I just heard from a friend last night about the idea to raise your eyebrows when saying the second tone. That’s another one I guess. It would be good to have all these in one place. Maybe I should do a post on gestures and tones just to see what everyone else knows about.

Thanks for your reply. I agree all these control gestures are designed for beginners, which are good coz they do help to some extent. I m a native Chinese speaker and devoting my attention to developing some effective teaching method for non-Chinese speakers. I have been teaching foreigners Chinese for several years and the greatest thing is that I consistenly modify/improve my teaching method by learning from my students. To have a good start in learning Chinese, tones pronunciation is very key. I do hope we guys can discuss more on it and let more people here benefit. Thanks again!

I’ve also read some articles (or it may have been just one) that talked about the “finger approach” to learning the tones and didn’t explain what that was. But, I’m pretty sure it’s talking about moving your finger in the air to draw the shape of the tone as you say the word. The idea is that your voice will follow your finger up and down as you say the word. I think it’s designed for people who have difficulty hearing and especially producing the differences between the tones. I’ve also heard of stomping your foot to make the 4th tone. Besides those two, I don’t know of any other gestures associated with learning the tones.

Mnemonic devices are good at first. In a conversation, however, you don’t have time to recall them — you have to just spit the word out. The goal is to make the word “sound natural” in your mind’s ear when the tone is correct, and “sound funny” when it isn’t.

Sometimes it’s helpful to record your own voice saying the word, to see if you really sound like you think you do.