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Shadowing
SHADOWING
Interpreters use a technique to learn how to listen and speak at the same time. If you’re into geeky language learning techniques, you might have heard of it already. It’s called shadowing. You listen to someone speaking and you immediately – with a couple of seconds of delay, that is – repeat what’s been said in the same language.
The technique of shadowing will train you to listen and speak at the same time, and it will improve your short-term memory. That’s some excellent brain training you’re doing there.
You can use shadowing to familiarise yourself with a foreign language. In fact, this is the first exercise we use ourselves when we start learning a language. It gives us a huge advantage when it comes to pronunciation and listening skills.
If you want to try this technique of shadowing yourself, here are the steps:
Find a speech, podcast or other media in the language you’re practicing. Take a slow one if you’re not that proficient yet! You could also slow down the video a bit with an app like Audacity.
Use headphones, but only in one ear: you want to hear yourself talk!
Play the audio and repeat immediately what’s being said. If you want to focus on pronunciation, stay as close to the speaker as possible. If you want to train your memory, you increase the delay to a couple of seconds.
That’s it! You’re listening and speaking at the same time. Now marvel at your brain’s capacities and see your memory and pronunciation improve
Start with slow conversations or speeches (find language learning podcasts for example, or YouTube videos), and slowly work up your way toward materials at normal speed.
Do the exercise with audio only, so without reading a transcript at the same time. Using a transcript might be temping, but you really want to focus on memory and sounds only.
