the rating percentage after I record my voice

Hi. When I recorded my voice to speak a word or sentence in the past. A percentage rating appeared alongside it. E.G. 70, 100 etc. 

Now this doesn't appear to be happening for me. Is this function finished?

I have been bumbling around with Rocket Chinese for a few years. Stopping… starting… stopping again etc. But always when I tried my chinese out on a chinese speaker, it didn't work! I got discouraged! 

But recently I tried it again and it worked! Not great but they understood me. I am very happy about this!

Hi Barry451,

Our apologies for any confusion caused. The percentage rating for the voice recognition is only available on certain browsers. You can see this feature using either Google Chrome or Safari 12 and up. If you are using Edge, Firefox, an older version of Safari, or any other browsers you will not see this. Please feel free to email customer support on support@rocketlanguages.com if you are using Chrome/Safari and still cannot see it. 

And big congrats on the success of your recent “adventure”! You’ve taken on the hardest task in learning a language – conversing with a native.

Here’s a tip: sometimes, it’s easier to speak Chinese to a fellow learner than a native.

When a native has trouble understanding you, it could be due to tones most of the time – you might have stumbled on an incorrect tone for a character in a phrase, accidentally changing the meaning of the character, and hence rending the phrase to a non-existent one, or one that doesn’t make sense. This, however, isn’t much of an issue with a fellow student of the Chinese language, as they would not have as vast amount of vocabulary as a native, and when certain pinyins are said with certain others, they make up basic, unmistakable words to the ear of a non-native. Native speakers of tone-specific languages could have a lower tolerance to tonal mistakes not because they are picky or mean, but simply because they know sooooo many other possible combinations that could sound like the errored tone.

If that made any sense, we encourage you to keep practicing with whomever that understands Chinese – doesn’t necessarily have to be a native; in fact, for beginners, it could sometimes be easier to converse with each other! If, though, there are natives around you, do try it on them, and tell them upfront (if you’re okay with it) to feel free to correct your pronunciation/tone.

Hope this helps, and we wish you many more successes in learning this tricky but wonderful language!