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Difficulties with shadowing | ||
Tags: Shadowing | Alexander Arguelles | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery |  | |
| vista Tetraglot Groupie United States Joined 6396 days ago 38 posts - 40 votes Speaks: English*, Portuguese, Spanish, French Studies: Modern Hebrew, Arabic (Written), Mandarin, Basque | Message 9 of 19 29 October 2007 at 6:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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This is relatively minor, and I am sorry if it has already been addressed somewhere. Shadowing in its early stages requires audio tape editing. How exactly should I go about it? It didn't seem obvious to me how I should do so I decided to ask so I didn't try and mess up the tapes. Thanks.
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| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6440 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 10 of 19 29 October 2007 at 10:44pm | IP Logged | ||
What I personally do is get a digital copy on my computer (much easier from CDs, but possible with tapes), and then edit with a program called 'audacity'. It's easy to work on a copy of the tapes, which gives a few layers of protection against messing up: you still have the original media, perhaps a backup copy on your computer, and then another copy that you're editing - and then, if you make a mistake and realize it, you can also choose not to save. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6910 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 11 of 19 30 October 2007 at 4:32am | IP Logged | ||
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Editing tapes is recemmendable if there are a lot of long pauses, or English audio ("Now, do you remember how to say 'Good morning'?"). If not, you could shadow straight away.
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| Darobat Diglot Senior Member Joined 7189 days ago 754 posts - 770 votes Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: Latin | Message 12 of 19 30 October 2007 at 10:09am | IP Logged | ||
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This is just a general question about shadowing. How is one supposed to shadow something without simultaneously reading an accompanying text without memorizing the audio? ProfArguelles has explicitly pointed out that shadowing is not an exercise in memory, but the concept of blind shadowing seems to be just that. How can you shadow an audio recording unless you're either reading along or memorizing the audio? Is it just the lessons you don't read, but you still listen along with the transcript?
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| jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6910 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 13 of 19 30 October 2007 at 11:55am | IP Logged | ||
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Whether I'm familiar with the material or not, the way I shadow is simply to listen along and speak as simultaneously as possible (just as I learn tunes by listening and playing along at the same time). It is easier if I have read the text before, e.g. an Assimil lesson or an articl, or if the speed of the dialogue is not too fast. It is not the end of the world if I miss a few words here or there.
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| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6676 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 14 of 19 30 October 2007 at 1:06pm | IP Logged | ||
I am doing the same when I commute by car to my work. I listen several times and every time I shadow better. Maybe it's not optimum, but it works for me. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| apparition Octoglot Senior Member United States Joined 6651 days ago 600 posts - 667 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), French, Arabic (Iraqi), Portuguese, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Pashto | Message 15 of 19 30 October 2007 at 8:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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Maybe it's more like you internalize the sounds of the language subconsciously as you shadow the audio. You aren't concerned so much with attaching meaning to the words (in contrast to Siomotteikiru's Listening-Reading system) as you are with developing an authentic accent and 'feel' for the language.
If you're going to be repeating 15 minutes of audio 8 times a day (as suggested by the good professor above), without worrying about the meaning, then what you have left seems to be purely the sounds wafting through your mind and seeping in and taking root so the language becomes second nature. Edited by ProfArguelles on 05 November 2007 at 4:03am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7257 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 16 of 19 04 November 2007 at 7:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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Ms. Evdokimova, this is indeed a much more interesting problem if your perception of these two Iberian sisters is colored by your previous acquaintance of this Uralic Northerner. I do not think it is dangerous, however, and, if sustained, you could indeed even turn it to your eventual advantage by creating an utterly idiosyncratic and therefore usefully memorable chain of associations. If it bothers you, on the other hand, you have two options: 1) stop singing Spanish and Portuguese songs, or – preferably – 2) start learning Spanish and Portuguese.
Back to the subject of shadowing in general: I have come to realize that, while seemingly simple in theory, the practice of shadowing is actually quite complex, and it is fairly difficult to develop good abilities in this learning skill. When I try to help real-live college students learn how to shadow, it generally takes many weeks of practice and a fair amount of both external prompting from me and, more importantly, internal self-correction in order to master the technique. I will continue to attempt to explain the theory and even the steps or stages of the practice in words here, but it seems as if the basic principles need to be almost physically demonstrated and drilled in order to be grasped. On editing audio materials: You need to do this to remove teaching language explanations, pauses and gaps, bells and music, and the like in order to obtain a sample of the target language being spoken constantly at a continuously increasing conversational pace—about two hours is a good size sample to begin digesting. I believe there are now programs of editing digital files that can do this for you almost automatically. Still, I would recommend doing this manually by listening through the material in its entirety several times before you delete these elements, penciling in the text margins how many seconds you need to pause, and where, when you make an edited copy. This will both give you a good overview of the entire guide before you learn it and also provide you with an opportunity to do some initial close silent listening while focusing on the detail of measuring time accurately, which is in itself a good skills development exercise. On blind shadowing: 1) When beginning the study of a new language: of course you are not to consciously memorize the audio of sounds whose connections and connotations you cannot conceive. You are, however, through regular repetition, to become instinctively familiar with their patterns and thus focus your initial learning energies solely upon internalizing the sounds and the intonation of the language. In school teaching of Chinese to foreigners, I believe it is common to spend months on phonetics alone. I do not think it is generally necessary to do this for so long, but it is indubitably conducive to eventual overall mastery to get a solid foundation here before moving on to comprehension. 2) When continuing the study of languages: your initial encounter with any new material to be eventually internalized should be without the text, but of course as you advance, you will understand more and more of the text save the new vocabulary for the lesson, and this preliminary audio presentation is of great assistance in comprehending a greater portion of the text upon first reading. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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