Would it be possible to add IPA representations to the “listen and repeat” Pronunciation exercises? This Anglophone is new to Hanyu Pinyin [xân.ỳ pʰín.ín], so is constantly struggling with vowel-related issues like
(a) semivowels W and Y that appear in words like Yi {one), Wuhan (city), and even Pinyin, etc., but not in the pronunciation
(b) THREE different pronuciations for the letter A in 天安門 (Tiān’ānmén in Pīnyīn [tʰjɛ́n.án.mə̌n] ).
The Mandarin pronunciation, less tone marks, is [tʰjɛ́n.ánmə̌n]. Note how so-called “finals” with I (or Y) plus A plus N (or NG) in the Pīnyīn all pronounce the letter ‘a’ as ɛ. Hardly a good start for writing Mandarin with ABCs! FWIW, this trickery was necessary because the letter E got co-opted for the middle vowel in words like ‘e’ (hunger/hungry), ‘he’ (drink), ‘men’ (gate), ‘men’ (plural marker converting pronouns TV I to we/us, you singular to you plural, he/she/it to they/them), and Huang He (Yellow River). IPA variously transcribes this vowel as ʌ (in English but) or the schwa (ə). Score so far: two fouls for the five English vowel letters. And It gets worse. The letter U has to do double duty for ‘u’ (in English boot) and ‘ü’ (in French debut and German über).
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The list goes on because Pinyin, as the official romanization scheme of the PRC comes with a lot of baggage that leaves us Anglophone scraching out heads.
Note that these IPA repesentations need not appear the first time. After all, one aim of your course is teaching the multitude quirks of Pinyin, a shamelessy rough “guide” to the actual Mandarin pronunciation. I therefore suggest hiding them until the student fails the first time.