Is Shadowing The Best Way To Learn Japanese

Shadowing is an advanced learning technique where you mind to a text in your target language, so speak information technology aloud at the same time as the native speaker.

I've been using the method for a couple of years without using whatsoever specific name to describe it, only later came upon a video by the remarkable scholar, autodidact and polyglot Alexander Arguelles describing a similar technique and calling it shadowing, which describes the process rather accurately.

How-to shadow

To first shadowing, you'll demand a player, a pair of headphones, and an audio recording in your target language, at your level of proficiency.

The platonic content is roughly one page long, at natural speed, on engaging topics and with no artificial pauses and admittedly no English. A great place to start is the Assimil audio CD, though the Japanese graded readers are also a good choice.

The basic concept is every bit follows:

listen to the text one time—if you don't take at least a general idea of what'south going on, you lot might be better off choosing an easier topic
listen to the text a few more times until yous are confident that whatever you lot notwithstanding don't understand yous won't be able to figure out from context through subsequent hearings
listen to the text while reading the transcript and await up any words you're non confident about
listen to the text and repeat with a minimum delay—rinse and repeat until you can read it confidently at the same speed equally the recording, then exercise information technology over again and move onto the side by side track

Past the time you move onto the next text, you should understand every discussion and sentence, and essentially know the text by heart. If you tin can't read nearly of the text from memory while in the shower, y'all haven't repeated it enough.

Notation that you lot shouldn't look upwards any vocabulary or grammer until you repeat the text several times. You might only barely understand the content on offset playthrough, but if the text is of the correct level, you should figure out the significant of many, if not most words and sentence patterns after hearing information technology several times.

Walk your manner to fluency

Make sure to speak loud and clear. If you lot're not too cocky-witting, this is a corking time to accept a break from the computer screen and have a walk in the park.

In fact, Arguelles argues that to learn effectively through shadowing, information technology is crucial to detect these three points:

i. Walk outdoors as swiftly as possible.

Walking outdoors forces you to get comfortable using the language in unusual settings, in a more automatic manner, while performing other activities. Just as you do with your native language.

2. Maintain perfectly upright posture.

Together with point №1, maintaining an upright posture increases oxygen intake which further benefits your encephalon, and thus the learning procedure. It is also ane more thing you lot demand to call back of simultaneously, and volition brand you a more confident speaker.

3. Articulate thoroughly in a loud, articulate voice.

Practiced articulation is crucial if yous want to perfect your pronunciation, and together with №2, speaking in a loud, clear voice will trick your encephalon into thinking that what you are learning is specially important. Think of yourself as an actor playing a part.

Proficiency through efficiency

You might have noticed a pattern here… each pace works in tandem with each other, and that is in fact the key to this technique, and intensive language learning in general.

To make that jump from stagnating at a higher-beginner level to being able to learn by really using in day-to-solar day life you have to piece of work more, and as there are only that many hours in a mean solar day, it means that you have to larn more efficiently past working on several skill-sets at once.