The few years that I had Pimsleur and Chinesepod on my 1 hour commute to work made a huge difference in my ability to speak Chinese. Just yesterday, a Chinese person said my pronunciation wasn't bad. I have the commute to thank for that, plus I did...
yeah, that's a bit of my frustration with cpod also. Even though its has great online tools, pdfs and mp3s, it acts like a university course from 50 years ago.
I agree with ouyangjun116. It seems if my tones are wrong, people often can't understand or misunderstand.
For me, I've basically gone back to Newbie to learn my tones properly- I'm Intermediate now, but not having learned basic tones for things like 习惯 or 喜...
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