I'm starting to go through the 2 Japanese Shadowing books. My reading is fairly decent (I've read about 40 light novels) and my listening is to the point where I practice by watching Japanese news though my listening skills are not as good as my reading skills. I'm doing shadowing to help with beginning to speak (it's about time!) and also to augment my listening skills. I was wondering how long it takes to get good at shadowing? I've only been doing the starting lessons for just a few days, but I usually am not able to repeat the passage a split second after it is spoken without get mixed up with what I am listening to when I fall behind. Are we talking about a skill that takes a few weeks to master or a few months? It seems that for now just repeating the passage helps since my speaking skills are so crude but I'd like to get to the point where you repeat the words as soon as you hear them.

I practice a light form of shadowing through listening comprehension. When watching a TV show, I'll pick up a word or a sentence and I'll try to repeat it to myself the way I heard it.

It happened spontaneously, though, and I didn't even realize what it was, and I didn't really focus on the thought that I was using shadowing until after a while.

The first time I used it was with hearing the word だいじょうぶ and finding out how commonly the word can be spoken quickly, and how the word can be spoken where it doesn't really sound like how it would when spoken more slowly while sounding the syllables out.

Second time was with the word "Sumimasen." After hearing it over and over I realized that certain syllables can be removed from the actual word when speaking it casually. Such as "suimasen" which sounded like "simasen" and "simase."

For me, it was a progressive and gradual realization of how Japanese sounds when initially learning it, and how it sounds when actually spoken by native speakers of various accents and speed-of-talk.

I guess that in terms of length of time that it takes to become proficient at shadowing, it would depend on your vocab count and how often you listen to Japanese audio alongside how often you hear select words from your vocabulary bank being spoken by different people at different speeds through the various levels of formality -- from formal to casual to how you would talk to the emperor of Japan and the prime minister of Japan.

What you might discover is that your reading comprehension and overall knowledge of the language will catch up to your listening comprehension as you become more exposed to the spoken language and Japanese audio, since your listening skills aren't as developed as you said. At this point for you it might just be an investment of time spent watching Japanese shows or something.

Edit: if it helps, I noticed that it's easier to follow Japanese with the volume turned up much higher.

Hey, I can't offer any insight to shadowing as I haven't tried it yet, but I was wondering, what books are you using? I am considering trying a shadowing textbook after finishing Tobira but I don't know which ones are good.

Chomskyan Wrote:Hey, I can't offer any insight to shadowing as I haven't tried it yet, but I was wondering, what books are you using? I am considering trying a shadowing textbook after finishing Tobira but I don't know which ones are good.

They're called シャドーイング 日本語を話そう. There is a beginner and an advanced book.

Here's the publisher's page for them. I have used the Intermediate-to-Advanced book (the blue one), it's quite good, and to my ears it's some of the most natural and "real-life" Japanese I've heard in a learning text.

The Core decks are great for this. The sentences are a good length for repeating easily. I've been working on my pitch accent with a version of the Core10k deck.

Thanks for the reference, I'll be sure to check out the more advanced book.

jimeux Wrote:The Core decks are great for this. The sentences are a good length for repeating easily. I've been working on my pitch accent with a version of the Core10k deck.

I do something like this

I've actually been working through two versions of the core 10k deck simultaneously. The first is a standard 10k recognition deck. The second though... I took the i+1 core deck and turned it into a listening sentences deck. The front of the card plays sentence audio (no replay button, only get one chance to hear like in real life) the back shows the sentence. Pretty easy to set up, and holy shit has my listening ability exploded since starting.

When I can't quite get a sentence after a couple of times, I shadow it on the back of the card (which has a replay button). Since I can replace that single sentence over and over again very easily it's not such a challenge to shadow, and it works really really well. So I guess I do have some experience with shadowing...

I'm finding even the beginner shadowing book very challenging. Guess it's natural because I'm not used to speaking. I get tongue twisted a lot of times. I'm trying to spend 1.5 hrs on listening practice (news programs) and 30 minutes on shadowing a day. I temporarily stopped reading light novels for a little bit since I'm so far behind on listening and speaking.

I have the advanced shadowing book but found that it has a lot of english on the audio. Because of that I haven't really used it as I find English on the audio distracting and taking away time from shadowing Japanese. Does it change towards the end of the book?

I used to shadow the JapanesePod101 dialogues a lot a year or two ago. It really helped helped my listening comprehension. It was really hard at first, I had to start with beginner lessons as it was just going too fast for me. To get into intermediate lessons I started every lesson slowed down, to get used to the content. At first without transcript and later on with. I always worked on several lessons at once, and after doing a lesson for a few days I'd usually remember it by heart.

jimeux Wrote:The Core decks are great for this. The sentences are a good length for repeating easily. I've been working on my pitch accent with a version of the Core10k deck.

I agree, but even better use subs2srs with Anki to create cards based on tv/movies you like to watch. Its so must easier to match emotions when the context is clear. The lines are also much easier to remember so you can focus more on pronunciation. These are by far the best to shadow.

ikore Wrote:I have the advanced shadowing book but found that it has a lot of english on the audio. Because of that I haven't really used it as I find English on the audio distracting and taking away time from shadowing Japanese. Does it change towards the end of the book?

I used to shadow the JapanesePod101 dialogues a lot a year or two ago. It really helped helped my listening comprehension. It was really hard at first, I had to start with beginner lessons as it was just going too fast for me. To get into intermediate lessons I started every lesson slowed down, to get used to the content. At first without transcript and later on with. I always worked on several lessons at once, and after doing a lesson for a few days I'd usually remember it by heart.

The idea of shadowing though is not to memorize and then repeat but to be able to do it anytime. It should get so instinctual that you speak the words after they're spoken easily. I'm far from that point since I just started.

PotbellyPig Wrote:The idea of shadowing though is not to memorize and then repeat but to be able to do it anytime. It should get so instinctual that you speak the words after they're spoken easily. I'm far from that point since I just started.

After having shadowed a dialogue for multiple times you will know it by heart. It's not the goal but more of a side effect.

ikore Wrote:I have the advanced shadowing book but found that it has a lot of english on the audio. Because of that I haven't really used it as I find English on the audio distracting and taking away time from shadowing Japanese. Does it change towards the end of the book?

That's strange. The beginner book has absolutely no English in the audio. I haven't cracked open the advanced book yet.

I'm near the end of section 3 of the beginner book now. I'm thinking of making some simple anki flash cards with the audio so I practice previous lessons on a regular basis. This is challenging since I never did any speaking practice or much production in the past.