I studied French at university, in fact I lived in Paris for five years so I reached an advanced level. I understood everything and I had near-native pronunciation. But that was twenty years ago now (!). I still understand everything I hear and read but I can’t speak because I have lost the habit. I have lived in Italy for 14 years now and I am used to speaking Italian. To speak French you need to make different shapes with your mouth and particularly with your lips and to do it well you need to train yourself. A big problem that language learners often have is the opportunity to speak. Maybe you don’t have anyone to talk to, or you speak only very little. When you then do have the chance you speak, you are not used to speaking out loud and the words feel unfamiliar in your mouth. What if you could improve your listening, speaking confidence and pronunciation by talking to yourself? No I am not going mad, the technique really exists and it’s called shadowing. There is a lot of material on Youtube related to watching films or Tv series or using podcasts. Thanks to audiobooks you can also shadow (follow and observe closely) the words of your favourite authors! Shadowing is a real workout for your mouth, it’s not just listening and repeating, it’s copying the rhythm, intonation, speech patterns and pauses of a native speaker in real time. What is the best way to do shadowing? With practice you can develop your own method but to get started I recommend you try the following 1. Choose a book you really like. 2. Find an audiobook version of the book with a reader whose voice you like or would like to emulate. 3. Listen to an extract from the audio book for general understanding. 4. Listen again and follow with the text a couple of times. 5. Try to work out the meaning of any new words by the context and intonation of the speaker before looking them up. 6. Mark the text to remind yourself of the correct pronunciation, especially word stress, linking and intonation (see picture for an example from the Preface of Frankenstein) 7. Pause the recording after each sentence or phrase and repeat.
8. If there is a word you have difficulty with, say it on its own a few times. You can even try dividing the word into syllables and then putting it back together. 9. Read along with the speaker at the same time as he / she speaks. 10. Get up, walk around, act out the text, it will help add emotion and meaning. Speak loudly. 11. Continue until you can repeat at the same pace as the speaker. 12. Record yourself and listen back to it to evaluate your progress. I like this Libravox audiobook because it is read by a young girl, and Mary Shelley was only 18 when she created the story! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZfXP2YZqEk Please if you do try, let me know how you get on. One of my students who has tried it has said it has really benefitted his confidence!
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
What is this?When I started lostinclassics I looked for language lessons in the books I was reading, such as for example the use of phrasal verbs or inversion in conditionals and I explained them through examples found in the text. I also did reviews of the books I read and tried to give some advice on how to read classics using the various resources I know of. Then I switched to just reviews and lately I have been doing a bit of creative writing inspired by my reading. Who knows what I will come up with next! Archives
September 2020
Categories |