I’ve been talking to myself a lot recently in Spanish. It’s a great way to “rehearse” and practice talking in between having real conversations, and you quickly find gaps in your knowledge whilst reinforcing and making automatic lots of useful phrases.
And, as I read this morning, some psychologists reckon it’s good for your general well being too:
So it’s win win!
Does anyone else use talking to yourself as a language learning tool? Any neat tricks or methods? And has it led to any embarrassing situations?
Well, I did try Prof. Arguelles’ shadowing advice once or twice in the streets of our little town on the way to do the shopping. I stopped it pretty soon for two reasons: the sun reflecting from the pages nearly blinded me and the looks I got nearly wounded me.
(I do believe, though, that shadowing can be very effective, even if only used to get up one’s speed of delivery. I am a naturally slow speaker and have great difficulty in matching the delivery of fast speakers.)
“He won’t listen to me either way, so it’s not much of a loss.”
German is a good language for giving commands though. “Platz!” sounds more convincing than “down!” Russian might be even better.
"Does anyone else use talking to yourself as a language learning tool? "
Do you mean “thinking out loud” or “simulating a conversation”? I tried thinking out loud in English/French for a while and it seemed pretty useful. As you already said, it helps you find gaps in your vocabulary´n stuff.
I suppose I mean both, I do think out loud a lot (which seems natural to me as I talked to myself a lot as a child), but also the other day a language exchange cancelled on me at the last minute. I thought: I want the speaking practice, so I just set up the video and chatted with myself for 45 minutes on the topics I was going to talk about with my language exchange. I guess I didn’t need the video, but it helped give the activity “structure”.