Shadowing Step by Step

Alexander Arguelles presents a discussion and commentary of his technique of "shadowing" foreign languages. For more information, please refer to http://www.foreignlanguageexpertise.com

Category:

Education

Tags:

• shadowing
• foreign
• language
• learning
• linguistics
• lecture
• technique
• method
• skill
• polyglottery
• polyglots
• acquisition

[phonicsquest]

shadowing is wrong,you cannot do two things at the same time

[ProfASAr]

@phonicsquest Is that your experience? I emphatically discourage multi-tasking when it comes to trying to do two different mental activities at once. However, when it comes to combining a mental activity (such as studying) with a physical activity (such as walking) into an exercise such as shadowing, my experience, offered here, is that it is both possible and highly profitable to do so. Have you actually tried it?

[phonicsquest]

@ProfASAr what I consider correct is repetition when the student has a minimum time to reproduce the target sound,but "shadowing" is wrong, you do not have the time to fix in your mind the requested ,previous sound...so the result is not accurate..

[ProfASAr]

@phonicsquest My own results, in terms of both segemental and suprasegmental reproduction, are much more accurate than when I "listen and then repeat." Upon first trying it, some students are stymied by the novelty of the technique, but thereafter my observations match my experience. So again I ask: have you tried it? It seems that you have not, but are basing your critique upon theory alone.

[inkstersco]

I have a question concerning language learning and age. You have learned many languages so I'm assuming you've done so over the course of at least ten years. Is there any noticable decline in speed or efficiency of study between, say, 20, and your own age?

[ProfASAr]

Quite the contrary: there is a very noticeable increase in speed and efficiency of study with the experience that comes with age. This is emphatically true for the ability to master new grammatical systems and to build vocabulary. It may not be true for the ability to develop a decent accent, however. Many of my own accents are confessedly bad, and while I suspect that this is mainly due to do with the fact that I have never had any active exposure to them, it may also be due to age.

[KomonHouseholdObjex]

He is a professor, so its the law. They have to go on tangents.

[ramblinevilmushroom]

you like your frightened by something, like someone is off screen with a gun forcing you to talk about languages!

[Bregowald]

can shadowing be used to learn your own language better?

[Crashof2008]

Wow.

At 33 minutes into this video when you talk about converting all your internal dialogue to the target language, I started translating everything you said into Spanish, my target language.

WHAT AN AMAZING experience. Thanks!

[Nevertoto]

Professor Arguelles, I really want to follow your shadowing system to learn Korean but I once heard from Steve Kaufman that the Assimil course for Korean was not good at all. Do you have any idea why he might have said that? Does your opinion differ? I'd appreciate it if you should reply. This is very important to me. Thanks.

[TheNonsubscribable]

The walking at a brisk pace really does help get your attention focused.

[TheNonsubscribable]

When shadowing if you are first starting out is it more important to know the meaning of whats being said or to know each and every word used? What im asking is should i be more focused on trying to pin point the words in the sentence or should i focus on the sentence as a whole?

[RollTheDice00]

Would you recommend this technique for learning Chinese, for someone with only a very basic knowledge of the language?

[crystalinthemirror]

this is a long video

[bradcasali]

I understand the point is that shadowing is supposed to provide a corrective device that simple repetition does not, but how is it different than just simply repeating the phrase a few times until it is correct? Speaking for myself, I usually can hear the sounds correctly when they're said, but the stumbling block may be a difficult sound within a sentence, which prolongs the time required for me to say it (because I'm focused on that sound, not necessarily the whole phrase).

[trungtrinhc3]

I was honored to be your student at RELC! You are an expert in teaching foreign languages. Best wishes