unsurprisingly, many people thought gr was too difficult to learn. nonetheless, it still has many supporters, and they would rather learn using gr than pinyin. while supporters of gr claim that it helps users of gr remember tones better than people who just use pinyin, studies have not supported this claim. as a matter of fact, one study showed that after one year, the subjects who learned chinese using pinyin could more accurately speak mandarin with tones than those who learned using gr.