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How many times to shadow with Assimil?

 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies Post Reply
Texas Badlands
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Joined 3068 days ago

5 posts - 5 votes

 
 Message 1 of 5
08 December 2015 at 5:05am | IP Logged 
Howdy,

How many times are you all shadowing each Assimil lesson? Using Truncate Silence in Audacity, each lesson in my
latest Spanish With Ease course is about a minute long.

Also, my Assimil set came with a CD with each sentence of each lesson as it's own MP3. Is it worth using these for
shadowing? I'd have to use Truncate Silence on them as well due to too much silence on each, which might be a
pain.
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jeff_lindqvist
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4250 posts - 5710 votes 
Speaks: Swedish*, English
Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French
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 Message 2 of 5
08 December 2015 at 10:03am | IP Logged 
You can custom the method any way you want. I mostly shadow lessons in sequence (especially if there's a story), but there have been times when I've just shuffled the lessons on a CD for spontaneity. I wish my initial Mandarin audio files (from a Swedish university) had not been individual files - the quality wasn't the best (very "choppy" starts and stops). Hopefully you have better luck with Assimil - it certainly seems like that, since you even mention the silence (which was non-existent in my sentences).
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Texas Badlands
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 Message 3 of 5
16 December 2015 at 5:38am | IP Logged 
Thanks, about how long can you go in one setting? Or in a day? 10 minutes? 15 minutes?
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Serpent
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Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
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 Message 4 of 5
16 December 2015 at 5:28pm | IP Logged 
My limit is about 1 hour in one go and quite likely 2 hours in shorter sessions. But routinely I probably did 40-50 min a day, and that was with Finnish materials where I already knew all the grammar and most vocabulary. (That was including but not always limited to Assimil)
It's all very individual and depends on the state of your throat/mouth, any minor issues will reduce the shadowing time. Also how much you speak at work or maybe in your free time, even things like dental treatment, adequate hydration, climate/humidity. Experiment and don't be hard on yourself. Too much of any activity often requires a break next day. I never bothered to truncate the silence, I think it's good to have some minimal breaks. If the audio itself is too slow, then try later lessons or different materials.
And then there's also the issue of diminishing returns, ie whether you'd benefit more from doing a different activity instead.

Btw most members are at forum.language-learners.org now.

Edited by Serpent on 16 December 2015 at 5:32pm

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Brun Ugle
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Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1
Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish

 
 Message 5 of 5
17 December 2015 at 7:32am | IP Logged 
I usually shadow the last ten lessons before doing a new one each day. In addition, I do some shadowing
while walking, which really is very effective. How much I do depends on how long the walk is and how soon it
drives me crazy. So, usually about 15-40 minutes.


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