Inny Jan Wrote:(And I'm not quite sure why you ignored my point that there are circumstances when shadowing, even if you are not in favour of this technique, is better then doing nothing at all.)

Anything is potentially better than nothing and that obviously also applies to shadowing; that's not much of an endorsement.

But is it efficient? I've yet to hear a convincing account that it is. It is most certainly not the cure for accent problems that so many people purport it to be. The world is full of people who lived in a second country their entire lives, who can hear in their heads exactly how the 2nd language should sound and yet maintain horrible accents their entire lives. The real problem is how to change your habits (and wanting to, but that's another issue). Even when you get people to make a specific sound that they couldn't make before, they quickly go back to saying it exactly the way they said it before. That's why self-talk allows you to tweak your pronunciation in a way that shadowing can't, and that's why a partner that can give you a hint that you need to correct yourself is a great way to start changing your bad habits and improve your accent.

AlexandreC Wrote:It is most certainly not the cure for accent problems that so many people purport it to be.

Shadowing can help you "improve pronunciation." This is rather vague. You seem to have taken it as being an aimed at improving accent. I have not read every post in this thread carefully, but my impression is that you are the only one who interprets it that way.

Personally I think shadowing mostly improves prosody (i.e. flow). I don't know of anyone who would argue that it specifically aids in cases where an accent causes systematic mispronunciations. Is there someone here arguing that?

Just wondering,

CJ

cjon256 Wrote:

AlexandreC Wrote:It is most certainly not the cure for accent problems that so many people purport it to be.

Shadowing can help you "improve pronunciation." This is rather vague. You seem to have taken it as being an aimed at improving accent. I have not read every post in this thread carefully, but my impression is that you are the only one who interprets it that way.

It's the same thing. If your pronunciation is off, you have an accent; if you have an accent, something's off in your pronunciation... Improve your accent, you improve your pronunciation; improve your pronunciation, you improve your accent...

AlexandreC Wrote:

cjon256 Wrote:

AlexandreC Wrote:It is most certainly not the cure for accent problems that so many people purport it to be.

Shadowing can help you "improve pronunciation." This is rather vague. You seem to have taken it as being an aimed at improving accent. I have not read every post in this thread carefully, but my impression is that you are the only one who interprets it that way.

It's the same thing. If your pronunciation is off, you have an accent; if you have an accent, something's off in your pronunciation... Improve your accent, you improve your pronunciation; improve your pronunciation, you improve your accent...

But pronunciation is more than just pitch accent (which is what seems to be in focus now). Pronunciation is rhythm, stress, pitch, whether it's, let's say, a "deep o" or "shallow o" (and maybe others as well). So while the "improve your accent, you improve your pronunciation" is true, the opposite is not.

Inny Jan Wrote:

AlexandreC Wrote:

cjon256 Wrote:Shadowing can help you "improve pronunciation." This is rather vague. You seem to have taken it as being an aimed at improving accent. I have not read every post in this thread carefully, but my impression is that you are the only one who interprets it that way.

It's the same thing. If your pronunciation is off, you have an accent; if you have an accent, something's off in your pronunciation... Improve your accent, you improve your pronunciation; improve your pronunciation, you improve your accent...

But pronunciation is more than just pitch accent (which is what seems to be in focus now). Pronunciation is rhythm, stress, pitch, whether it's, let's say, a "deep o" or "shallow o" (and maybe others as well). So while the "improve your accent, you improve your pronunciation" is true, the opposite is not.

I meant accent as in accent, not as in pitch accent.

AlexandreC Wrote:I meant accent as in accent, not as in pitch accent.

That leaves out at least rhythm, and a "deep o" or "shallow o"

For information, today I had a chance to listen to two teenagers talking to each other in a lift. One of them at some stage said:
しらんかった

I take that it meant:
知らなかった

Funny is this pronunciation thing...

I don't that falls under the umbrella of pronunciation.

It's just a very common contraction. な＞ん

re shadowing...I don't think it's necessary. I'm definitely in the camp that thinks that 99% of the time when someone's speaking and/or pronunciation sucks it's because of lack of comprehension (ie. something to be fixed by input activities). However, shadowing is a listening activity, so it is most certainly helping somewhat. Also trying to keep up with your voice may force you to pay more attention to the sounds and match what you say to what you hear.

In my experience shadowing obscures both the sound of the recording and your own voice. To improve you need to listen to both and identify the differences, so I don't really see how it's supposed to help. The only thing I think it is good at is correcting poor rhythm, but in Japanese that can easily be done by tapping a beat with your hand or a metronome, and that will also allow you slow things down to a more manageable speed while also being much more aware of how you sound.

I do think a little shadowing can be useful, but relying on it heavily is big mistake.

AlexandreC Wrote:

semperanimus Wrote:what is shadowing? i'm not aware of the exact meaning of it.
are you saying that listening to audio is not a good way to learn to speak?

Listening to audio is a good way to improve your listening skills. Apart from the fact that you could acquire vocabulary this way and eventually use it when speaking, no, listening to audio alone doesn't significantly impact speaking skills -- to speak better, you need to speak more.

Shadowing is when the learner repeats exactly what the speaker says, either at the same time or with a short delay.

What are you talking about?

I rarely speak Japanese to anybody because I don't know any Japanese people where I live, and I can speak Japanese just fine. A couple of months ago, I spoke to a Japanese native on Skype and we could talk normal without any problem, she didn't have to slow down or dumb down her speech or anything.

And plus, how are you gonna just go out and "find" Japanese people to speak to them? I mean, what kind of creepy activity is that?

I just listen to Japanese audio pretty much all day long and that's it really. I read Japanese websites as well, this is all I do. I can speak without any problem, no accent either.

Realism Wrote:I rarely speak Japanese to anybody because I don't know any Japanese people where I live, and I can speak Japanese just fine. A couple of months ago, I spoke to a Japanese native on Skype and we could talk normal without any problem, she didn't have to slow down or dumb down her speech or anything.

[...]

I just listen to Japanese audio pretty much all day long and that's it really. I read Japanese websites as well, this is all I do. I can speak without any problem, no accent either.

Is this a joke? The idea that someone would speak a foreign language, let alone Japanese, to perfection ("no accent") without hardly ever practising it ("I rarely speak Japanese to anybody"; "I just listen to Japanese audio") is only conceivable if you are also claiming to be an extremely gifted language learner. Actually, this would go beyond any claim I've ever heard from the gifted polyglots I know or heard of.

Realism, I'm curious who told you that you have no accent? Was it the the one woman you spoke to on skype? Was it one of your professors during your 4-year university degree...?

nadiatims Wrote:I'm definitely in the camp that thinks that 99% of the time when someone's speaking and/or pronunciation sucks it's because of lack of comprehension (ie. something to be fixed by input activities).

I don't believe there is any camp who think that. (btw, back to the 99%, eh? )

There is pretty much consensus that accent is the hardest thing for adult learners to master to native level. Input is essential, but not sufficient. [edit: I'm not suggesting native accent should be the goal, just disagreeing with the claim made in previous threads that it's easy to acquire through input.]

There was a great deal of excitement over one study in which about 5 of the 10 or so Dutch learners were able to able to achieve a flawless English accent. They were ESL teachers in a masters program who had learned English growing up (which I believe included lots of English TV from an early age) and underwent specialized pronunciation training for several months. Those were considered very remarkable results and the study generated much discussion. I don't think there is support for your claim that many foreign language learners achieve native accents. This study wouldn't have been generated such interest if that were true.

One element is that once our brains become tuned to our first language(s) as babies, it is difficult to overcome those sounds which conflict with sounds in a new language. [This finding also doesn't seem to be controversial, yet you dispute its veracity.] If efforts aren't made to overcome those specific conflicts early on, people apparently learn vocab without properly distinguishing some sounds. (For eg, some Japanese who have learned to pronounce r and l when reading are still not able to distinguish them aurally. They rely on context to different some words which native English don't hear as homonyms. Training can help with this.)

Another issue is production entrenchment or fossilization. They say that mispronunciation of sounds is the hardest thing to correct once entrenched. Harder than other aspects of prosody as well as grammar and lexical errors. Best to correct it early if correct pronunciation is desired.

I just don't think you should keep advising people to ignore their pronunciation because it is easy to fix later and that input alone will ensure correct pronunciation. If you have some reason to believe that this research is wrong (beyond your view that we shouldn't rely on experts), please let us know.
Edits in [ ].

Learning how to speak isn't just about accent, although I think having a good (not necessarily perfect) accent is part of the claim to fluency, especially in a pitch-accent language like Japanese.

Some people can get to a convincing accent in a foreign language with very little speaking practice, as long as they do a fair bit of listening. Not perfect, but say 90% there. To give you an example, I learned French in school and had very little practice speaking, and then later went to the same hairdresser in Montreal for four years, and he only realized that I wasn't from France when I told him. Actually practically nobody in Quebec ever seemed to say anything else, and you know that people there are honest to the point of rudeness (Alexandre, I don't know if you're Quebecois, otherwise I'd say you're a case in point ). I don't think they were just trying to flatter me, that would be too anglo. On the other hand, I'm evidently only 90% there because my French (i.e. not Quebecois) landlord heard my non-native accent right away (I wish the same had happened with Japanese, but it didn't).

Another example: in my first year in graduate school there was this guy who my English classmates thought was from Bristol, until he at some point said he was from Brussels and had gone on exchange to Bristol in high school.

So I wouldn't dismiss Realism's claim to having virtually no accent. I would say that if your native language is German or Italian, perhaps also Swedish, it's entirely possible that you have very little accent in Japanese even without much practice. But I have never, ever met a native speaker of English or French who didn't have a noticeable accent in Japanese -- that is, noticeable even to the non-native like me.

But I agree that obtaining a "perfect" accent is entirely possible, but indeed usually requires professional instruction.

In Montreal, for example, there used to be many call centres, and several companies offered training to rid people of their non-native accents (as in India, incidentally). Many French Canadian actors also take accent reduction/elimination training to learn how to speak "standard American" so they can get jobs as extras in US movies. Actors learn to erase their native accents and acquire new accents all the time, so it's definitely not out of the question. Plus you never know how many non-native speakers with perfect accents you've met in your life... the nature of it is that you can't tell.

That aside, I don't think shadowing will do much for you except get the flow of the language right. You're probably better off repeating the native speaker audio recording until you memorize the phrase, so you can use it and modify parts of it when the need arises.

Some people have a true gift for learning languages. The vast majority of polyglots have, at best, good or ok accents.

Some people have a gift for imitating pronunciation, yet are not necessarily very good at learning languages.

And then some vary rare people have a gift for both language acquisition AND pronunciation. I've never heard any such person claim that learning to speak a language with little to no accent was anything else than a lot of work and dedication, including putting a lot of emphasis on oral production.

In this light, Realism's claim is... hmm... less than realistic.

AlexandreC Wrote:Some people have a true gift for learning languages. The vast majority of polyglots have, at best, good or ok accents.

Some people have a gift for imitating pronunciation, yet are not necessarily very good at learning languages.

Which is why I'm equally impressed if someone speaks two or three languages learned as an adult with perfect accent as when someone speaks five or six with crappy accent.

But I still think that your native language has tremendous influence on how hard it is to achieve a native-like accent in a particular language. Based on my subjective experience, a few combinations that seem to work well:

Swedish --> Japanese
Italian --> Japanese
German <--> South American Spanish
French --> Brazilian Portuguese (although I really can't say that with any authority)
Russian --> German
Finnish --> that funny language Greedo speaks before Han Solo shoots him

and of course

Japanese --> No known language, it seems.

how about spanish? lol. they have mad vowels too.

howtwosavealif3 Wrote:how about spanish? lol. they have mad vowels too.

Japanese and Spanish both have 5 vowels only. It doesn't get much easier than that. Languages with less than 5 vowel sounds are fairly rare. Languages like German or French have up to 3 times more.

The reason I am a bit skeptical of Realism's claims is b/c I've experienced him(?) trying to promote the idea that pure exposure without study is the best method by using himself as evidence ... conveniently leaving out the fact that he had 4 years of univ Japanese study. Reading a lot of Japanese after university is certainly going to improve one's language tremendously, but we can't ignore that a foundation was already established in Realism's case. So I think it's somewhat disingenuous to advise absolute beginners to start reading novels by claiming that's how he became fluent.

As for the accent stuff, I was actually quite surprised to learn how difficult it is to master. They've done some massive studies (looking at age of immigration, education, work, % day spent using new language, income, home language, parental education, amount of exposure to native speakers, etc.) The strongest correlation was higher education in the new language. Motivation to change accent was another important factor.

When academics who are known for being strong advocates of the importance of input are the ones concluding that input isn't enough, I feel fairly confident I'm not getting bamboozled. I'd rather to rely on their results than my own personal experience, possibly flawed memory or mysterious bias...

fwiw, though, I haven't met a foreigner who could speak Japanese with a flawless accent who wasn't raised in Japan (or partially in Japanese.) This includes foreign students, foreign profs, foreign professions and very long-term residents. This includes men with Japanese wives and children who have lived and worked in Japanese for decades. I spent 14 years around Japanese students and graduates who had attended univ in English overseas. The only ones without accents had also done grade school overseas. Accentless JFL learners surely must exist, but I didn't meet them.

So...I'm skeptical of the claim that most Japanese who attend univ overseas return without accents. I'm also skeptical of the claim that anyone in immersion education from age 12 will achieve native level language skills (b/c that hasn't been the result of 50 years of Canadian immersion education.) What are these claims based on?

Thora Wrote:fwiw, though, I haven't met a foreigner who could speak Japanese with a flawless accent who wasn't raised in Japan (or partially in Japanese.) This includes foreign students, foreign profs, foreign professions and very long-term residents. This includes men with Japanese wives and children who have lived and worked in Japanese for decades. I spent 14 years around Japanese students and graduates who had attended univ in English overseas. The only ones without accents had also done grade school overseas. Accentless JFL learners surely must exist, but I didn't meet them.

What percentage of those would you think were native English speakers? I've met only very, very few native English speakers who spoke any other language without a discernible accent. The vast majority of recognizable foreigners in Japan are American/Australian/British/Canadian etc, so perhaps that's part of the explanation?

Thora Wrote:So...I'm skeptical of the claim that most Japanese who attend univ overseas return without accents. I'm also skeptical of the claim that anyone in immersion education from age 12 will achieve native level language skills (b/c that hasn't been the result of 50 years of Canadian immersion education.) What are these claims based on?

I'd agree if you put it that way. I've met my fair share of Japanese diplomats and high-level bureaucrats now... maybe 150 or so in total... Only two of them speak native-like English without any accent (actually, one has a mild Australian accent, the other a noticeable Queen's English pronunciation). Both grew up in English-speaking countries because their fathers were Japanese diplomats. That's a highly-educated, highly motivated group of people.

About the immersion education: that's a particularly damning assessment because most parents who send their kids to French immersion are educated, middle-class people whose kids have the best chances. I'm wondering though what percentage of teachers in French immersion schools is native speakers of French. At least none of my classmates from university who now teach in French.

AlexandreC Wrote:

howtwosavealif3 Wrote:how about spanish? lol. they have mad vowels too.

Japanese and Spanish both have 5 vowels only.

Listen to enough of both languages and you'll start to wonder if that's actually true.

I do.

Irixmark Wrote:What percentage of those would you think were native English speakers? I've met only very, very few native English speakers who spoke any other language without a discernible accent. The vast majority of recognizable foreigners in Japan are American/Australian/British/Canadian etc, so perhaps that's part of the explanation?

I don't really know about languages other than Japanese. (Do you mean lazy English speakers or some feature of the language itself?) I've come across articles comparing pronunciation, timing and intonation errors in Japanese by learners from different L1s. More focused on specific errors than overall assessment, though.

But yes, the fluent speakers I met in academic and business worlds and the fluent long-term residents were mostly native English-speakers. Some of the older guys spoke fluently, but couldn't read. I also knew some fluent business people from Germany, Italy and France. I can't really compare the accents of people I met from other countries b/c they weren't at the same level.

Classmates in language related courses spanned the globe, but Europeans and North Americans outnumbered other regions. They had at least an undergrad in Japanese and were taking languages classes to supplement their research or MAs in other areas. The Germans and Russians were really impressive. Not so much accent as general language ability. No idea why they were so good.

The foreign students in my non-language seminars were mostly Chinese and Koreans. They had accents. The only other Westerner was Spanish. Her Japanese accent was very mild. She had done her undergrad in Japan as well. An Australian friend at the PhD level had an incredible grasp of the language, but still had a noticeable accent. (I'm sure comprehension was not the problem.)

I lived in a small int'l dorm for a year with researchers from India, Malaysia, Thailand, China, Korea, Africa. Japanese was the only common language. We all had different accents, which made for a few amusing miscommunications. lol

This is why I don't get the claim made in an earlier thread that foreign students in Japan don't have accents. Folks currently studying in Japan could tell us if things have changed since I was a student. Has easier access to audio input eliminated foreign accents?

You can often guess someone's L1 based on their accented Japanese. Targeted L1-specific learning can apparently help reduce those identifiable traits, but as long as they don't impede communication (or result in discrimination), I don't see much need to eliminate them. :-)

Irixmark Wrote:About the immersion education: that's a particularly damning assessment because most parents who send their kids to French immersion are educated, middle-class people whose kids have the best chances. I'm wondering though what percentage of teachers in French immersion schools is native speakers of French. At least none of my classmates from university who now teach in French.

Indeed, something I read mentioned that immersion schools had scored above average on standardized exams. They attributed that in part to demographics. With public schools currently facing a number of challenges, some parents are apparently enrolling their kids in French immersion for what they perceive to be a better education. Some are calling it "poor man's private school".

I don't know offhand what % of teachers are native speakers.

The students had high-level language comprehension, but weren't achieving native-level French in production. For eg, certain grammar, expressions and pragmatic awareness were not native-like...especially in writing. Some researchers attributed this in part to insufficient range and amount of production. This goes beyond accent. It was more a reminder that there's more to it than just input and we should avoid making stuff up.

edit: I've taken the discussion off topic, sorry. Back to shadowing.

Thora Wrote:edit: I've taken the discussion off topic, sorry. Back to shadowing.

If there is anybody who took the topic off it was AlexandreC who insists that accent and pronunciation are the same thing.

And topic is actually "Technique to improve listening and speaking" so any relevant posts are... relevant. So far your, Thora, posts are ones of the most interesting in this thread. (Maybe b/c they are almost completely aligned with my own experiences?) Keep them coming.

This is coming from learning English. For listening, even though I had a lot of exposure to said language, because of depending on English subtitles, my listening didn't improve. Of course, I didn't want it to at the time, but when I did, I tried listening to sound with subtitles, that also didn't help because I was used to read without listening.
So, what improved my listening ability? Of course I was already at advanced level in reading, it was songs that greatly helped me and gave me the initial push. Songs naturally fit to this task, their lyrics are available and we constantly repeat them, that's it!
By listening to a song with lyrics, then without, then again with to nail the rest, and keep listening to it everyday, you will memorize it with SOUNDS, this I found to greatly help.

As for speaking, at first, we need to do some repeating to practice pronunciation, then speaking will improve speaking.

Inny Jan Wrote:If there is anybody who took the topic off it was AlexandreC who insists that accent and pronunciation are the same thing.

I'm not sure what you mean.

While obviously, the words accent and pronunciation are not synonyms, working to improve your accent or your pronunciation is indeed the same thing. How could you work on improving your accent in a way that doesn't impact pronunciation or vice-versa? Or are you trying to say that intonation is part of accent but not part of pronunciation?

@kazalee Japanese and Spanish have 5 vowel sounds each. That's a fact. I'm not sure why you think it sounds or feels like more... but it's still 5.


The OP claimed without further explanation, in his only post in this thread, that listening to the audio from Japanese videos for 2 years has helped his listening and speaking skills. Ignoring the fact that during a period of 2 years, a million other things could have helped him improve his oral, supposing it has improved, I objected to the fact that listening only would significantly improve speaking skills. Someone then suggested he might have been shadowing, to which I replied that shadowing is not an effective part of any regimen designed to improve speaking ability -- not to mention that he probably didn't shadow in public transportation.

Not sure how much more to the point I could be without the OP giving us anymore information.