Tone and active vocabulary problems at more advanced level

[Wippen (inactive)]

On 2/9/2018 at 9:00 PM, Tomsima said:

Keep on plowing on. I'm going for 30 mins a day for the whole year, will post audio at the end of the year, if you're up for it, you should too

 I can invest around one hour a day on studying (Monday to Friday). Do you mean chengyu here or did you mean shadowing? Posting yourself reading a text or doing a small presentation? Up for a challenge if that is what you mean.

 

@ 艾墨本  @Tomsima

When people , you guys, use shadowing, do you generally use new information or go over something you they have already listened to?

 

 

 

[Tomsima]

I got an article from a book which had an audio book recording with it, and shadowed 17 minutes of reading (one chapter). I shadowed everyday for 5 weeks, 30 mins a day, now I can read the article aloud at native speed with correct tones and intonation. I have probably read through this one article around 50-60 times since the beginning of Jan. I just switched to new content, a podcast taken from 得到 which includes transcript. Its very quick and I'm finding it hard going. Its only ten minutes long but I'm expecting not to be done until April time. Slow and steady with corrections is proving to be incredibly productive.

 

As for end of the year challenge, I say we aim to take a news report that comes out on January 1st 2019 (perhaps a VOA chinese live report) and record it ourselves then post in a new thread for comparison and criticism.

[Wippen (inactive)]

6 minutes ago, Tomsima said:

I got an article from a book which had an audio book recording with it, and shadowed 17 minutes of reading (one chapter). I shadowed everyday for 5 weeks, 30 mins a day, now I can read the article aloud at native speed with correct tones and intonation. I have probably read through this one article around 50-60 times since the beginning of Jan. I just switched to new content, a podcast taken from 得到 which includes transcript. Its very quick and I'm finding it hard going. Its only ten minutes long but I'm expecting not to be done until April time. Slow and steady with corrections is proving to be incredibly productive.

 

As for end of the year challenge, I say we aim to take a news report that comes out on January 1st 2019 (perhaps a VOA chinese live report) and record it ourselves then post in a new thread for comparison and criticism

 

I really appreciate this feedback. Thanks for taking the time! Just one last question - when you shadow, do you read at the same time or do you just use listening as input method=The speaker speaks a sentence and then you repeat whatever you heard (like interpreters do), which means you do not use the script whilst shadowing but of course you can consult it afterwards.

 

In the past i have had many lessons in which the teachers have presented an unseen text and asked me to read aloud from cold. I must admit I really dislike this approach as I end up first focusing on pronunciation.  After many lessons being forced to do this, I did notice that I improved. just picking up an unseen text suddenly seemed a less arduous task (though I still do not enjoy it). I also realised the benefits to doing that. 

 

I am up for the challenge.  Hopefully others will join in too.

[Tomsima]

The method I feel comfortable with: first slowly go through the whole audio sentence by sentence with text in front of you. Repeat it after the speaker, chorus with the speaker, whatever I feel is working best, until I can record that sentence back twice perfectly. Some sentences take 15 mins, some take 30 seconds. Its this way I find where my problems are. Always listen back to myself after every repetition.

Second time through, exactly the same except without text, only relying on listening.

Third time through, I can only hear each sentence one time, but can see text, then record it back. If I fail to do it quick enough I will try one more time, if I still fail I note it down and move on.

Fourth time: same as third time, but no text.

Then just repeat 4th way of shadowing every day, occasionally reading through whole text aloud for referencing progress and joining sentences together, comprehension.

I now wake up in the morning with all sorts of unusual sentences stuck in my head, it's....well....great 

[Wippen (inactive)]

@Tomsima  

Thanks for giving me 出某计策·

 

1 hour ago, Tomsima said:

Some sentences take 15 mins, some take 30 seconds

I am the same. Some sentences can be bastards. I used to try and just practice sentences by heart that I needed. I had a recording of it, but some took ages to sink in.

 

1 hour ago, Tomsima said:

I now wake up in the morning with all sorts of unusual sentences stuck in my head, it's....well....great 

I know these earworms:). I take this to mean that the phrase is beginning to embed itself in the long-term memory. I have these humming sentences all the time also. Sentences other people have said may appear out of the blue many weeks later. Also in my native language.

Being very aural, it is hard to get good at reading though.

[Tomsima]

2 minutes ago, Tøsen said:

Being very aural, it is hard to get good at reading though.

Agreed. The answer: also read more. Dammit...

[Tomsima]

small update: today I pronounced 麵 as miǎn, when it was the emphasis of my sentence, and naturally got laughed at by people at dinner. A few hours later I said 德國 with too much emphasis on 國 and got told I sound weird. This is what progress looks like I guess... 

[Wippen (inactive)]

@Tomsima However, there is some power to negative feedback. It creates an emotion that then helps remember the right way next time. You also have people prepared to correct and give feedback.   At least you didn's say "我"国 when meaning to say "China" :-)

[Angelina]

23 hours ago, 艾墨本 said:

Interesting you use French as an example, since the way syllables are split are in stark difference to English and Putonghua. French being syllable timed 音节型节奏 while English and Putonghua are stress timed 音步型节奏 ( @Angelina for a linguist to double check this) meaning the earlier assigns the same stress to each syllable while emotion is mainly shown in the final bit of a sentence while in the latter emotion can be shown in stressing most any of the words. So in Putonghua we can say 我很喜欢吃苹果 and throw stress on a variety of words to affect meaning. This is intonation, which is drastically different than tones.

 

Excellent point. 

 

 

@Tøsen

As for the problem you are talking about,  practice makes perfect  

Try reading about the dual process theory, you have to transfer your knowledge from System 2 to System 1. 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_process_theory