Our Learning Approach

In this lesson

• Understanding our four-step learning approach

Our lessons are designed to help you achieve the learning goals we mention at the beginning:

1. recognize and distinguish different Cantonese sounds
2. produce Cantonese sounds accurately
3. read and write Romanized Cantonese using Jyutping

Some of our lessons will focus on one individual sound, and other lessons will compare similar sounds. Most lessons follow this four-step learning approach:

Step 1: Listening to the sounds

We will start to build up the sounds in our brains by simply listening to it. Don’t rush to repeat the sounds aloud. Try to simply listen to how the sounds actually sound like.

Step 2: Producing the sounds

In this step, we will learn to produce the sounds. You will see graphics that help you visualize how the sounds are produced. Then, we are going to say the sounds and words with the sounds together.

Step 3: Identifying and distinguishing the sounds

Next, we will simply listen to the sounds again to consolidate the sounds in our brains. You will identify the sounds from sentences, dialogues, or short paragraphs. And more importantly, you will practice distinguishing between the sounds and other similar sounds.

Step 4: Transcribing the sounds to Romanized Cantonese

Each lesson ends with Romanized Cantonese practice. You will read Romanized Cantonese aloud and write down Cantonese speech using Romanized Cantonese. The practice will help you get familiar with the Romanization system. If you have already learnt the system before taking this course, you may simply skip this part.

So that’s the way we’re going to learn individual sounds from the next section. Before starting the next section, we will go over some basic concepts related to Cantonese pronunciation in the next lesson. See you!