Shadowing

Yes, I’m still alive (whoohoo!), but I’ve been a little bit busy with work and some tutoring business (more on that later). In my vacation, I couldn’t stop writing at times so I’ve got a bunch of long-ass articles. Now, some of these articles may sound a bit negative or it may even look like I’m bashing people, but I’m not. It’s just that I’ve seen too many faulty methods and I try to warn people for this. So here’s the first article regarding shadowing.

I’ve written some stuff in the past about accents and pronunciation, why it’s so important and how to build you accent. Yes, I really think that a correct pronunciation is one of the most important things someone who calls himself fluent needs to master. I’ve met countless people who’s overall Spanish was quite good (a wide vocabulary range and no grammatical mistakes), but whose pronunciation was really bad. Why bother expanding your vocabulary if people can’t even understand you without trying hard?

Luckily I’m not the only person who thinks that a correct pronunciation is important. In a lot Spanish classes they give special attention to accent and stuff (unfortunately there’re more classes where they don’t give a **** about pronunciation), and people come up with methods to improve one’s pronunciation all the time. But what exactly is the best method? Does it even exist? Well, some think they’ve found the holy grail by applying the Shadowing technique. “What the heck is shadowing?” you might ask. Well, it’s actually a good question as most people who want to apply it don’t even exactly know what it is.

What it is, is that you listen to a piece of audio (audio book, news broadcast, maybe even a song) and repeat the speaker just a split second after he/she said it. So not at the same time (i.e. not speaking along, but rather echoing). Countless people applied it to their studies, but I’m skeptical. Why? Because I don’t think it works, and in the worst scenario it’ll damage your pronunciation for life. Yes, I’ve tried it, and no I couldn’t keep up with the speaker. Not that I can’t speak as fast as a regular native, but just because I can’t speak and listen at the same time. And I’m alone with that, most people can’t listen and speak at the same time. “But Ramses, how is it possible then that I sing along with my favorite songs and such?”. Well dear reader, it’s simply because you’ve heard the song so many times that it’s burnt in your brain. Even if you don’t hear the song or the music you can sing it. And here’s where input is going to help you.

I strongly believe that shadowing is not the best way to improve you pronunciation, like I said. So what is the solution then (I’m not saying that this is the best solution, but it’s one of the better solutions)? Simple: massive input. I’ve said it countless times and I’m saying it again: watch television, listen music, just listen to Spanish. Even better: listen to the same piece of text over and over again. For example: I’ve seen Toy Story about a dozen times now, and I just love the opening song (Hay un amigo en mí – Spanish version. Soy tu amigo fiel – Mexican version). Every time I watch Toy Story I rewind it a couple times to hear the song again. Heck, I even looked it up on Youtube to hear (yes, just hearing it can do magic, you don’t even need to concentrate all the time. As long as you listen to it enough and have some moments you do concentrate) it when I needed to feel happier. Now it’s burnt in my brain, I can’t forget it. I know the lyrics, I even know exactly how the singer pronounces the words and how his voice sounds. And the best of all: I can imitate it all; both his pronunciation AND his voice. Pretty scary huh? But it’s true, and only because I listened to it over and over again and keep enjoying it. If I’m now singing along (or shadowing it, whatever you want to call it), I don’t have to listen carefully and only have to match my words with the singer. I can’t damage my pronunciation because I know how it has to sound.

At the end of this post you’ll see a short video. Well, it’s not exactly a video, it’s more a voice you’re hearing while seeing some pictures. It may sound like a complete alien language, but it’s supposed to be English… learned by shadowing the same text over and over again. Yes, shadowing, not even listening, but proactive shadowing. As you’ll hear it’s bad, really bad. Why does it sound this bad? Do all shadowers sound like this? Well, I can’t believe that, but the other examples I’ve heard (for example Dutch and Frisian and to a lesser extent Afrikaans – which I can understand but can’t speak that well) sounded awful. It’s just that they aren’t able to analyze the sounds and produce it at the same time. This breeds some bad habits of the worst kind: a messed up pronunciation. I’ve seen it in class (both the college classes I attend and the classes I teach for my internship); a good pronunciation is really hard to learn if you already bred a messed up one.

So the best advice I can give, is: listen before you speak! And I mean that you need to listen for weeks and weeks before even considering to speak Spanish. I know that a lot of teachers insist you to speak from day one (they’ve done it to me as well, and I thought it was the best to do) as they think that speaking is the way to fluency. “If you don’t start speaking now, when will you speak?”. For long I thought this was true, but it isn’t. Starting to speak when you don’t exactly know how you need to sound is the worst thing you can do. The truth is that you will speak if you listen enough; it goes automatically. I mumble weird things in Spanish all the time. Why? Because I’ve heard the same exact lines over and over again. It can be rap songs, lines from movies I’ve seen, etc., etc. Learning a language is all about imitating, just like shadowing is meant to be. But shadowing is the bad form of imitating (like someone put it once: “It’s speaking before you’re able to speak“) and just listening and analyzing is (one of) the best way to learn how to speak.

Don’t worry, just enjoy your materials and in the end (it may be sooner than you think) you’ll start mumbling like I do. Further down the road you’ll start thinking in Spanish and wanting to answer people in Spanish (like I do, I have this all the time. Simply because I have massive input each and every day, throughout the day). And this will happen with a good accent, because you’ve heard it countless times.