I've had a lot of requests recently for a new video about the shadowing technique.
So, here we are.
Today, I'm going to talk a little bit about how I used the shadowing technique to learn
Japanese, to the level of fluency that I did.
First of all, a little bit of background.
Like everybody else, I started learning Japanese by using text books.
I studied grammar rules, I memorized words and I answered the questions on the text books
and that was about it.
After a while I could understand a bit of Japanese, I could read a little bit of Japanese,
but I couldn't speak any Japanese at all, I couldn't speak, and I couldn't hear Japanese,
my listening was terrible.
The way natives speak Japanese, it was impossible.
Now, the CD attached to the text book, I could understand that, no problems, because it was
so slow and the language was so plain and dry.
I could understand that, but not real Japanese.
Complete waste of time.
I heard of the shadowing technique.
I tried following along to Japanese TV shows, I kept that up for a while and it worked for
a little bit.
But, to be honest, it was too much.
It was too much all in one go.
A TV show is pretty long, it was hard to choose a part to shadow and it was hard to keep it
up and it was hard to review or keep on practicing.
So I gave up that pretty quick to be honest And eventually I came across a website called
www.japanesepod101.com Japanese Pod is basically a website full of
"Learn Japanese Audio Lesson" The best thing about them is that each lesson
has a dialogue and you can download the dialogues and I used those dialogues for shadowing.
When I started doing that, I really started to notice an improvement in my Japanese.
Let's take a look to what I actually did with this website and shadowing.
Let's take a look over here.
I'm going to demonstrate today with English Class 101.
It's exactly the same, this is the English language version, I used the Japanese Language
version, but just to make it easier for you guys to follow, I'm going to use the English
version.
I'm going to came up here and sign in.
This is the learning centre, this is the main website.
you've got these different types of lessons.
You've got a lot of tools and things at the top.
There are a lot of useful things in here, I'm not going to talk about them today, though.
Let's pick a lesson.
Let's go to Intermediate Season 1.
Let's just wait for this to come up - my internet connection has been very slow recently.
Here we go, we've got all these lessons.
There are thousands of lessons in here.
Let's pick one at random.
This is the lesson, this is one lesson that you get, it's got all this stuff on here.
~background noise~ Some stuff falling down from the wind, don't
worry about that If we take a look down here, this is the main
audio lesson I didn't listen to this on the website, what
I did was, I used this tool here, called "My Feed".
This is a very useful tool.
Basically, "My Feed" let's you download whatever lessons you want onto your iPod, so I
downloaded about a week's worth at a time.
I downloaded those and listened to them on the train in the morning, on my way to work.
It's only about 13 minutes long; my commute to work was about 15-20 minutes depending
on the day, on the train.
So I could listen to that easily on my way to work.
I'd listened to that on the train, and then after I listened to the lesson, I'd go to
this track here, which is the dialogue.
This is the same dialogue as you hear in the lesson.
It's just in a separate track, so you don't have to listen to the other stuff, it's very
useful.
I would listen to that a few times and then that's it.
By now, this is stuck in my head for the rest of the day.
Then I'd finish my working day, I'd get back on the train going back home, and then I'd
go back to this and I'd listen to this track here,
the "Review Track" and I'd review all the vocabulary and
everything from the lesson.
I'd listen that a few times, usually around 4 times and then I'd listen to the dialogue
a few more times.
So by now I've listened to the dialogue a few more times, I've listened to the lessons
and I've listened to the review.
Now I understand this, no problem.
This is all easy for me now.
I would get home and the later in the evening I'd use this tool here:
"Line By Line Audio Transcript" This is the best thing about this website,
this is a really amazing tool, because...
- My internet connection is very slow- Okay, as you can see here, we've got a transcript
of all the audio track.
It's not so long, it's about the right length, I think.
You've got a transcript of the audio track here and you've got all these buttons, so
you can listen to this line by line.
For example: So, it looks like you're feeling better.
So, it looks like you're feeling better.
Next track.
Yes, thanks for coming to visit me the other day by the way.
What I would do is, I'd shadow this line by line, and I'd do each line several times,
until it was easy for me.
For example, let's do the first line: So, it looks like you're feeling better.
So, it looks like you're feeling better.
I think that was okay, but I feel like I need more practice, let's do that again.
So, it looks like you're feeling better.
I think that's okay now, let's go to the next line.
Yes, thanks for coming to visit me the other day by the way.
I think that one's fine.
Next line.
Don't mention it.
We were just a little worried about you after the party.
Don't mention it.
We were just a little worried about you after the party.
I need more practice with that one, so let's give that one another go.
Don't mention it.
We were just a little worried about you after the party.
Sometimes, I would look up this lines and I'd read as I'm saying it.
As I was practicing, I will not to look at them, I'll try just to listen and shadow just
from the audio as much as possible.
I'd go through all of this lines and I'd practice all of them just a few times.
It doesn't take long, just a couple of minutes to get through these, as I said it's not very
long.
Next, I'd came back up to here, to the dialogue and I'd load the whole dialogue.
So we click here on the pop-up.
Let's let that come up.
I would shadow the whole thing through.
Here we are, hear the dialogue start up.
So, it looks like you're feeling better.
Yeah, thanks for coming to visit me the other day by the way.
Don't mention it.
We were just a little worried about you after the party.
And you want to check out the pool?
That too.
Ok, so you get the idea.
I'd go through the conversation and anything difficult, anything which I thought "that
was a little bit too difficult", I'd go back to
the line-by-line transcript and I'd practice those again and
I'd keep at it until it all felt natural and easy.
Next, I would go to the My Voice Recorder, click on that and, basically, what you get
is an on- screen voice recorder.
Let that load.
This used to be much faster at my old house, I moved recently and my internet connection
here is terrible.
It takes so long for anything to load.
We get this Voice Recorder here.
I'm not going to use the audio; I'm just going to read this through.
Sometimes, if was feeling really enthusiastic, I'd try to memorize this conversation, but
I haven't done that today, so I'm just going
to read it.
Click on Record.
So, it looks like you're feeling better.
Yeah, thanks for coming to visit me the other day by the way
Don't mention it.
We were just a little worried about you after the party.
And now I'm going to listen back to my own pronunciation.
So, it looks like you're feeling better.
Yeah, thanks for coming to visit me the other day by the way.
Don't mention it.
We were just a little worried about you after the party.
I think that's mostly okay, but I think my pronunciation of this first part "Don't mention
it", I'm not happy with that, so I'm going to practice
that a few more times.
Don't mention it.
We were just a little worried about you after the party.
I'm going to practice that again, then I'll re-record myself and listen to it again.
Basically, I'm shadowing line-by-line, I'm trying to match my pronunciation, the speed
and the rhythm to the speak on the audio, I do that
for each line and then I do the whole conversation from the dialogue, again trying to match the
speed and the rhythm of the native speakers and
the pronunciation.
Sometimes I'd even just choose one character from the story, I wouldn't do the whole thing.
I'd just do, for example, Drew or Teddy or whomever the characters are in that conversation.
I'm going to go through that, I'm going to get good at it and then I'm going to record
myself, listen back to that and see how it sounds.
If it sounds good, great; if it doesn't, I'm going to practice again.
That sounds like a lot, but actually, it only took about 10 minutes a day, I think.
I'd get through a lesson very quickly.
I'm listening on the train on my way to work, home, anyway, that's commute time so it's
not wasted time, and then I'd come home and about
10 minutes of this, I'd shadow the material.
That was it, that was my day's learning of Japanese.
Really, we're talking 30-40 minutes a day, most of that on the train and 10 minutes at
home.
Doing this, I found that I could improve my listening and my speaking very quickly and
it wasn't much time before found that I could start
to understand what people were saying in conversations and I could start to join in
the conversations by myself.
That was really great motivation, and I kept up this system, this pattern up for more than
2 years until I finished everything on the Japanese
Pod site and we're talking more than a thousand lessons at least, so you can see
just how quickly I was able to just absorb all this
Japanese, in your case, all this English, this material, just very easily.
Of course, you don't have to use English Class 101 or Japanese Pod for shadowing, you can
use anything, and now I use TV shows and audio
books, as I demonstrated in my other video.
Now I have a lot more time than I did when I first came to Japan about 5 years ago.
The best thing about this is that each lesson is very short and self-contained.
Self-contained means that you can listen to any lesson you want at any time, you don't
have to start from 1, then 2, 3, 4.
You can basically just choose what you're interested in, or what is useful for you at
that time.
Because they're short, it's very easy to finish one lesson in a day so it's very easy to make
the goal of 1 day/1 lesson, next day 1 new lesson.
You're always using new material, it doesn't get
boring.
The lessons are quite funny and interesting, anyway.
So it's very easy to keep it up.
Occasionally I'd go back and review all the lessons and I'd listen to all the dialogues,
but, mostly, I'd just keep on doing a new lesson
a day.
As I said, I kept that up for 2 years until I got to the level of Japanese that I am at
now and I found everything on the website too easy and
I finished everything.
Recently, I don't use it so much, as I said, I use audio books and TV shows instead.
That's it.
I highly recommend using this site for the shadowing technique.
Something else that I want to point out is that this is not free, well, you can get a
free account and you can get a certain amount free, if
you sign up for a free account, you get a free
premium account for 2-3 weeks, I don't remember.
So you can get a premium account for a while, but then you have to pay for it.
It's a little bit on the pricey side, but for the 2 years or so that I kept this up,
I didn't spend money on anything else learning Japanese.
I never felt like I needed to take classes so there was no class fee to pay, I didn't
buy any other CDs, there was nothing like that.
I didn't really buy any text books.
This was a very cost effective way for me to learn Japanese.
And I saved a lot o time by using this, like I said it was just 10 minutes a day, literally,
for 2 years and that was it.
Money and time, I saved a lot of it using this.
That's it.
As always, if you've got any questions, leave a comment.
If you've got any requests for something you need me to talk about more, leave it in the
comments, if you've something you need to ask, leave a comment.
That's it for today.
Until next time!
See you then!