Familiarize yourself with the pinyin spellings for the following sounds. Listen carefully to the differences between the tones. Practice by repeating the sounds aloud.

The syllables , and are sounds common in English, but in English these sounds usually occur at the end of words. Can you think of any English words that have these sounds? In Mandarin these sounds are exclusively used as initials. The -i used in these syllables is a placeholder for tone marks. It represents no sound. In a more English-like romanized system these syllables would be spelled (), () and (), but pinyin is nearly universally used so it looks like we just have to get used to the pinyin spelling for these sounds.

Read and record the following words and phrases.

When you have finished upload your audio file using the appropriate dropbox assignment. You can record the assignment directly into the dropbox as an alternative to using a separate recording application.