Naturally, many people had replied to my Chinese attempts in English since 1) I had only 8 months of Chinese at the time so people who had studied English in school often had superior English communication skills and 2) They probably wanted a chance to speak English, and maybe felt it would be more friendly. Ethan raised a great point though. I’m there to learn, why be a tourist? (I read that article too, haha)

In truth, one of my teachers at my American university ran a sink or swim class, and I swam, but she had such a disappointed disposition every time anyone made a mistake. I think this was overdone, and by making mistakes in Taiwan and afterwards (For example, I told the mayor of Kunshan: 我学了两个半年的中文了 last year and the smile that broke out told me I had made a mistake) I learn so much more. I managed to skip two semesters of Chinese because of my 2 months of study in Taiwan as I studied and applied what I learned in real life, and still felt I spoke much better than previously same-level classmates who had done intensive study in a class in Beijing for that summer. I think comfort zone should be among the first things to eliminate in language learning.

I (personally) had two reasons to care about pronunciation: First, it’s the most skill-like part of learning a language and thus involves more habit-like processes than anything else. This means that it’s harder to change bad pronunciation later. Second, I think pronunciation is interesting. My research is in acquisition of second language phonology and pronunciation, which reflects the same interest. This interest isn’t limited to Chinese, though.

I’m quite curious what your reasons may have been for striving to perfect your pronunciation from the very beginning.