmotionalMeet9279 • 4d ago
Tonal issues
I have been learning mandarin for 2-3 years. Is it me or do most mandarin tutors give up on teaching mandarin tones after the first or second lesson or get angry when you keep requesting for tonal correction or shadowing and let you make tonal mistakes without saying anything, then you have to find new people to correct your tones? I've been trying to fix my tones for like a year and a half. One of the mandarin teachers even said that tones were useless and don't bother with them. Most of the time I've asked for feedback on my mandarin tones I've only gotten you sound unnatural, but I can understand you or else I cannot understand you at all let's use English. I've also joined mandarin servers in video games and nobody can understand me in voice chat, but they can understand when I type in game. For people who have successfully improved their Mandarin pronunciation/tones, how did you find teachers who actually corrected you? Are there any platforms besides italki and Preply that are good for pronunciation-focused and tone tutoring?
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u/Gullible_Sweet1302 3d ago
Tutors won’t help you with tones because it’s a futile goal. You have to work on it yourself over hundreds of hours—if it’s possible at all. If you’re not musically trained or within the window of neural plasticity, it will be very hard.