1. The five basic tones of English all have quite clear simple (though not precise) meanings along with pitch values (eg a "movement from high to low" etc) that are easily recognised and memorised.

 2. Don’t be discouraged if, listening to people talk and trying to identify the tones they use, you find it baffling. Ordinary speech is naturally very often not at all precise so it should be no surprise that its tones are the same, ie reflecting imprecise attitudes and emotions etc.

3. A tone may be defined as the pitch feature of a syllable which stands out.  Its typical function is to accent (stress) a word. It’s inconvenient to use phrasal definitions (eg "a fall from a high to a low pitch") so we give each tone a monosyllabic name. Syllables which dont stand out are described as 'toneless'. For example in The 'cat 'sat on the `mat the word on and both occurrences of the word the do not stand out so they they may be described as 'toneless'; the other three words do stand out, as regards their pitches, so they may be described as 'tonal' or alternatively 'tone-bearing'.

4. The Alt, sign / 'm /, ( /m/ standing for any syllable), is a high level tone, the only basic one which has no movement either up or down. A speaker who starts speaking with a sustained Alt could be beginning to sing. Any isolated word spoken on an Alt (in non-remote speech) usually suggests the incompleteness of a speaker breaking off though wishing to continue. Alts almost never end complete sentences of conversational speech or of reading aloud as opposed to calling out (remote speech) or singing.  The word is pronounced /ælt/. 

5. Alts often occur in sequences (twos or threes etc) with the later ones stepping lower than the preceding ones. A pair of Alts may well remind you of the warning sound from an ambulance or fire engine. Pairs of Alts, with the first one high and the second one lower, are used for calls like Yoo-Hoo and Coo-ee. A sequence of three downstepping Alts is what you hear if someone begins to sing Three Blind Mice.

6. The Climb / ´m / begins in the middle of the voice range and moves up towards the top of a speaker’s vocal range. On an isolated word it has an unmistakeable interrogative ie questioning effect; within sentences it usually combines marked liveliness with a suggestion of incompleteness. A speaker of probably any language may request repetition by using a Climb on a sound that isn’t a true word eg [´m]. The Climb is the least used tone.

7. The Fall / `m / is the most frequent tone. It goes from the upper voice range down to the bottom range. It may sometimes move so quickly that you can only realise afterwards that you heard it by noticing the next word is low. Its meaning is finality with liveliness.

8. The Rise /ˏm / is the only basic tone that begins low. It moves up to the middle of the speaker’s vocal range. It’s neutral in terms of liveliness but usually positively suggests continuation whether of its sentence or of the conversation. English-speakers may use successive Rises for fairly slow careful counting: eg ˏone, ˏtwo, ˏthree and so on.

 9. The Slump / ˎm / shares with the Fall its bottom-pitch-range ending and its semantic character of finality but without the liveliness of the Fall. It begins in the middle of the speaker’s voice range. It tends to be too lifeless-sounding to be the only tone of most sentences. It often occurs after Alts. Their high pitch prevents any uninterested, dull or gloomy effect.

10. Combinations of two or three tones may occur on single words (something unusual in other languages). The only one of these it’s really worth EFL users trying to adopt is the Fall-Rise / `ˏm /. Other “complex” tones include the Slump-Rise /ˎˏm/, the Climb-Fall / ˊˋm / and the Climb-Fall-Rise / ˊˋˏm/. These are much favoured by some English-speakers but by others not very much used. The EFL speaker needn’t bother to adopt them.

11. To recognise a tone, it’s valuable to consider what semantic effect (broken off, suggesting continuation or final) it has when heard (on its word) uttered in complete isolation.

12. When adding tone marks to text, from time to time the tone units (aka 'intonation phrases') may not be adequately conveyed by ordinary punctuation. If so, it's convenient to signal unit boundaries by inserting after each of them a vertical bar ie "|".