The course has got up to the stage of introducing tones of Chinese. I thought the hardest part has gone, but from what I saw this evening, it seemed the hardest part is just coming on its way :-(

People improved greatly on their pronunciation with Finals and Initials, but sounded not getting their heads around on tones. They were like a out-of-tuned piano, struggling in finding the proper tune for each word. The head dipping down and going up sometimes helped a bit, like when pronouncing the 3rd tone, but for the first and the second, it just killed them. I wished I could have had a better way to teach them, but unfortunately I don’t know if there is one. When they got to trying the Tongue Twister out, I almost fainted. What the hell are they talking about? I was supposed to hear “si shi si, shi shi shi; sishi shi sishi; shisi shi shisi”…but for me, they sounded like “si si si si si si………..” with different but strange tones they made up themselves. Oh my God! I hope they don’t hate me.

But I did see the strong interests on their faces when we were playing back the song “The moon represents my heart” on my husband’s mobile. They followed the lyrics on the paper easily even they have never heard of it before. I can see the motivation that they wanted to learn so maybe one day if they go to China, they could impress those Chinese.