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Shadowing: yay or nay? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| ChristopherB Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 6319 days ago 851 posts - 1074 votes  2 sounds Speaks: English*, German, French | Message 1 of 67 29 June 2008 at 4:09am | IP Logged | ||
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I notice various people on this forum who have acquired an impressive number of languages have differing opinions on shadowing as a study method. Zhuangzi, for instance, prefers just to listen. Iversen has said he prefers to keep listening and speaking separate. On the other hand, Professor Arguelles uses shadowing as a core element in his study regiment.
What are your views on this? Do you have another means of practicing other than shadowing? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6088 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 2 of 67 29 June 2008 at 4:16am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi, Fränzi
I just cast a big "yay". Folks can read about my ongoing efforts in my one post in the Lessons in Polyglottery thread so I won't waste time repeating myself here. Interesting poll! Edited by Sunja on 29 June 2008 at 4:17am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| J-Learner Senior Member Australia Joined 6033 days ago 556 posts - 636 votes Studies: Yiddish, English* Studies: Dutch | Message 3 of 67 29 June 2008 at 4:27am | IP Logged | ||
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Actually I don't really understand how to do it yet. So I can't add my own vote. I say 'yay' for any method that works for me. Until I try them and give them a honest fair go I cannot decide.The method does interest me. I see a lot of discussion of whether the method works or not but I don't exactly know WHAT the method is.
I just wish I could be given some step by step instructions with perhaps some concrete examples.If anyone would like to inform me with enough depth but succinctly enough so as to not put me to sleep with details then please pvt message me with some hint. Many thanks in advance. Shalom, Yehoshua. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6442 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 5 of 67 29 June 2008 at 5:50am | IP Logged | ||
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I simply cannot give shadowing a yay or a nay. It is a method with huge advantages, and significant caveats.
Shadowing Assimil from an early stage allows something approaching broken conversational ability within a few months with a relatively small time investment per day. Structures become deeply internalized and automatic. It's possible to profitably study a number of languages in parallel this way. I have not come across anything else rivaling the sheer convenience of studying this way. Pronunciation is a trickier business. Shadowing from an early stage is much better than having no audio sources for the language, or the ridiculous "a b is like the b in 'book', and 'ch' is like in the Scottish 'loch'" descriptions resorted to by so many sources. If the target language is 'easy' phonetically, or one has access to a slightly patient native speaker, one can acquire a 'passable' accent this way; if not, there is a real risk of being incomprehensible, as shown in the youtube video of the Japanese girl shadowing English. By 'passable', I mean easily comprehensible, but also obviously foreign. My personal experience is with last summer's Total Annihilation Challenge. I shadowed 6 languages, and made significant progress in 5. I learned to pronounce the 6th, Persian, recognizably, but learned fairly little of it. It helps that it is a phonetically 'easy' language; only 'kh' is particularly tricky, and a native speaker sorted that out for me in two 5 minute sessions a few days apart. I happened to be lucky enough to be going to a university with a significant Persian minority at the time. On the other side, to acquire truly good pronunciation, I am yet to see a convincing alternative to extensive listening. For one-off repeating of phrases, a good phonetic knowledge and hard work on other languages seems to sometimes allow really good results, but for extemporaneous speaking, I haven't seen anything of the sort. The foreign language I pronounce best is, without doubt, German. I credit this to the hundreds of hours I've listened to Deutsch Welle, often in the background while paying little attention. I find that listening with a lack of attention does not lead to significant gains in vocabulary, structure, etc, but it does help phonetically. Acquiring 'tolerable' (somewhat more than the mere minimum for comprehensibility) pronunciation in a couple of languages also helps greatly. Dutch speakers who I've convinced to help me pronounce Dutch have been able to tell almost immediately that I've learned a bit of several languages from my attempts to imitate their pronunciation. A study of phonetics also helps. A voiced 'x' is rather easy with the theoretical background and perhaps a little practice, or so I find; trying to imitate it blindly by sound wouldn't be, at least for me. Why does early pronunciation matter? Simply put, it's much, much harder to correct than to get it right in the first place. I have currently banished Professor-Arguelles-style shadowing from my language learning as an experiment. It was extremely helpful to me, and for certain goals (such as a command of the written language, primarily for reading literature) with a very limited amount of time per language per day, I cannot conceive of anything similarly effective. Nonetheless, the effect on accent has lead me to seek out other methods, with the aim of systematically comparing what happens. If I find myself faring equally badly, that will still be valuable to know. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| J-Learner Senior Member Australia Joined 6033 days ago 556 posts - 636 votes Studies: Yiddish, English* Studies: Dutch | Message 6 of 67 29 June 2008 at 8:49am | IP Logged | ||
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I pick up pronunciation from listening and trying. True what you say about it being hard to correct bad pronunciation. I find I can learn to pronounce any language in a matter of days anyway. So that part of shadowing is not relevent to me. And I believe the structures can be learn by parroting if really need be.
I think that I prefer my method over what I have seen of shadowing. That is: 1.edit an audio source that has words and sentences only in the target language. (ie...Pimsleur, Assimil) 2.listen and repeat everything. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6442 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 7 of 67 29 June 2008 at 10:12am | IP Logged | ||
That's how I've shadowed - primarily with Assimil, and editing to reduce gaps. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| qklilx Moderator United States Joined 6189 days ago 459 posts - 477 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Korean Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 67 29 June 2008 at 1:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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If conversation with a native is available, wouldn't it take precedence over shadowing in pretty much every way?
I have never shadowed so I cannot comment on its effectiveness. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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