If the tones are giving you trouble, our series explaining them tone-by-tone should be useful. In this crowded podcast Brendan, David, Echo and Bunny start from the absolute basics with tone number one. This is the high and flat tone that establishes the upper range of your pitch, so you'll need to get your voice up there and keep it there (ideally without the reedy warbling).

Don't let the first tone intimidate you. In this podcast we start by introducing some critical everyday words that all use the first tone, and then start packing them into practice sentences. Brendan and David also pass along on some tricks on getting the pronunciation right, gathered over many years at great cost to personal dignity.
 said on
October 9, 2008
I like this one. Sounds like you had fun making it. :)
 said on
October 9, 2008
This first lesson is very simple and easy to comprehend. Who would have thought that I would be able to say at least eight sentences in Mandarin from the first lesson?
 said on
October 11, 2008
quite like this lesson. looking forward to more like it.
 said on
November 21, 2008
under lessons, tone 1, vocab.. I can't get them to play audio. is it just me?
 said on
November 21, 2008
@cassattila - looks like a problem on our end. we'll get this fixed in the morning, Beijing-time. sorry for the inconvenience.... :(
 said on
November 21, 2008
Its okay, Im happy to be here, and there are many other resources working, Ill come back to this one tomorrow :)
 said on
July 6, 2014
Hi, thank you for the fun lessons. I am new to popupchinese. I have a problem in that the dialogue does not play all the way through. It stops and starts again. It keeps doing this but each time the dialogue gets shorter and shorter before it automatically stops and replays. Would you please help me out with this. Thank you. Lynne