Shadowing a novel (Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies) Language Learning Forum

Shadowing a novel
Tags: Activating a Language \| Shadowing \| Audiobook \| Vocabulary learning
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James29
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Message 25 of 46

09 March 2014 at 11:31am | IP Logged

That's great advice, luke. The narrator on albalearning is nice, slow and clear.

A GREAT slow/clear narrator is the voice actor Raul Amundaray (who does The da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons in Spanish). He sounds like he is cool. Who would not want to sound like that guy?

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tarvos
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Message 26 of 46

09 March 2014 at 11:54am | IP Logged

luke wrote:

One of the benefits I find from shadowing is that it helps me to focus on
the story.

That's just reading aloud the text after someone else read aloud the text, but I will
give you this.

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luke
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Message 27 of 46

09 March 2014 at 12:53pm | IP Logged

tarvos wrote:

luke wrote:

One of the benefits I find from shadowing is that it helps me to focus on
the story.

That's just reading aloud the text after someone else read aloud the text, but I will
give you this.

As I understand the Professor, he is says that one speaks as quickly as possible after the audio, rather than
in unison with it.

As far as "focus", I'm often listening while doing other things, such as driving. There is plenty of internal and
external stimuli in that environment that can distract from a story. Actually speaking along with the recording
is helpful for keeping those distractions at bay.
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Retinend
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Message 28 of 46

09 March 2014 at 10:22pm | IP Logged

Yes. Do it. I've been shadowing "Siddhartha" in its entirity and also I've been writing
it out in my scriptorium, and revisited the same text with many glossing techniques.
Shadowing at intermediate level forms a replacement for pre-intermediate tools and it's
a way of avoiding floundering with random cultural detritus after you've graduated from
the expressly learner-oriented tools. Shadowing Siddhartha in this way gave me about 300
hours of intensive, rewarding work which brought me from 500 hrs to about 800 today. For
me it made the difference between intermediate frustration and basic fluency. I don't see
why it will fail to get me towards a higher level if I continue to shadow.

It's difficult to find a book with L1 translation and with audio, but if you're good enough
to read without a translation, you can find foreign bestellers with their audiobook releases
and shadow without your L1. I have one detective novel lined up with corresponding audiobook
(something called "Böses Blut") when I'm satisfied with having reasonably internalized
Siddhartha, I'll start with that.

Shadowing works.

Edited by Retinend on 09 March 2014 at 10:40pm
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Sterogyl
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Message 29 of 46

15 October 2014 at 9:44am | IP Logged

Retinend wrote:

Hello,

I have a question. How did you shadow it? In one go (for example, chapter by chapter and one chapter every day) or did you do repetitions (like Arguelles does with Assimil)?
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Retinend
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Message 30 of 46

15 October 2014 at 1:24pm | IP Logged

Thanks for asking, Sterogyl! I did it chapter by chapter, repeating whatever chapter I was then writing in the scriptorium. But I now think that it
would be better to do the entire thing in cycles - from start to finish and then back to the start again - as originally recommended by Alexander
Arguelles. One specific reason is that I ended up repeating certain chapters more than others. Itunes tells me that I've listened to chapter one over
40 times in total, but the final chapter, only a dozen times. Also, if you cycle through the material (in opposition to dividing it into successive
chunks) you have both better long term outcomes and you space out the repetitions in a way that aids memory.

The reason I changed was partly because of reading this passage from "The Nature and Conditions of Learning" by H. L. Kingsley:

Quote:

Children often prefer the part method, and unpractised adults are often skeptical of the advantages of the whole method. With the whole method
much more time and work is required before any results of learning are manifest. One may read a long poem through a dozen times without being able to
recite a single line, while with the same amount of work by the part method the learner would probably be able to recite several stanzas. For this
reason a learner gets the feeling of success sooner with the part method. The recitation of parts become sub-goals, which provide a series of steps
towards the main goal, the ability to recite the whole. These intermediate goals and the satisfactions derived from reaching them no doubt favour the
part method, particularly with children and with adults unaccustomed to rote memory work. The whole method is likely to be discouraging because the
learner has to work so long before he can see any returns for his effort. He may feel that he is not making any progress or he is wasting his time with
this "new fangled method." This attitude operates against the success of the method. The experienced and informed learn knows that the readings in the
whole method are not a waste of time. He knows, as Ebbinghaus demonstrated, that every reading yields an increment of learning, which is spread over
the whole, and that if he continues, he will eventually find the whole selection rising above the threshold of recall. He knows that while he must work
longer before the results are manifest, the final returns fully justify his patience and endurance.

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Sterogyl
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Message 31 of 46

15 October 2014 at 4:21pm | IP Logged

Thank you for your answer, Retinend. So you would rather go through the audio book without any repetitions of single chunks/chapters or whatever, working through the entire audio book again after finishing it? And how many times would you repeat the whole process?

At the moment, I'm making an attempt to systematically shadow a novel, but I'm having a hard time to find a reasonable approach. I first shadowed one chapter at a time (about 20 minutes of audio each), working on a new chapter every day. It felt awkward to start a new chapter without repeating any the former chapters. I didn't feel I had mastered anything (I have to say that I had already read the book and knew the vocabulary - comprehension itself didn't pose any problems but I couldn't shadow/parrot it properly). I then switched to making 2 minutes chunks of each chapter which I am now shadowing Assimil style (10 chunks/day, adding a new chunk every day, thus repeating each chunk 10 times). This seems to be very thorough, maybe a bit extreme, and I'm afraid it'll take a long time to "shadow" my way through the complete book.
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Serpent
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Message 32 of 46

16 October 2014 at 1:06am | IP Logged

You can just do this with your favourite chapters or the ones with the most dialogue/descriptions/advanced vocabulary/whatever. (I still don't see any reason to shadow an entire novel)

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