Trying to change up my study methods and have started to read out loud a little, maybe for 10/20 mins a day. Is this a waste of time? I’m trying to read aloud with the accompanying audiobook for instant feedback from a native speaker. I get moments when it feels natural and i can follow the story and other times it feels like i’m focusing purely on pronunciation of the words and not the story. Thoughts?
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Read up on Shadowing, that’s what you’re after
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I’ve spent a decent amount of time shadowing with audio only. I’ve found it fairly useful. I was wondering if anyone has combined reading, listening and speaking at the same time to any success. More specifically are you meant to grasp the meaning or is this kind of exercise purely for practicing intonation and pronunciation?
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My practice partner and I have been reading books aloud to each other for about 1.5 years now. We read the same book, but he reads in English and I read in Russian (his language). We help each other with pronunciation and the meaning of idioms/less common words and also discuss the book together. It has helped us both so much.
I would say, though, that if you’re focusing purely on pronunciation of the words and not following the story, the book might be a bit on the difficult side. We started with books for second graders and progressed (we’re up to John Grisham now although this is our first book for adults).
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I almost always read aloud in Ukrainian, nearly everything that I read. Been doing so for almost 3 years. My Italki teachers tell me that my pronunciation is pretty good (although I know it still needs work). I am sure that reading aloud has helped.
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I find shadowing incredibly difficult. In addition to the multi-tasking required to accept input and produce it while not missing the next input, I find myself tongue-tied and my pronunciation getting much worse, rather than better, as I’m trying to force words out too quickly. I can shadow little bits of content, then skip a bit, and shadow another little bit, but am very far from shadowing several sentences in a row. I don’t think it’s entirely a question of level, either–I honestly think I’d be hard pressed to shadow effectively in my native language. Does anyone else have this issue?
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For over a year I did listen/repeat/shadow on every sentence I worked on in LingQ. I did reach the point where French pronunciation felt natural.
Which isn’t to say my pronunciation is great – just that I am no longer stumbling through French phrases as though they were all tongue twisters.
My ability to hear French as words came more slowly and I still can’t hear a long sentence and understand it on the fly.
I think reading aloud is a great practice. It can also be fun and you can get into the feel of being French or whatever your target language is.
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I did it during a 3-4 months period. I have started it because I have realized I was really slow reading in Ukrainian. Now I can say what I did is a huge plus. At the beginning I was reading 3 pages per 20 minutes. Now it’s around 4 pages per 20 minutes. Also I pay much more attention to each letters of a word. I think it’s important to memorize correctly the words also.
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