How it works: The way this exercise works is: you are presented with a chinese word and four images and you will also hear the pronunciation of the word in chinese. Based on what you hear and what you see you need to select the correct image. Even if you don't know the word at the beginning, don't worry, you will get immediate feedback on whether your option is correct or not. If you get a low score then you should repeat the exercise again. You will see that the more you repeat the exercise the better your score will be. Tips: If you want to see the roman alphabet pronunciation of a particular chinese word, click on the button that says 'pinyin'.

How it works You will see a set of cards with the face down. You need to use your mouse and click on one of the cards. After that you need to click on another card. If the cards turns to green that means you have found two cards that match. This means that you have matched an image against its chinese word in Hanzi-Image mode or that you have matched the chinese character against its chinese pronunciation if you are playing in Hanzi-Pinyin mode. There is a time constraint on this exercise so try to be quick!

In mandarin chinese it is not only difficult to distinguish tones. Certain syllabes in pinyin sound quite similar. Take as an example 知道 - zhī dao - to know and 迟到 - chí dào - to be late. To the untrained ear they sound the same but actually they have a slighly different sound. That's why it is important that you try this exercise and see whether you can differenciate the different sounds in pinyin.

How it works: You will hear the sound of a word in chinese and you have to select the right pinyin spelling from a number of options. For each question only one option is correct.

In mandarin there are 4 basic tones and a neutral tone.
The first tone is a high level tone with an horizontal pitch. The second tone is, also called rising tone that has a sound that rises from mid-level to high. The third tone is a dipping tone that starts mid-low, lowers to the bottom of your voice and then followed by a rising pitch. Finally, the fourth tone, perhaps the easiest of all to recognise(in pair with the first tone) has a sharp falling pitch. It starts high and ends low.

The more you practice at recognizing tones the more you realise how tricky it can be to distinguish the third tone from the second tone.

How it works: You will hear the sound of a word in chinese and you have to select the right pinyin spelling with the right tone from a number of options. For each question only one option is correct.

How it works You will see a set of cards with the face down. You need to use your mouse and click on one of the cards. After that you need to click on another card. If the cards turns to green that means you have found two cards that match. This means that you have matched an image against its chinese word in Hanzi-Image mode or that you have matched the chinese character against its chinese pronunciation if you are playing in Hanzi-Pinyin mode. There is a time constraint on this exercise so try to be quick!