In late 2013 I set myself a challenge of getting conversational in Mandarin Chinese in one year. One of the biggest barriers to me reaching this goal was the pronunciation of the language, as it has many foreign sounds to a native English speaker.

Throughout my journey I came across a whole host of incredible resources, from the website Hacking Chinese to the Glossika approach, that really helped me to overcome this challenge. Over summer I sat down with my brother (who is now also learning Mandarin) to try to give him a bit of a crash course on what I had garnered from these resources. Please find a video of that lesson below with the associated document and links embedded below that. I hope that Mandarin learners of all stages find this a helpful article.

An additional tip that I didn't mention in the video is the benefit of recording yourself and playing it back to check how you're tracking with your pronunciation. I can't recommend this approach highly enough. Good luck!