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Shadowing - what went wrong here? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery |  | |
| edwin Triglot Senior Member Canada towerofconfusi&Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6465 days ago 160 posts - 183 votes  9 sounds Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French, Spanish, Portuguese | Message 1 of 5 14 April 2008 at 4:14pm | IP Logged |
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Hi,
I ran into a post from another language forum. A person was teaching English to some Japanese students. He plays recordings of native speakers and asks the students repeat them again and again. (A kind of shadowing?) The teacher did not give more details, so I assume this is the only method he uses. He posted a recording of one of his students and asked for comments on her pronunciation. I listened to the recording and was surprised that in the first half minute or so, I could not figure out that she was indeed speaking English! In fact, I could pick up less than 10% of what she was saying in my first listening. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jm9Fvfry8Q I wonder what went wrong in this case. My own conclusion was that she was probably working on something not quite suitable at her level. She should pick materials with slower speed and contain simpler vocabulary. She should also put more focus on her pronunciation. I asked the 'teacher' to provide more details about his teaching method, but I haven't received any reply yet. Any comment? Thanks. Edited by edwin on 14 April 2008 at 4:15pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| bushwick Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6245 days ago 407 posts - 443 votes Speaks: German, Croatian*, English, Dutch Studies: French, Japanese | Message 2 of 5 14 April 2008 at 4:53pm | IP Logged |
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i can, basically, discern nothing from what that girl is saying.
strange, as her introduction is quite clear. maybe, she's reading the English text written in katakan. which would be incredibly weird and useless, but i'm still somewhat baffled between the clarity of her introduction and her reading. Edited by bushwick on 14 April 2008 at 4:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Budz Octoglot Senior Member Australia languagepump.com Joined 6374 days ago 118 posts - 171 votes Speaks: German*, English, Russian, Esperanto, Ukrainian, Mandarin, Cantonese, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Korean, Portuguese, Bulgarian, Persian, Hungarian, Kazakh, Swahili, Vietnamese, Polish | Message 3 of 5 14 April 2008 at 5:13pm | IP Logged |
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Well, occasionally what she says is quite clear. I suspect that there's some sound combination that she's completely messing up. Words without that sound are ok, the one's that have this are not that word at all. If she spoke slowly I suspect it would be possible to work out what's going on with her pronunciation. Maybe this is an indication that one should learn the pronounce words clearly first before one speeds up. In fact I often get annoyed when learners straight away think they need to use combinations such as 'gunna' for 'going to'... That sort of think might be going on here.
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| K.C. Groupie United States ksclay.net Joined 7053 days ago 42 posts - 46 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 4 of 5 15 April 2008 at 1:33pm | IP Logged |
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I wonder how many times the students were given to listen to the recordings before being asked to repeat. Especially when languages are very different (such as English and Japanese) I think it's hard for speakers of one to even hear certain sounds in the other without a lot of practice. Maybe that's what's happening here. Maybe she's making approximations of the sounds by matching the English sounds to their closest Japanese approximations or ignoring sounds that she doesn't assign meaning to because they're not part of her native language of Japanese. I think people do this subconsciously a lot until they've had enough exposure to the target language. I just think about how a lot of people I know (native English speaking Americans) mispronounce Spanish constantly because they don't pay attention to the differences and just pronounce it with an approximation using the sounds they're used to in English.
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| Budz Octoglot Senior Member Australia languagepump.com Joined 6374 days ago 118 posts - 171 votes Speaks: German*, English, Russian, Esperanto, Ukrainian, Mandarin, Cantonese, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Korean, Portuguese, Bulgarian, Persian, Hungarian, Kazakh, Swahili, Vietnamese, Polish | Message 5 of 5 15 April 2008 at 4:15pm | IP Logged |
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Good point. We're astounded when this happens from foreigners speaking English - but think it's fair enough when English speakers completely mispronounce Spanish etc.
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