I have tried to learn the tones yet it seems to be much more difficult that remembering definitions or character/word handwriting.
Can anyone give clues as to how to go about TONES ??

my tones are terrible, so take this for what it may be worth, but my best advice is listen to a lot of Chinese and the only advice I can give specific to Skritter is to use the color coding system. My theory, for which I have no proof, is that the part of the brain that recognizes color is somehow better connected to the part that deals with language than the part that processes tone "numbers" or tone marks.

I study most of the the time on app.Can I put that on in iOS App?

One thing I sometimes do when I'm having trouble remembering the tone of a character is look to see if any of the strokes in the character looks like the tone marker. For example, if it's a first tone and the character has a horizontal stroke, I will try to remember that stroke as the "tone stroke" (any stroke with a bend can represent the third tone). It doesn't work for all characters obviously, and you need to be careful not to mix up characters that share a common component, but I find it does help.

Other than that, I would recommend just getting a massive amount of Chinese audio input. The more time you spend listening to tones, the easier they will stick. When you grow up speaking a non-tonal language, your brain just isn't used to associating the pitch of a word with its meaning. The only way to effectively train it to do that is to expose it to so many tones that it has no choice but to adapt the way it perceives and stores linguistic information.

@Sandeep, Lots of people have brought this up and perhaps it's something that starts to click in more later. According to Skritter my tones have always had the highest retention rate. I study all four parts on Skritter.

I usually remember tones based on individual characters first, then apply them to words. For some characters that means I have to be aware of multiple sounds and or tone situations.

I don't use any intentional methods of looking at strokes in a character for clue, because I don't have the luxury when speaking. I will agree with levitooker on the listening part. Sometimes I won't remember a tone and will just try to naturally speak the word and then listen to what I just said.

I currently use the mnemonics system suggested in Tuttle's Learning Chinese Characters Volume 1, and it works well for me. The intro, which outlines the system, can be read for free on google books:

http://books.google.ca/books?id=YweFHwPd05EC&lpg=PP1&dq=tuttle%20learning%20chinese%20characters&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=tuttle%20learning%20chinese%20characters&f=false

Sandeep,
Unfortunately, the color coding scheme is not available on the iOS app.

Sandeep,

Have you tried reading the character aloud several times?

@ pekines..
Not Really.. Does it help? I skritter while my kid sleeps and really can't do it :-) without waking him up.

@Sandeep

I think it does. But I am not versed in psycholinguistics either. I think that reading pronouncing characters silently helps too, specially if you are closer to the "audial" learner type than to the "visual" one.
After having reread you question, I ask myself which is more effective: to try and learn that problematic tone; or to start all over again learning the pronunciation (tone included)of the problematic character.

I don't know; I use the tone color scheme, but I don't really seem to notice the colors. But it might be very helpful to others.

It's cliché, but I'm gonna say it anyway: talk a lot to people! (Thank you, Captain Obvious!)

It's better than any pinyin list or flashcards, or even listening. Countless words are stuck in my head with the correct tones because people didn't understand what I was saying when I used the wrong tones. I remember vividly how I confused a friend when I mixed up 水餃 and 睡覺; never used the wrong tones since :)

@Schnabelhund: Did you know there's a whole song about that?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XTBwvi0h2E

Cool! I bet that guy never mixed those words up again :)

@Sandeep

I´m curious to know why you study Chinese. I mean, is it for reading, for speaking, for writing?

Some people find it useful to learn characters together with words that contain them. For example, there are at least five characters pronounced bao3; if they want to learn the one written 宝, they do it linking that character to the word 宝贝 [bǎobèi], let´s say.

Having said that, I think that to ask oneself how to learn tones reveals a misconception about the nature of Chinese phonology and phonetics. Tones are inextricably linked to the other elements of the syllable (consonants and vowels). I wonder what they have to do with colors, numbers or diacritics, apart from being a way of representing them: they are nothing less and nothing more than the result of variations in pitch, in the tension of the vocal chords, which in turn take place as a result of orders sent by the brain.

That´s why for me the best way to learn the pronunciation(s) of characters is to pronounce them repeatedly and conscientiously. I suppose I´m trying to develop a conditioned reflex in which the character is the visual stimulus and its pronunciation (tone included) the oral response to that stimulus. In my case that works even if I pronounce a character mentally. I guess my brain tells my vocal chords to tense o distend; and if the brain adds orders to let air come through these chords, then the sound is audible; otherwise it is not.

Apologies for my English.

Has anyone used Rosetta Stone or AI Chinese to record themselves and try to mold their pronunciation and tones into proper shape? In theory it seems like listen / repeat / get feedback and hear yourself / repeat again, etc. should work, but surprisingly I have seen no endorsements for this as a good way to learn tones.

One thing which has worked very well for me is to use the Dominic System for tones. See http://dominicsystem.blogspot.com/ for some background. Once you have associations for the letters A through E and all combinations thereof, you can map tone numbers to letters and then to people, then make up stories about the people. For example, to remember that the tones for 睡觉 (shui4 jiao4, to sleep) are 4, then 4, you would convert 44 to DD and think of Donald Duck sleeping. Another example: 屋顶 (wu1 ding3, roof) is 13 = AC, so I imagine A.C., O.J. Simpson's buddy from the Jeep, up on a roof.

For longer words like 卫生纸 (wei4 sheng1 zhi3, toilet paper) you convert the tones into pairs and singletons: 41 3 = DA C. Then imagine Dan Aykroyd and Cher fighting with toilet paper.

James

Hi podster,

There are probably learners who benefit from using these pieces of software for drilling. I personally find them cumbersome.

I would limit it to listening, imitating, repeating, also as a physical exercise for the tongue, the lips, the vocal cords... I try to get feedback from hearing myself, pretty much like when after having written a character, I cast a glance on it and can more or less assess whether it looks OK.

Learning tones is simultaneous with learning sounds.

Hi jww1066 (et al.)

The system in the link you gave us looks pretty complex. Well, all mnemonic systems are, aren´t they?

You probably know what happened when the Jesuits explained to the Chinese how Western mnemonics work, and why it would be useful for those taking the imperial exams. The Chinese objected than if they were to use that mnemonic system, they learning load would double, because besides the "curriculum", they would have to learn how the system works.

I think mnemonics is great for what it was originally created, that is, for not forgetting what one has already learnt. Software is also a wonderful tool for that, and for learning.

These guys have some interesting and sobering thoughts on learning tones here:
"Chinese themselves do not know that they have 4 tones and speak Mandarin perfectly well. I don’t understand why us, the students of Mandarin should know this.
Tones are very important of course, but the way they are explained to students is far too academic and not practical at all."
http://www.foreverastudent.com/search/label/Learning%20Mandarin
arg! silly forum software, this works: http://goo.gl/ub9gT
"Children hear whole sentences. They don’t start with syllables."
http://thepolyglotdream.com/2011/11/19/tips-on-how-to-learn-chinese-tones/
There's also some interesting skepticism about SRS methods.

@ Kai Carver

Thank you very much for the links.

Has anyone tried this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/McGraw-Hills-Chinese-Pronunciation-CD-ROM-Live/dp/0071627367/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345030239&sr=8-1

Does it work?

I used a similar CD-ROM when I fist started learning and found it very helpful, especially the Sammy diagrams which show what you physically have to do to produce a sound. It helped clarify a lot of phonetics I wasn't sure of. I wish the McGraw-Hill book was out when I first started learning Mandarin.

But if it's just tones that are an issue, I don't think it much more useful than a free pinyin chart with audio.

I've used colours since day one, and now, on just over 1,000 characters, my tone recollection is incredibly strong. That's especially amazing for me, because I always assumed that I would be hopeless wih tones.

One trick I use is to build the tone colour into the meaning of the character. If you use the standard tone colouring system (1 red, 2 orange, 3 green, 4 blue, 5 black), here's a good example: if you can't remember that 桥 (bridge) uses the second tone, associate the character with the Golden Gate Bridge in America, which is orange. You probably won't forget the tone now.

@Sobria_Ebritas

I agree: Just copy someone you want to sound like. It's really that simple if you still have the ability to mimic strangers.

@ Kai Carver

Chinese people have unconscious competence with their language: They don't need explicit instruction on the concept of tones. It is already ingrained deeply inside them. The rest of us, myself especially included, do. I spoke Thai for over a year before I realized I wasn't using tones.

As for SRS: Nothing beats total immersion. SRS is useful when you lack the resources to study full-time.

@admad I think for tone colors the app doesnt help. I don't find tone colors in iOS app.
Right?

@adamd, do you use colors just as a mnemonic? Or do you also use the colored characters?

@Sandeep: Yeah, no colours in the Skritter iOS app, unfortunately.

@lechuan: I use coloured characters in Pleco. For everything else, including Skritter for iOS and everyday Chinese text, I resort to picturing each character as its colour in my head, but mnemonics help enormously with tones that otherwise won't stick.

@Sandeep, did you check out the Matthew's mnemonic system for remembering pronunciation (tones/phonetics)?

@LEECHAUN

What is this method ? some URL for it ?
thanks.

@Sandeep, see my post above from Aug 2nd.

I think the only useful thing I can say is that I don't try to learn tones for characters alone, but for longer words or phrases.

I see this a bit like how you don't learn nouns in isolation in French (and German, and probably other languages with the concept of 'gender'), you always include the correct masculine/feminine word before it. If you ask me if 'plage' (beach) is m/f, I only know it is f because "la plage" (the beach, f) sounds 'right' to my ear and "le plage" (the beach, m) sounds awful.

What I am trying to say is that I don't memorise directly that plage=f, just try to hear what sounds right as part of a larger phrase.

Similarly in 中文 if you ask me the tone of 什 I would think of the suspiciously inquiring sound of 为什么wei4shen2me to rather than remembering 什=shen2 alone.