Does anyone here at an intermediate level do shadowing? What do you think about it? I’m wondering if it’s something I’m missing in my routine but it seems really hard, so I’d love to hear peoples thoughts!
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I do a lot of listen, repeat since I can pick up and self-evaluate intonation. I do a little bit of speak with the recording when I’m struggling or getting tongue tied.
As someone who’s done a lot of formal study in music, I have two helpful hints for the hearing challenged and introverts who are studying without a coach.
- Record and listen to yourself. It’s painful, but you must built up good self-evaluation skills.
- Exaggerate/Acting! Dial it up to 10 in practice and you’ll probably be a 5 when you do the real performance…
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Really depends on your goals whether it’s worth it or not.
I’ve fallen into the typical trap of grinding self-study and getting an OK level of understanding, but still being pretty useless at productively using the language.
There’s a podcast called Japanese with Kanako that is designed for shadowing, and I sometimes listen to an episode (mostly about 10 mins) in my car.
The presenter will introduce a sentence in English - do a bit of a pause, then say it in Japanese. I try produce the sentence in Japanese myself during the pause, then see how Kanako forms it, then shadow her sentences and consider my pronunciation, word choice, messed up conjugations, and all the rest.
I go for the ones marked #3 (using grammar points from Try N3). This is below my JLPT level, but it’s good practice for actively using these points and trying to form sentences.
I’ve also tried straight up shadowing some of the easier learner podcasts (Let’s Talk In Japanese eg.) when driving, but I find I more or less don’t have the stamina and am a bit unsure of the benefits of just repeating stuff to get it out rather than actively producing my own language.
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I love her podcast - also because it is structured around Genki 1, Genki 2 and Quartet. (If you start from episode #01)
IMO, this makes it super useful if you use those books - because you can follow along after doing a lesson once you (mostly) know the grammer and vocab to really reinforce what you have learned.
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I completely forgot to reply to this FML
This sounds really perfect!! Thank you for the recommendation, I’m going to check it out ASAP and see how it goes for me.
My goal with shadowing is just to make speaking a little more fluid so I hope that it will help.
I am already cringing without even doing it LOL but I will give it a go! Thank you for the recommendations 
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I have also been wondering recently if shadowing would be a sensible next step for me and these recommendations seem to be exactly what I have been looking for! I will definitely be checking them out!
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When watching dungeon meishi, I was worried I wasn’t listening to the Japanese and just understanding from the pictures
So I shadowed along with the Japanese subs. I also shadow verity TV
Just put your expectations on the floor. your goal isn’t to understand every word, or repeate full sentences.
You want to listen carefully and make Japanese noises like a bitty baby going “Hiite, ko ten to wa” (正しい：聞いて、露骨に表情をなくした。not even close).
When ever I want to give up (shadowing Japanese is really hard) I say “being bad at shadowing is easy, and you gotta be bad to get gud”
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