Shadowing?

Or listening, then repeating?

Hello, I'm Julian Northbrook, the Posh Punk of English education.

And in this video, I want to talk a little bit about shadowing.

There's a very good chance that you've seen the shadowing video that I made originally in 2011, and then re-uploaded to the current YouTube channel in 2013.

Today, I'm going to show you how you can practice speaking English...

Yes, that video is somewhat old.

More than six years old, in fact, at the time of recording this video.

And to say that my thinking, and not to mention my learning, has changed and progressed somewhat, would be quite an understatement.

So in this video and over the next few, I want to expand upon that video slightly.

And talk more about the shadowing exercise, the shadowing technique, and answer some of your questions.

On said shadowing video, I got the following question.

"Hi Julian."

"Shadowing is a really good method, "but don't you think it's better not to copy the voice of the speaker simultaneously?"

"But to copy it after the speaker, in order to hear your own voice."

"What do you think?"

Listening and then repeating is brilliant for working on your pronunciation.

When you listen and repeat, you can hear what you're saying.

And this just helps you to work on the big problems that you've got with your pronunciation.

If you are unable to say something, you'll very quickly notice.

The drawback of that, however, is it's quite a slow process, and you don't really get much bang for your buck.

That is, you really only just work on your pronunciation, and work out the pronunciation of the words that you don't know, and that's it.

Finished.

Shadowing, on the other hand, is brilliant for working on what we call the physical aspects of fluency.

That is, how your mouth muscles move, your rhythm, your tone, your intonation, the speed at which you are speaking, the pauses and the way that you chunk your language.

There are many aspects to fluency,

and what we call the, again, the physical side of fluency.

Shadowing is brilliant for working on those.

It is crap for working on the creative side of fluency.

That is, the actual organising of the language in your mind,

because there is no creativity involved with shadowing.

You are listening to somebody else speaking,

and then you are mimicking what you hear.

However, this is why it's so good for working on the physical aspects,

because the creative side of it is pushed out the way.

You don't need to worry about that.

So to put it simply,

I guess we'd say that shadowing is good for building positive motor habits.

That is, you know, the physical side of fluency.

Again, of the pronunciation, the intonation,

the rhythm at which you speak, the speed,

where you put the pauses, how you chunk the language.

You're not gonna get that by just listening to something and repeating it,

because you're not actually producing the language in real time.

You're not being forced to mimic all of the subtleties of how the language is being pronounced.

But again, the answer to the question, which is better?

Really, it depends on what exactly it is that you want to do.

Personally, I prefer shadowing.

I don't really do listen and repeat for Japanese,

because I don't really need to.

I don't really find any of the words of Japanese,

you know, that difficult to pronounce.

Good chunking skills, rhythm, intonation, however,

is quite different between Japanese and English,

and that is something that I do need to practise,

and shadowing is, as far as I'm concerned,

the best way to do that.

If you have a question of your own,

specifically about shadowing,

just ask it down in the Comments

and I will answer it in another video.

I do plan to do a whole series of these videos,

and probably the next one that I do,

I'll talk about where shadowing actually comes from,

cause it wasn't originally a language learning exercise.

It was originally something else,

and we've just changed it into a language learning exercise.

Again, I'll talk about that in another video,

as well as some more advanced variations of shadowing, as well.

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Good-bye.