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Speaking practice by using recordings | ||
Tags: Voice Recordings | Speaking | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Dorkus Newbie United States Joined 5334 days ago 7 posts - 9 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Swedish | Message 1 of 15 02 November 2011 at 10:56pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I have been listening and reading to German, Swedish and Spanish for quite a while now. I would like to start practicing my pronunciation. I am planning to record myself repeating phrases from my training materials. My question is how much time should I start off with each day especially since I am a beginner. I want to do this for a bit before attempting to speak to a human. I am not at the conversational level yet. Thanks! Edited by Fasulye on 08 November 2011 at 9:58am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tibbles Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5126 days ago 245 posts - 422 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Korean | Message 2 of 15 03 November 2011 at 7:07am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Start soon. Listening and speaking are very different skills. Also, without speaking to a human, you won't get feedback and corrections on your pronunciation. Good luck on learning how to pronounce the number 7 in Swedish without a Swede to help you. :)
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| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5197 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 3 of 15 03 November 2011 at 3:49pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Obviously, the best way to practice speaking is to speak. I get corrected all the time in Portuguese, that's what helps me to learn. If you can say basic greetings, count, say "my name is ----, what's yours?" you can communicate- if that's your goal.
There are plenty of resources on the web available for language exchanges, even if you're a beginner. What will I talk about when my language level is so basic? Seek and ye shall find. People are your best source of critique on pronunciation. If you are having trepidation about speaking to people, then try recording samples into mp3 and uploading them to a cyberlocker. Once uploaded, ask the forum members if they will critique you. This isn't as good as actually speaking to people but can provide you some feedback. To echo what @tibbles has said, speaking and listening are both very important- especially if you want to actually speak the language. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Dorkus Newbie United States Joined 5334 days ago 7 posts - 9 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Swedish | Message 4 of 15 04 November 2011 at 4:37pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Thanks for the responses! For the time being I just want to compare my recording to the original before I start talking to a live person. I want to save them the agony of me struggling with basic pronunciation and slowness. Is there a certain amount of hours before one becomes somewhat fluid in speaking? Or is that a person by person basis? How many have you practiced by yourself before going one to one? How long did you practice each day?
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| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5316 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 5 of 15 04 November 2011 at 7:19pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I don't remember anyone on this forum ever mentioning that they have learned a great deal from recording themselves. This kind of exercise is often suggested, but I'm not sure it's that efficient. The problem is that we are not usually very good at copying exactly what we hear, and we aren't very good either at deciding which parts need to be identical, and which allow for some leeway and how much.
This is very altruistic of you. Are you sure it's not more about not embarrassing yourself? It doesn't much matter how much your pronunciation makes your partner struggle if the goal is for you to improve. And in order to improve, you will need to accept that you will fail, sometimes just a bit, sometimes miserably, but you will fail and you will learn from it. Do not put off failing, or you will be putting off learning.
It depends immensely from person to person, based on a wide variety of factors ranging from personal ability or interest to the amount of time available each and the quality of the study time. I personally spend quite a bit of time doing self-talk, right from the start. Speaking is -- and usually by a fair margin -- my strongest skill. Here is a self-talk exercise I suggested a while back. Edited by Arekkusu on 04 November 2011 at 7:20pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5782 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 15 07 November 2011 at 7:39am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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MY EXPERIENCE WITH VOICE RECORDINGS
I have been using voice recordings to train my pronounciation of Danish. To make these voice recordings I use a memo recorder. With my MP3 - player I listen to a dialogue or two and then I read it aloud speaking on my memorecorder. I usually make 2-3 recordings of the same dialogue or text. Afterwards I listen to my recordings carefully while reading dialogue or text to control my achievement. When you do this regularly with a new language on the beginner level you will make rapid progress with your pronounciation. My target language Danish has a very diffcult pronounciation, so for me this method was and is a great help! Fasulye Edited by Fasulye on 07 November 2011 at 7:40am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| microsnout TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Canada microsnout.wordpress Joined 5406 days ago 277 posts - 553 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 7 of 15 07 November 2011 at 2:03pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I have been using voice recordings to try to increase my rate of speech to match native francophone rates. I have
noticed that even fluently bilingual anglophones tend to speak a bit slower than native speakers which does make them easier to understand but does not sound natural. When I record a sample of maybe 8 to 20 seconds and compare to the original it is usually a few seconds longer, so I try a couple more times until I match the time. At this point I notice that my recording sounds a bit rushed whereas the original speaker sounds relaxed in the same time, so with a couple more tries I can usually fix this and achieve a good recording matching the time and sounding natural. This also helps to identify some spoken language "shortcuts" like contractions and missing words. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5316 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 8 of 15 07 November 2011 at 5:15pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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It's great to see Fasulye and microsnout chime in about their experience with recordings. I'd never heard anyone say that.
Of course, I've considered using recordings, but I always felt it was a bit of a waste of time, and that any potential benefit could be obtained otherwise anyway. Basically, I (naively and arrogantly) believe that I can tell what I'm doing wrong without having to record myself. My experience tells that it's probably not always true, but that it usually is. If I can't notice what I'm doing wrong, I'm not sure listening to myself will make it any more obvious. If I'm going to record myself, I'm probably going to practice a few times, but this exercise in itself will make you sound better as you improve your oral planning skills. As for speed, I can also just repeat something over and over until it gets faster, and it inevitably will. Do you guys feel that you couldn't have made these improvements without recordings? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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