First, I would like to thank those who help me with my core2000. Your suggestions were very useful and I finally managed to get those 2000 words done. I'm going to start doing core6000 today. But to be honest I can't help but doubt how far I can actually keep this going. I now quite tired of knowing only meaning of words but not being able to use or sometimes recognize them even (please note that I did actually look for several sentence examples for each word when studying, although I prefer reviewing in pure vocab manner). So I am looking for something else that I can do along the side of my vocab study, mainly to give me some purpose to cram piles of words everyday, and also for improving my listening and speaking.

I have come across an idea of SHADOWING and in fact got a book "Shadowing: Let's speak Japanese" for quite a while already. It's a great book and I enjoy it. I put the audio in my mp3 player and listen to it as much as I can everyday. Perhaps because of this, I have actually remembered some phrases in the first two chapters by heart and find them very handy when speaking (I live in Japan by the way). However, I feel that the book is too small, the conversation is very short (I need something longer to feel the context I guess), and the content covered is very limited and sometimes repetitive (which is entirely bad I do realize). Now I am looking for other books. Are there some other books or free online resources that are as good or maybe better? I have heard of Assimil and linguaphone, any comment? And for example with Assimil, can I just skip to the second book, since I have finished Genki 2 already? (the book is quite expensive).

Also I am looking for other methods to improve my ability to recognize the words I have crammed (I guess basically to give me the purpose to do core6000). Does anyone has come across other useful methods especially for listening and speaking? For reading I have tried reading manga (e.g. Conan) but find it quite difficult still. So now I am reading Graded Reader level 4. It is very easy and I love it. But I also want to move on, so I wonder what kind of book I should read that is between Graded Reader and manga.

Thank you very much. I really appreciate it. I promise I will study very hard.

Do you have both of the books? I mean "Shadowing: Let's speak japanese!" 1 and 2.

I bought them both recently, started shadowing 3 days ago, when they arrived. I intend on shadowing everyday for at least 30 minutes. I really hope this develops my skills.

I'm also interested in knowing about books for shadowing, I still have a lot of shadowing to do with these books but if this actually works I will have to find more shadowing resourses within a few months.

Second book? oh I didn't know there is a second one! I will check that out. Does the second book cover a wider range of situation? I feel this is what the book lacks. I really like this book in that it helps cementing different grammar points that I learned in Genki, but I feel that I need other books as well to fill this gap. Please comment.

I think the short stories in this thread:
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=7005

would be pretty good for shadowing, over half have transcripts now.

I personally couldn't hack the that shadowing book for very long.

If you have finished genki 2 and core 2000 I think you could take on an easy manga so long as you don't mind not understanding every sentence.

Here you go

http://www.whiterabbitpress.com/product....t=0&page=1 book 2

http://www.whiterabbitpress.com/search.p...=shadowing other shadowing books whiterabbitpress as

CarolinaCG Wrote:Here you go

http://www.whiterabbitpress.com/product....t=0&page=1 book 2

http://www.whiterabbitpress.com/search.p...=shadowing other shadowing books whiterabbitpress as

Looks good, I might get it as well

Not sure if it's mentioned, but using subs2srs you can create a nice shadowing set-up. With the option to export audio in addition to subtitles to the lyric portion, you can create 30 sec to 1 min long "shadow segments".

There's also a couple of books "Read Real Japanese" with a female reading the narratives in the books. A couple of people recommended that as a good shadowing source.

Good skills to you.

Is anyone else doing shadowing? Did it work for you? I hope speaking gets easier, just like listening did, through immersion. I intend on shadowing at least 30+ minutes per day everyday, a bit in the morning and at night.

I will try to shadow the news too, just to see if I can keep up with their speed (using the pause button many times of course).

Recently I bought the first Harry Potter book and incidentally I have obtained an audiobook of the exact same copy. Book has furigana, doesn't have overcomplicated grammar and at some point it might be possible to try to shadow it all.

But first I'd take a look at those books CarolinaCG posted, they'll probably be more suited for shadowing and thus easier to use.

You could try shadowing with the core sentences. I hope haven't misunderstood the concept of shadowing, because I don't have any of the specific 'shadowing' books. However, what I do is go through the core words in an Anki deck. (corePLUS shared deck), going from sound to English meaning, then on the back of each card I have the Japanese sentence, written and audio (the english sentence, I have printed in white text on a white background so I don't have to see it). Most often, when I have time, or I an not in public, I repeat the sentence once or twice. I find this quite useful. After a while the sentence patterns become ingrained and the patterns can be re-used, when constructing your own sentences. It also gives useful context for the words you are actually learning. The sentences aren't too long or complicated, which could be seen as a good or a bad thing, and you won't learn much about joining sentences together. But since you seem to be doing a vocabulary deck anyway, you could easily try this in addition to other listening.

How do I delete a duplicate post ?

Do those that have them find these shadowing books in any way better than shadowing dramas and stuff, or is it just that they are more convenient?

rachels Wrote:How do I delete a duplicate post ?

The delete function was recently removed

Nukemarine Wrote:Not sure if it's mentioned, but using subs2srs you can create a nice shadowing set-up. With the option to export audio in addition to subtitles to the lyric portion, you can create 30 sec to 1 min long "shadow segments".

There's also a couple of books "Read Real Japanese" with a female reading the narratives in the books. A couple of people recommended that as a good shadowing source.

Good skills to you.

Now that I think about it, that would work. Definitely need to try sub2srs again. For some reason, I always end up just sticking with my reps(in my other decks). If I were too add sub2srs to the mix, that would double my srs load.

thurd Wrote:Recently I bought the first Harry Potter book and incidentally I have obtained an audiobook of the exact same copy. Book has furigana, doesn't have overcomplicated grammar and at some point it might be possible to try to shadow it all.

There is an audiobook for Harry Potter? :o Any other audiobooks for English translations?

There is only an audiobook for HP 1 and 2. Audiobooks are sadly not popular in Japan at all.

The book Japanese with Ease by Assimil is perfect for shadowing. Check it out.

Shadowing: Let's Speak Japanese! Did this book work for anyone?
I have the first book coming. Possibly thinking about making my own deck from the book.
I want to try subs to SRS soon but that going to require some research time.

Thanks

I's using that book. After 2 weeks I started feeling a difference, but until now I havent felt any more differences. Started like 3 months ago.

Just wondering how your studying the book. Just got it today. So far I'm just prereading the page then trying to shadow them right after.
Any tips?

I usually:

-read
-understand
-listen and shadow several times

Well not so much lately, I'm in the last section of the first book and there's still vocab I don't know. Because I don't focus on understanding (even though I read a first time) but rather on imitating and speaking. I will starting to add the vocab in anki I don't know (5%??), but not right now because I have loads of tests and would rather add jlpt vocab and grammar.

Within less than one month I will focus on all shadowing skills.

Any questions feel free to ask. I have the second book, I can tell you that the second book as looong dialogs to shadow. Like this for instance

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ysdZ9llnpig/TX...C04155.JPG

Another good source is JPod's lessons. You can listen to the lesson first to familiarise the dialogue and learn what you don't know, and then just use the dialogue audio and the transcript (while necessary) to shadow. There are loads of lessons on all sorts of topics, covering different grammar points, so you get a good variety of language.

I've been using the Shadowing books since March. I finished book 1 and am about 1/3 of the way through book 2. I use simple Anki cards in order to help myself remember to do it daily and review older dialogues. Just plain text cards with the audio track information, no multimedia effects. I leave the audio files as regular MP3s to play in my usual audio software because a lot of the material feels like tongue-twisters at first and I like being able to easily pause/rewind/repeat tricky parts.

My experience is that within the first week I noticed an immediate improvement in my pronunciation and fluidity in real-life conversation, and there are a few patterns creeping into my speech now that I didn't use before. The beginning was very encouraging, but the rate of improvement quickly dropped off. Most likely I'm continuing to improve, just it's so gradual that I can't see it myself any more. However, if I miss a day of shadowing, it's painfully obvious that I'm worse the next day. So I keep doing it in order not to suck more than I have to.

I've also gotten better at reading casual speech. Like interviews or manga dialogues with mumbly-style pronunciation instead of textbook spelling, or abbreviated expressions.

After I finish Shadowing 2 I'll probably try doing the audio in the 聞いて覚える話し方　日本語生中継 series.
http://nihongo.9640.jp/66
My language teacher recommended these books for listening practice, but I think they'll do for shadowing as well.

I'd do Subs2srs cards and read or speak along with the actor. Otherwise, you can shadow anything. I used to shadow anything on TV. It was hard at first, but after awhile you get the trick of being about 0.5 of a second or more behind the speaker and your ability improves. Also, Doramon or anything for kids is a good start. You would have to work over the TV show a bit, but it's possible (the TV to you version is only for pronunciation, rhythm and tone depending on your level.)