3 replies to this topic

[flowerly]

Hello, I'm having a Chinese oral this Wednesday and I am very worried about my tone in Chinese. I started learning Chinese in 9th grade which is considerably late compared to my classmates who had been studying Chinese for at least more than 5 years. Some even learned chinese for 10 years! I am probably at disadvanatage, but I took it because I felt like it was better to be good at one language than to be so-so at many different languages.

Okay, I'm rambling too much. Haha. So, my main concern is the tone in Chinese. I am horrible with tones. How do we get better at speaking Chinese? Listen to the Chinese book CD's? I know confidence helps, but I can't help but feel small whenever I speak Chinese.

About the oral, my teacher will give me a picture and I just have to talk about the picture for 3 minutes and the remaining 2 mintues would be the questioning and anwering time. I don't what to do with the picture. Do I relate to the picture by creating a story out of it, or what I think about the issue illustrated in the picture?

Thank you in advance!

[gonengg]

Do you know what the picture will be about? If so you can practice what you are going to say until perfection There are some websites that 'speak out' the characters that you put in which could help you.

I would say practice with either a recording of what you are going to say, or use the tones to help you until you memorise them. Also, confidence does really count!

[flowerly]

Yeah, I think I have some idea what the pictures will be about. They will be based on the units we have learned so far. But, the thing is the vocabulary we've learned is sometimes not adequate to the picture. It's limited. For example, we learned a unit about natural disaster. There might be a picture of some people fleeing from flood, but I don't know how to say the word "escape" for example. So, how do we practice until perfection?

If you don't mind, would you please share the website? I was desperately looking for it the other day, but wasn't successful. It was either just a program that writes pinyins for you or you had to pay for it. And, I will try recording myself. That sounds like a great idea. Thank you SO MUCH for your advise!

[gonengg]

Here:
http://ecl.iflytek.c...is/Default.aspx

Best of luck!