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 9 of 15 08 November 2011 at 9:43am | IP Logged |
Arekkusu wrote:
It's great to see Fasulye and microsnout chime in about their experience with recordings. I'd never heard anyone say that.
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. |
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I do it that way that I first listen to the native speaker on the CD (MP3 - player)and then I record myself 2 or 3 times. After each time I check the recording with the original text, so I can monitor how my pronounciation makes progress. If you make mistakes with your pronounciation on the recordings it doesn't matter because you yourself will be the only person who ever listens to these recordings. So it's just a training medium, nothing to broadcast to other people.
Fasulye
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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 10 of 15 08 November 2011 at 9:51am | IP Logged |
Arekkusu wrote:
Do you guys feel that you couldn't have made these improvements without recordings? |
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I would say it depends very much on the language. If you learn a language with an easy and regular pronoucitation like Esperanto, or Turkish it's not necessary.
But there are other languages like English or Danish which have no strict pronouciation rules so you have to practice your pronounciation a lot, there such recordings are very effectful.
It will also be of great help when you have the personal ambition to aquire a near-native accent and may-be no personal contact to native speakers.
I didn't do such recordings with my other foreign languages, simply because I didn't have such a memo recorder before. But also with my other languages I did a kind of shadowing.
Fasulye
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garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5142 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish
| Message 11 of 15 08 November 2011 at 2:25pm | IP Logged |
I've definitely found it useful for French, I record myself speaking along to Assimil lessons for example and listen back to compare myself to the speaker in terms of pronunciation, rhythm, and intonation. Definitely much more useful than shadowing without recording in my experience, at least once you already have a decent knowledge of the sound system and so can understand what the differences are between how you're saying it and how they're saying it. Good to hear other people have found it useful too.
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microsnout TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Canada microsnout.wordpress Joined 5406 days ago 277 posts - 553 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French
| Message 12 of 15 08 November 2011 at 4:54pm | IP Logged |
Arekkusu wrote:
Do you guys feel that you couldn't have made these improvements without recordings? |
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It is possible that I could have but there is really very little cost to it. I already use my laptop as the source of all the material to emulate so it is very simple to start up Audacity and make a recording.
Also, I am not a good judge of time. Starting with an original audio track of 10 sec, I think I am saying it the same way but when I make a recording I see it is 12.5 sec! That is 25% longer but I never realized it. At first I was surprised how difficult it was to match the original time and it sometimes felt like a tongue twister so I assume that I was just not used to reproducing the sounds in that sequence and rate.
As for pronunciation, I know I can't tell on my own if it is perfect but I can certainly distinguish between decent and terrible pronunciation.
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montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4763 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh
| Message 13 of 15 09 November 2011 at 7:43pm | IP Logged |
@OP:
I can't give you any guidance in terms of number of hours, but as an activity, I can't
see it doing any harm, and it may do a lot of good. (Once you get over the sound of your
own voice! This can be hard, even in your own language! :-) ).
Audacity, which has already been mentioned, is a great free tool, and ideal for this kind
of thing, especially if you already have some audio learning material on your computer.
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microsnout TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Canada microsnout.wordpress Joined 5406 days ago 277 posts - 553 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French
| Message 14 of 15 09 November 2011 at 8:08pm | IP Logged |
montmorency wrote:
(Once you get over the sound of your
own voice! This can be hard, even in your own language! :-) |
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mets-en !!
It does take some getting used to. I keep thinking, is that the voice my friends have been hearing all these years!
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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 15 of 15 09 November 2011 at 8:15pm | IP Logged |
microsnout wrote:
montmorency wrote:
(Once you get over the sound of your
own voice! This can be hard, even in your own language! :-) |
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mets-en !!
It does take some getting used to. I keep thinking, is that the voice my friends have been hearing all these years! |
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Strangely though, we never think other people's voices are weird, we just accept them. It's kind of like hats -- sometimes we think we look stupid with a hat on, but I've never seen anyone with a decent hat on that made me think they looked weird.
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