ToneCoaching

About 2 minutes. Find out where your Mandarin pronunciation actually stands — and which sounds your native language makes hardest.

Works best in a quiet room. Use headphones if you have them.

What is this?

A free two-minute pronunciation checkup for people learning Mandarin. You read ten words out loud. In return you get your consonant and vowel accuracy, plus a breakdown of which sounds tend to be hardest for speakers of your first language — because tone errors are not random.

Why your first language matters

Published research on Mandarin tone acquisition shows that the tones learners struggle with depend on their L1:

• Vietnamese speakers most often struggle with the 4th tone — the opposite of what Western learners typically find hardest.
• Italian speakers tend to produce the 2nd tone as a 3rd tone — the rising contour doesn't rise enough.
• Japanese speakers generally find tone discrimination harder than characters or pinyin, because Japanese pitch accent works at the word level rather than the syllable level.

Most apps give every learner the same drill set. That never made sense to us. See the research for all 27 first languages →

What it does and doesn't tell you

It does: score your consonants and vowels, and compare your result against the research for your native language.
It doesn't: tell you which specific tone you got wrong. The assessment engine we currently use doesn't expose a tone verdict, and we'd rather say nothing than say something wrong.

Your audio

Audio is scored in real time and discarded. We never store your voice. No signup, no account, no email required.

Pronunciation scoring by Tencent Cloud SOE. Phase-0 prototype — currently free while we work out whether it's worth building properly.