Teaching Mandarin Tone Listening with a Pitch-Line Display: Materials and Classroom Reflections

Mandarin lexical tones are difficult for beginners from non-tonal language backgrounds because learners do not automatically treat pitch movement as a stable cue for word meaning.In Arabicspeaking classrooms, the key risk may surface in question framing (here, Mandarin ma yes/no questions).Interrogative prosody may increase cue competition for lexical pitch cues, so this is treated as a classroom stress test rather than a clean sentence-final rise manipulation.This teaching-focused article presents a classroom routine that uses a simple pitch-line display (a Praatbased pitch-contour display; hereafter, pitch-line display) to guide learners' attention to contour shape and turning points.The visual support is based on Praat-derived F0 contours, with light display-level enhancement for readability (e.g., smoothing, redrawing, and adding labels and directional arrows).It functions as an instructional scaffold rather than automated feedback or an analytic tool.The article provides (a) design principles for building instructionally usable contour visuals, (b) a brief teacher-led micro-teaching script that links gesture and contour cues, and (c) a task progression that moves from isolated syllables to statement and yes/no question sentences.The final section offers practical reflections on common confusions, especially those involving rising cues in questions, and describes teacher moves that help learners re-focus on lexical tone cues.The goal is to offer classroom-ready materials that can be implemented within normal teaching time.