I was guessing that must have been an old person because they made no attempt to stand up or get out of that situation . I ' m thinking STAND UP ! <| sep |> half a country <| sep |> I wish I could take credit for it , but it was an accidental pun . <| sep |> Its all about those iron sights ! <| sep |> What ' s pisses me off is society is now supposed to pretend that Amy Schumer and Lena Dunham are attractive , and if you dont agree , prepare to be bullied by the mob of people who are against bullying . <| sep |> Really solid idea ! <| sep |> So in your job you can sit there and pull no ' s out of the air ? <| sep |> Ideally you want to be able to hear when something sounds wrong coming out of your mouth , but it takes a long time to get to that point . A good understanding of Mandarin phonology would help , but I don ' t think you need to necessarily learn IPA as a whole . Go to the Mandarin phonology wikipedia page . Look up all the sounds , make sure you know what distinguishes them from English sounds or whatever other languages you speak and other Mandarin sounds that might sound similar . Never forsake listening . You have to be able to distinguish what sounds right when you hear it before you can produce the right sounds when you speak it . Intensive listening probably at sentence or paragraph length for the phonemes , tones , and phraselevel intonation . Extensive listening has less immediate and tangible effects , but don ' t underestimate how useful it is over a longer amount of time . Practicing producing the sounds is important , too , but it sounds like you ' re working on that already . Making the muscles move right is imo the easy part after you can reliably selfcorrect your pronunciation . Just keep up the practice and I ' m sure you ' ll be fine .