This is really obvious and simple but I thought I'd make a post since it's helped me a lot.

Basically I rip all the audio streams out any Japanese videos I have, load them onto my iPhone, and listen to an episode during my commute to uni or whenever there is time to fill.

It's pretty effortless and an easy way to rack up your hours exposed to Japanese. Obviously shows which are dialogue dense are the best, but as long as its a show you like your bound to get something out of it. Some examples of shows I've tried are GTO, Liar Game, Seinfeld (Jp Dub), Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokemon.

For those wondering how to extract audio I've been using "Pazera Free Audio Extractor" which works pretty well. You can get it here
http://www.pazera-download.com/audio_mul...RTABLE.zip

I've been doing this for about two years now and my listening and speaking skills have greatly improved. Don't worry about understanding everything just enjoy listening to the sound of Japanese, as you listen to the same episode multiple times you'll pick up more and more and eventually be able to quote the entire show!

[s0apgun]

Another option to extract audio is MPEG Streamclip.

You can also just record the audio stream as you watch it. For mac I used to use Wiretap Pro.

@OP

What you describe is basically "Shadowing for Lazy People" ™.

These days, without extra effort, I can go:
僕は嘘をつくのは得意ではない。でも嘘をつくこと自体はそれほどきらいではない。変な言い方だけど (end so on...)
真っ白な嘘・村上春樹

I used Audacity, where I segmented the whole essay and piece by piece forced upon myself with "Shadowing for Not-So-Lazy People" ™. You must have seen faces of my Japanese colleagues when during one of the lunches I threw at them:
日本語では真っ赤な嘘っていうけどどうして嘘は赤いのか知ってますか。

Well, at my stage declamation of 村上春樹 is more of a gimmick then anything else but it's fun so why not.

Where can one find Seinfeld in Japanese?

And how does this help your speaking?

jonokon Wrote:Basically I rip all the audio streams out any Japanese videos I have, load them onto my iPhone, and listen to an episode during my commute to uni or whenever there is time to fill.

Nukemarine has some posts / youtube videos on doing this sort of thing that you might want to look at. IIRc, he expands it a bit by cutting the shows up into smaller clips and playing them randomly, etc.

AlexandreC Wrote:And how does this help your speaking?

I assume shadowing.

overture2112 Wrote:

AlexandreC Wrote:And how does this help your speaking?

I assume shadowing.

Over two years, you'd be hard pressed to demonstrate that any improvement in speaking has actually come from the shadowing itself. I've yet to hear a clear account of how shadowing actually made anyone's speaking skills improve significantly. Even Prof. Arguelles, who advocated in favour of shadowing and who did this exercise extensively (see his videos on Youtube), said that it did little to help him improve his Mandarin pronunciation. Not to mention that the skills involved in shadowing have little to do with the ability to speak freely and fluently...

AlexandreC Wrote:And how does this help your speaking?

Ask me in some years from now, when I make improvements in fully controlled output.

AlexandreC Wrote:Not to mention that the skills involved in shadowing have little to do with the ability to speak freely and fluently...

The skills involved in shadowing include production at a native level - speed and accent wise. Phrases that you would otherwise have to think of, can be played back spontaneously with small amount of cognitive process. For example, if I want to say in Japanese:
"Where do I need to go to (eg. buy this book)"

these days I can go straight with:
"どこに行けば..."

Shadowing is one of the tools in language acquisition and I don't think you should totally dismiss it.

You could have internalized "Where do I need to go..." by repeating it just few times, for a few minutes. No shadowing needed.

Shadowing is invoked here as a means to solve fine pronunciation issues, and for that, I think it's inadequate and ineffective.

nadiatims Wrote:You can also just record the audio stream as you watch it. For mac I used to use Wiretap Pro.

On OS X, Soundflower (http://cycling74.com/products/soundflower/) what comes out of the speakers to the recording software of your choice, e.g. Audacity.

AlexandreC Wrote:Shadowing is invoked here as a means to solve fine pronunciation issues, and for that, I think it's inadequate and ineffective.

@alexandreC
where here did anyone but you mention accent? the OP is talking about the ability to understand words and produce them at native speed. Or am I missing something?
on a side note, how do you sugguest working on accent?


interesting method. couldn't you do the same thing with songs or podcasts?
which are already in audio form.

AlexandreC Wrote:... I think it's inadequate and ineffective.

Most of the shadowing can be done at times when you drive or walk for a lunch. The only more ineffective thing that you can do at those times is doing nothing.

semperanimus Wrote:

AlexandreC Wrote:Shadowing is invoked here as a means to solve fine pronunciation issues, and for that, I think it's inadequate and ineffective.

@alexandreC
where here did anyone but you mention accent? the OP is talking about the ability to understand words and produce them at native speed. Or am I missing something?
on a side note, how do you sugguest working on accent?


interesting method. couldn't you do the same thing with songs or podcasts?
which are already in audio form.

My mistake; I will still claim that shadowing in ineffective as a way to improve "speaking skills", although the OP himself hasn't yet said which part of his regimen has allowed him to improve these skills.

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?

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.

Seinfeld J-dubbed? Where? I am looking but…

AlexandreC Wrote: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.

While listening to audio -alone- is not enough to improve speaking skills, I think it is a -prerequisite- for improving speaking skills (unless you live in Japan and hear native Japanese constantly, of course). To pronounce properly, you need to know what you're trying to sound like first.

Aside from having a private coach as you suggest (which is either very expensive or requires heavily imposing on a friendship), I'm not sure there is anything better than shadowing as a single technique. I think occasionally recording yourself and listening to the results is a good idea, as it's hard to hear yourself clearly when you speak so this will provide essentially feedback that will improve the results of shadowing practice.

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:

AlexandreC Wrote: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.

While listening to audio -alone- is not enough to improve speaking skills, I think it is a -prerequisite- for improving speaking skills (unless you live in Japan and hear native Japanese constantly, of course). To pronounce properly, you need to know what you're trying to sound like first.

Aside from having a private coach as you suggest (which is either very expensive or requires heavily imposing on a friendship), I'm not sure there is anything better than shadowing as a single technique. I think occasionally recording yourself and listening to the results is a good idea, as it's hard to hear yourself clearly when you speak so this will provide essentially feedback that will improve the results of shadowing practice.

People who shadow rarely know what they are shadowing. They obviously try to copy what they hear, but they don’t really know what phonological components they are hearing, let alone which of those components matter. For instance, it’s not uncommon for people to shadow for a long time without even realizing that there is pitch, or that English and Japanese j- or -n are different. Under those conditions, you can keep shadowing all you want, little will improve.

But let’s suppose you know exactly what you’re hearing and what you have to replicate. There is still no mechanism to ensure that you are doing anything correctly. You could shadow a 10-minute monologue, make 150 mistakes and be none the wiser. At least, with self-talk, you can say the same thing over and over, first slowly then faster, until you think you got it right. With shadowing, you hear it, you say it and it’s gone – and you’ve had very little control over what happened and no opportunity to correct it or improve it. And actually, it’s the attempt to self-correct that’s one of the most effective way to improve one’s pronunciation, not guessing at lightning speed.

As for the private coach, I was thinking more along the lines of a language partner who, in the context of an equal exchange, helps you for free. But even if you had to pay the tutor, you should be able to find someone willing to help for cheap if it only requires them to show up for an hour without any preparation.

So... you're saying that shadowing without every studying phonetics, pronunciation rules, pitch-accent rules, or recording your own voice, would be useless.

Yeah, I'd have to agree that shadowing to the exclusion of any other pronunciation study or practice -would- be useless.

As for language exchange - if you're in an English speaking country, you'll be very lucky to find someone to come sit and do pronunciation exercises for language exchange. If you're in Japan, it will be easy. It all depends on who's surrounded by the language they are learning and who's desperate for any native speaker of that language. (I'm in America myself, and would probably have to commute an hour or more to do any in-person language exchange given my distance from the next major city with any noticeable Japanese population... that's three hours of my day plus any fee or exchanged time plus transportation costs to do an hour of practice. Hmmm... and I'm not in the worst position, pity those in the middle of the country, the midwest, the great plains and the southwest... it'd be easy to be a day's drive from the nearest native Japanese speaker if you aren't on a coast. )

There is internet chat, but I think you'd be foolish to waste your time on pronunciation exercises given the tiny overlap of waking hours between the US and Japan, unless your pronunciation is truly incomprehensible. That should be production time in the grammar/communication sense.

I don't see it really - I think it's perfectly possible to learn -pronunciation- from shadowing/self-recording/phonetics and other self-study (although pitch-accent resources for the foreign learner are sorely lacking, so you'd better have or develop a good ear for pitch; or resign yourself to getting fluent in other ways first and then studying NHK pronunciation.) I think natural -sentence- production is where native feedback is invaluable.

Improving speaking ability is something I've been wondering about myself - I tend to slip into English too easily when chatting one on one with language exchange partners.
While not exactly the shadowing method, would reading aloud from a text, and then listening to an audio recording of it afterwards help with speaking? The Tobira textbook has a lot of practice conversations and the website has readings of the conversations available to download, which sounds like it could be helpful for practicing speaking.
One thing I did learn today (completely by accident!) is that my spoken Japanese improves a lot when I'm speaking to a group of 3 or 4 Japanese people. For some reason, when it's in a small group, I feel more comfortable speaking in Japanese.

Quark - my Japanese accent is pretty much atrocious, I'm sure, aside from my 得意 ability to say 人 with that perfect hiss that isn't しと but rather a 'hsito' sort of thing that would be great if only I could pronounce the other sounds in a downtown 1990's Tokyo sort of way....

But I'm working my way up to significant accent focus (hence my interest in this thread and general cruelty and verbal abuse towards the other hapless and well-meaning posters) and have pretty firmly come to the conclusion that any mix of -listening- to real Japanese and -producing- the same sounds is good. Especially if you get feedback (record yourself and compare to the original, or get a native speaker to evaluate you. The former risks an untrained ear and the latter risks personal dialect over generally acceptable, but, hey, nothing's perfect.)

If you didn't follow that, I just said 'yeah, that's a good idea', in more words.

Ahem. Anyway, if you have the opportunity to speak in small groups, I absolutely encourage it. It's an ancient story, and a personal anecdote, and has no value at all... BUT... when I was in England for just two weeks, spending time surrounded by the English my accent quickly adapted to theirs whenever I spoke in small groups and just as quickly reverted when I rejoined my traveling (American) schoolmates. If I had the luxury of sitting in the corner of a pub in any part of the world and chatting with a couple of fellows there, I'm sure I could pick up any giving local accent in a week or so. Of course, I don't have that luxury... work, bills, and so on! But I don't think there's any better way to pick up proper speech patterns than shooting the ... stuff ... over a couple pints.

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:Ahem. Anyway, if you have the opportunity to speak in small groups, I absolutely encourage it. It's an ancient story, and a personal anecdote, and has no value at all... BUT... when I was in England for just two weeks, spending time surrounded by the English my accent quickly adapted to theirs whenever I spoke in small groups and just as quickly reverted when I rejoined my traveling (American) schoolmates. If I had the luxury of sitting in the corner of a pub in any part of the world and chatting with a couple of fellows there, I'm sure I could pick up any giving local accent in a week or so. Of course, I don't have that luxury... work, bills, and so on! But I don't think there's any better way to pick up proper speech patterns than shooting the ... stuff ... over a couple pints.

It's weird how a person can pick up an accent of whoever they're around. When I was in high school, my parents were friends with a family from South Africa. When their son was with his family, he had a fairly thick Afrikaans accent, but when he was at school, his accent was really toned down, and he sounded more Canadian. I had a friend who, after she heard him speak around his family, accused him of being a 'faker' and making up his Afrikaans accent to 'fit in' with his parents. I tried to tell her that he probably wasn't even aware of his accent changing, but she didn't believe me.
The three people that I met today are all from Osaka, which I'm really excited about. The Kansai accent is メチャかわいい and I really want to learn more. Unfortunately, they're only in Canada for three weeks. 残念！

quark Wrote:Unfortunately, they're only in Canada for three weeks. 残念！

I don't know what level your Japanese is at... three weeks would be plenty of time for me to pick up another English accent, but a Japanese accent would be a serious challenge (especially the pitch part). 頑張ってください！ If you can, perhaps you could try to record a conversation or two for future reference with a standard voice-memo recorder or a smartphone app, to give you a chance to refresh the accent. Asking to do that may be a little touchy perhaps so be careful!

AlexandreC Wrote:At least, with self-talk, you can say the same thing over and over, first slowly then faster, until you think you got it right. With shadowing, you hear it, you say it and it’s gone – and you’ve had very little control over what happened and no opportunity to correct it or improve it. And actually, it’s the attempt to self-correct that’s one of the most effective way to improve one’s pronunciation, not guessing at lightning speed.

Oh man, shadowing is just a crutch to get to the point of self talk. I agree that if you shadow only then there is little value in it but who would be so stupid to rely on shadowing exclusively?!

Of course you look at the "phonological components" and of course you study all the used vocabulary and grammar points. As I said before, "shadowing is one of the tools in language acquisition" - just one of the many. (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.)