“El Mariachi”, Day 8/14
(palabras, la música, y mucho más)
SUMMARY
Yabla “LoMásTv”: 8 hours
Extra Pronunciation: 0.5 hours
Background listening: 1 hour (music)
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Total time today actively studying Spanish: 8.5 hours
Total time spent studying Spanish during this experiment: 39.5 hours
Total time actively studying Spanish so far: 130.5 hours
Additional light immersion with music and TV: 36.5 hours
Grand total of Spanish study and immersion: 167 hours [22 days]
NOTES
I had a few firsts on Yabla today…my first music video (which was a little sad but beautiful), and my first Venezuelan and Puerto Rican videos (where I got to meet the truly vivacious Dr Guacuco and his bucket of spicy shellfish).
I was also thinking a lot about pronunciation and speaking skills today, and ended up doing more research than initially planned on the Internet this morning. Part of this was indubitably procrastination (for which I have a born talent), but all essentially in good faith to investigate ways of improving my spoken Spanish for future sessions. Hence a slightly longer post today on this topic…
There’s a whole sea of theories and practices abounding in this area, as you probably are already well aware, but certain rules of thumb seem to stand out from the rest. For example, initial temporary aural memory is very short and degrades quickly (my “phonological loop”, the bit of audio I can hear echoing/repeating afterwards inside my head, is generally 1-2 seconds long at best), therefore to get the most out of any form of repetition, the first important guideline seems to be to follow each segment of audio as quickly as possible when practicing speaking.
This leads to the second useful guideline. I find that it’s not good enough just to “hear” the target audio, although this has its benefits over time of course. What I really need to do is actively “listen” to a section, and then compare and analyse the differences between the native speaker and my own currently abysmal yet “eagre to learn” efforts at pronunciation.
Of course the best thing altogether is to be immersed in a Spanish speaking environment over several years, or have access to a gifted Spanish tutor or friend who can help you along with pronunciation each day. However, what should I do in the meantime to improve, I keep asking myself…
A combination of repetition, shadowing, and chorusing is the first answer that comes to mind. But I’ll be honest here. I know techniques like shadowing and chorusing work exceedingly well for a lot of people, but it’s just not essentially enjoyable for me most of the time, which can often put me off the language and further study for a while (which isn’t good at all in the long run). Perhaps, as Professor Arguelles maintains, it’s simply a matter of developing the correct technique over a month of guided study. But it turns out that I’m just not that patient or self-disciplined I guess. Repetition with my finger constantly on the pause button, on the other hand ;), is laboriously dull, even with the most engaging variety of videos and a handy interface like Yabla.
So what other approaches are out there? The quick answer is MANY. Some techniques focus more on speed and breadth, essentially speaking along or as closely as possible with the audio, whereas other techniques concentrate on depth and tend to be slower and more analytical or repetitive. Rather than going into the pros and cons of each approach (as it’s largely “horses for courses” here, i.e. each person has their own preferences, when it comes to study techniques), I’ll just list a few of the activities I did last week instead, and then briefly write down what I’ll be trying out this week.
Some of the activities I cut the rug with last week:
– in-depth study of English and Spanish phonetics and phonology, including a detailed comparison of phoneme sets.
– using a set video to practice pronunciation, focusing on 1-2 sentences at a time.
– repetition, shadowing, and finally chorusing with whole videos (with and without pauses).
– reading aloud to uncover problem areas whilst reciting texts (i.e. practising words or phrases I find difficult to say).
– recording myself on a digital voice recorder, and then comparing this with the original audio file (very useful!).
– exercises in “Pronounce It Perfectly in Spanish”, a general coursebook in Spanish pronunciation.
– following some of Olle Kjellin’s chorusing ideas with sample sentences to improve overall rhythm, intonation and prosody.
– breaking down sentences into phrasal “sense units”, initially practising these in isolation, and then joining them up later with the audio to improve word stress and overall flow.
Some more activities I’ll trip the light fantastic with this week:
– analysing and practicing new sections of a set video every day, paying particular attention to phrasing and intonation, with a view to reciting it all off by heart at the end of the week.
– learning choruses of songs off by heart too, and singing along with them later in the background (i.e. blind chorusing with music).
– blind shadowing the speaker in each of the Yabla videos (a bit like a co-rapping MC), ensuring I repeat only those words or phrases I can hear and understand clearly and just listening to the rest (with no reference to texts).
– continuing to record my recital of the set video so far on a digital voice recorder, and then comparing this with the original audio file several times at the end of each day.
Phew, I’m already out of breath just at the very thought of all this linguistic jitterbugging! I hope it all leads somewhere in the end… 🙂
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