If you have doubts about your pronunciation, then take pronunciation lessons. Pronunciation is a speciality, so look for a teacher with training in linguistics. In general, speakers of European languages such as Portuguese, Spanish, French, and German have an advantage. The sound systems of these languages have many similarities to the English sound system. Speakers of other languages often have problems being understood. If they were lucky, their English classes included conversation practice with a native-speaker teacher. If they were very lucky, their English classes included pronunciation practice with a qualified teacher who understood phonetics.

1) Try setting a cell phone or computer for "dictation" or "voice commands" and see whether a computer can understand your spoken speech. 2) This website and/or app is just _excellent_ for learning the sounds of English: http://soundsofspeech.uiowa.edu/index.html#english 3) When anybody speaks a foreign language, the natural tendency is to hear it with your native years and think you are hearing the phonemes of your native language. Instead of hearing the real sound, you think you've heard the a similar sound in your own language. Instead of making the real sound a native speaker makes, you make the closest sound you have in your native language. In some cases, it is _very_ hard for a speaker to hear the differences between phonemes in a foreign language. Some mistakes are more of a problem than others. Some mistakes just result in "a charming accent." Others mean that your listener actually hears a different word from the one you meant to say. You just have to get a language companion, or hire a teacher, who is willing to point out the worst issues to you. Very often there are just a small number of bad problems, and if you can correct them, you will improve the ability of others to understand you. They are often hard to correct because you often cannot hear the difference at first, so the first step is ear training. I personally am not helped much by diagrams or descriptions of tongue and jaw positions, but some people are. I don't know much about Chinese or phonology, but some Chinese speakers famously have difficulty hearing and reproducing the difference between the English sounds of "R" and "L." English speakers actually get the impression that they reverse them. They do not. Instead they use the same in-between sound for all of them. This causes huge problems in understanding words like "world" and "girl."

Hi Joy Lin, I always teach my students the Internacional Phonetic Alphabet. That's a terrific tool for improving your pronunciation in English. When you learn it, then you can check the pronunciation out in any good dictionary. Good dictionaries have both the British and the American pronunciation. I could help you with that. In case you already have a teacher, ask him/her to teach it to you!

Hi Joy Lin! In my experience I would say there is not an especific way to know if you are misspronouncing a word. The best way to learn it is to make mistakes. Take advantage of the reaction of the people your a talking too and if you are not sure that you are saying something corretly you can ask the person to please correct you. Sometimes you may feel embarrased for making mistakes in front of native english speakers, however, I think that is the best way you can learn. You will notice in the moment the mistake your are making and also you would not forget it. Also, I recomend you to search for the words you may think you will use in advance and practice the pronunciation everyday. This would help you to know your words before putting them to practice. I hope this help you. Good luck and take care.