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The music videos available in the Premium section can be a great resource to practice your listening and reading skills. What words or phrases do you recognize? Observe the tones of the various words in the lyrics and how the tones are being pronounced “in tune.” Try to pronounce the Pinyin lyrics and see how they are pronounced within the music. Do note that since they are “in tune” they might be pronounced differently than in regular conversation. You can also use this section to test your recognition of Chinese characters. Try and pick out the most common characters first before moving to the more difficult ones.

For most people, tones represents one of the hardest aspects of learning Chinese. Indeed in rapid speech it can be very difficult to make out one tone from another. However, like anything else, this is a skill that can be acquired with enough practice. You may not realize it, but you already have experience in this area through your perception of various forms of intonation in English. The entire meaning of a sentence can be changed with the slightest change in intonation, which doesn’t cause any problems in understanding between native English speakers (indeed this process is mostly performed unconsciously). For an added challenge try and practice intonation in Chinese to express different emotions. Make sure you don’t change the tones in the process.