[geomark]

I found it immensely useful to speak English with my Thai tutor in the beginning when I was trying to get the pronunciation correct and train my ear to hear tones. When I listened to four different words that sounded the same to me but actually have different tones and meanings it would been totally baffling if my tutor did not point out the (to me) subtle tonal differences. I doubt I would have made much progress otherwise. After that, of course, force yourself to stay in the target language and not fall back to your native language.