jiāotán · to converse. The verb other apps can't do. Speak anything out loud and the teacher will give you feedback on your tones and pronunciation, and keep the conversation going as long as you want.
For learners who want to actually speak
A complete Mandarin Chinese learning system. That hears every word you say.
Tone-scored conversation. Phoneme-graded shadowing. Spaced-repetition flashcards built from your own speech. $149 a year, or $19.99 month to month.
7-day free trial. Cancel anytime.
Converse Shadow Review Curate
From absolute beginner to fluent. With all the tools you need.
Teacher mode
A conversation partner who replies in Mandarin and grades how you sound. Stuck on a word? Look it up in the built-in dictionary. The teacher waits as long as you need.
Shadowing
Hear a Mandarin sentence, then say it back. The app grades every phoneme and tone, so you see exactly which sounds you nailed and which ones slipped.
Flashcards
Vocab review built around the words you have already spoken. Cards come back at the right moment to stick in your memory, not so often that practice feels like busywork.
Vocabulary studio
A simple place to add and manage what you want to learn. Drop in a vocabulary list, edit a card, prune the words you already know.
Four tones. Same syllable. Four different meanings.
motherThe level tone, held flat and high.
hempThe rising tone, voice climbing.
horseThe dipping tone, falling then rising.
to scoldThe falling tone, voice dropping.
Get the wrong tone and you have called your mother a horse, or worse. Native speakers will be polite about it. They will not always correct you.
I studied Mandarin for years and still couldn't tell if my tones were right. Flashcards can't hear you. Tutors are rare and expensive. I built Watch Your Tones as the tool I needed.
Everitt Gill · Founder
Questions before starting.
Watch Your Tones works best for learners with some foundation. Roughly HSK 2 to 3. If you can recognize basic characters and know some vocabulary, you are ready.
Your audio is transcribed by a fast speech-to-text model (Groq Whisper), then scored by a specialized acoustic analysis system trained on Mandarin phonetics (iFlytek ISE). Each syllable's tone contour is evaluated against the expected pattern, returning a numeric accuracy score per word.
Audio is sent to our speech pipeline for transcription and tone scoring, then discarded. We do not build a searchable archive of your recordings.
Reliable for clean-audio practice of isolated words and short phrases. Like any automated scoring, it is imperfect on noisy recordings or long free-form utterances. The app tells you when it is uncertain and lets you retry.
Yes. Cancel directly from your account settings. Cancel during the free trial and you will not be charged.
Yes. Watch Your Tones is mobile-first and runs in any modern mobile browser. No app store download required. iOS and Android both support "Add to Home Screen" for a one-tap launch.
One plan. Two ways to pay.
Seven days free. Then the plan you choose.
- Unlimited conversation practice
- Unlimited tone and pronunciation scoring
- Teacher mode with personalized correction
- FSRS-scheduled flashcards
- Shadowing across five difficulty levels
- Vocabulary studio with import
Cancel anytime in settings.
Monthly or annual, every study mode is included.