Improve Your Pronunciation By 'Shadowing'
Others
Many English learners can improve their pronunciation by listening
carefully to native English speakers and trying to match the up-and-down
movement of their sentences.
That is the opinion of Marla Yoshida, an English as a Foreign Language
teacher at the University of California, Irvine.
Yoshida wants English learners to look for details that are important to
native speakers. These details are not only sounds, she notes. Native
speakers also communicate by using pauses, and by saying some words more
forcefully than others.
As a result, native speakers might not understand an English learner
even if the learner pronounces sounds correctly.
The problem with 'listening and repeating'
Yoshida says that English learners often study pronunciation by
listening and repeating something from a recording.
Yoshida says that English learners need to do more than listen and
repeat in order to improve their pronunciation:
“I've gradually gotten really interested in pronunciation because it's
something that students have trouble with, but they don't always get a
lot of really good instruction in it. They just have someone say 'Listen
to this recording and repeat … and now, aren't you better?' No! You're
not necessarily better. It takes more than that.”
The problem with listen and repeat, says Yoshida,
is that when people repeat, they are often not trying to sound like the
other person.
“You think that when students are repeating after the teacher, or
whatever, they're trying to sound exactly like that person, but they're
not.
The sounds that you hear go into your brain … and your brain interprets
them or filters them through the sound system of your own language, and
what your brain ends up understanding is not everything – it's not what
the speaker intended…
You have to try to get past that filter and hear all of the details that
are important to someone else.
So you have to try to duplicate what the person is saying."
What details should you try to copy when you listen to an English
speaker? Among others, the important details include pauses or breaths,
which words to emphasize -- or give special attention to, and intonation
– the up and down movement of your voice as you speak.
English speakers, in particular, use a broad range of up and down
movements in their voices. These movements can be difficult for English
learners to recognize and understand.
Native English speakers might have difficulty understanding English
learners when learners use a narrow range of their voice. In other words,
native speakers have fewer vocal restrictions when they are speaking.
English learners also may use intonation patterns that are different
from those in Standard English.
Studying how native speakers use intonation will help English learners
better understand what native speakers do with their voices.
Practical tips:
If English learners want to start improving their pronunciation, Yoshida
suggests that they do an activity called shadowing.
“Shadowing means finding a short audio or video clip that you like…
that's maybe 30 seconds long, one minute long, at most two minutes long,
and listen to it. Listen to it a couple of times to get the meaning, and
to hear where the speaker pauses, and what they emphasize … and what the
intonation sounds like – because those are really important things too –
not just the sounds. Pronunciation is much more than saying each sound
correctly because you can say each sound correctly and still sound
really hard to understand…
So, find a short clip, listen to it, mark things that you notice, then
listen a few more times just to sort of let those sounds become a part
of your brain, and then start imitating. And imitate trying to sound
exactly like that person.”
What does shadowing look like?
Here is a short example of what a shadowing activity could look like.
The example comes from Martha Kolln's book Rhetorical Grammar*:
"One of the most important aspects of your expertise with sentences is
your sense of rhythm."
Listen to the sentence several times.
Then try to mark the intonation of the voice. Listen for emphasized
words.
"One of the most important aspects of your expertise with sentences is
your sense of rhythm."
In the sentence, you can hear that some syllables are emphasized, while
others are not. Overall, the voice falls after important syllables,
notably at the end of the sentence.
English sentences often emphasize words at the end of a sentence – the
place where you usually find new information. The next time you are
reading and listening to a story, try to mark the patterns of intonation
that you hear.
Remember, all our stories have audio, so you can print the story and do
a shadowing exercise while listening to the story. Give shadowing a try,
and let us know how it works for you! |
).
Utiliza el botón derecho del ratón y "guardar enlace" para descargar el
fichero a tu PC, tablet, Smartphone, etc.
