Chris Foley has set himself a challenge to improve his tone pronunciation, and achieve a standard Mandarin accent in time for his Chinese wedding ceremony in one year. To reach his goals, he’s enlisted I’m Learning Mandarin founder, Mischa, as his language coach. Over the coming year, Chris will be documenting his progress over a series of monthly blogs with recordings. In this first post he tells his back story and sets out his goals.

After an ambitious start to my Mandarin learning journey last month, December brought with it a new set of challenges - and valuable lessons.

With the Christmas period in full swing, I found myself stepping away from my study routine for almost two weeks. At first, this break felt like a setback, and guilt crept in. How could I allow myself to fall behind with such an important goal?

It wasn’t until I spoke with Mischa, my language coach, that I realized the importance of realism in any long-term learning project. Taking a break during the holidays to focus on family and festivities wasn’t just inevitable, it was healthy.

This shift in mindset allowed me to return to my studies with renewed energy and a clearer perspective on how to manage my time effectively moving forward.

Refining My Approach

This month, I’ve continued to refine my sentence-mining process, focusing more on mining sentences from real-life interactions - conversations with my partner and her family, texts, and even overheard phrases.

This adjustment has made my learning feel more grounded in reality and, frankly, more engaging. By integrating phrases I encounter in my daily life, I’m learning vocabulary and sentence structures that are both practical and memorable.

Pronunciation Breakthrough

Another breakthrough this month has been in pronunciation, which has long been a weak point for me. As mentioned in last month’s blog post, Mischa has encouraged me to make this a priority, and I’m already starting to see results.

I’ve been focusing on practicing the tones of the Chinese language and paying closer attention to the subtle differences that can completely change the meaning of a word.

To demonstrate my progress, here is a small example of a voice note I sent Mischa telling him about my imminent plans to visit China (more on that later!). 

For the purposes of these voice notes, I am speaking slowly to try to ensure tone accuracy. Although my pronunciation is still far from perfect, it still highlights how much better I’ve become at tone accuracy and delivering sentences with greater confidence in just one month.

This effort has already started to pay off: my partner and her family in China have noticed my improvements.

Their positive feedback - specifically on my pronunciation - has been incredibly motivating, and it’s clear that getting the tones right isn’t just a technical necessity, it’s essential for being understood and building confidence.

A Balanced Perspective

Despite the progress, I’m realistic about where I stand. This wasn’t my most productive month, and I still have a long way to go. However, I’m learning to embrace the journey rather than obsess over perfection. Language learning isn’t linear; it’s about consistency and adapting as you go.

What excites me most about next month (month 3) is the challenge I’ve set for myself. I’ll be embarking on a two-week “No English” Mandarin immersion while staying with my partner’s family in China for the Spring Festival.

This will be my first time attempting to rely entirely on Mandarin for day-to-day communication. It’s going to be intense, but I can’t think of a better way to push my boundaries.

Stay tuned for next month’s post, where I’ll share how this immersion experience shapes my learning - and how it feels to finally put all this practice into real-world use.

Until then, I’ll keep refining, sentence-mining, and working toward the fluency I dream of!