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.