How to Improve your Listening and Pronunciation in English - Shadow and Repeat

"How to Improve your Listening and Pronunciation in English?"

Gabby: Hi there!

It's me, Gabby Wallace and in this video, I would like to show you a technique for improving

your pronunciation in English.

And this technique is called, "shadowing."

A shadow is that dark light that comes behind you when you are standing in the sun on a

sunny day.

So if the sun comes from one direction, like you can see the light in this room, it's coming

from one direction.

You can see the shadow is the darkness.

You can see some darkness on my face.

That's a shadow.

So the shadow comes right after the light.

So what we're going to do in shadowing is to speak right after you hear someone else

speak in English.

So I'm going to show you an example with the famous speech "I have a dream."

by Martin Luther King.

So the first thing you need to do is to select some listening material or audio.

It could be the news.

It could be a famous speech.

It could even be a song in English.

Anything you're interested in is fine.

The important thing is that you can understand the words, so that you can say them as soon

as you hear them, right after you hear them.

So don't wait at all.

You'll see what I mean.

I'll just show you about a minute because it's a long speech.

Okay.

So I'm gonna (going to) play this speech on YouTube.

You won't be able to see it but you should be able to hear it.

Okay.

I'm gonna show you shadowing.

Here we go.

[Playing on YouTube] "I am happy to join with you today in what

will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation."

[applause] "Five score years ago, a great American in

whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation..."

Okay.

I'm gonna (going to) stop there.

So shadowing is not easy.

As you could see, I had to focus completely to shadow because you don't actually listen

to the whole word.

You begin to hear the word and then you say it on top of the speaker.

It's a lot like simultaneous translation where you have to just speak as soon as you understand

what the person is saying.

So if this is really challenging and you wanna (want to) start somewhere a little bit easier,

I would suggest to repeat after the speaker.

So let's see what that looks like.

Just repeat each short phrase.

So let's go back here and I'm gonna (going to) play and then pause, so I can repeat.

So listen to this.

[Playing the speech on You Tube] "At this time, I have the honor to present

to you..." (pause)(repeat) "the moral leader of our nation."

(pause)(repeat) "I have the pleasure to present to you," (pause)(repeat) "Dr. Martin Luther

King."

(pause)(repeat) Okay.

So I think that you can understand what I'm doing.

I'm just playing about one or two seconds, very short, just a phrase that I can easily

repeat.

So I play two seconds and then pause and repeat the phrase exactly as I hear it, the intonation,

the pacing, even an accent.

If you hear an accent, do it exactly.

Repeat exactly as you hear it.

So this will train your listening and especially your pronunciation.

So I will include a link to the "I have a dream" speech, but I think that it will be

a good idea to find something that you are interested in like a song or a news piece.

There are a lot of good news pieces that are audio or video if you go to Voice of America.

The web address is voanews.com.

And actually, if you want to find this "I have a dream" speech, it's very easy to find

on line.

Just Google on or search on YouTube, "I have a dream speech" and you can find it there.

All right.

So try this out and let me know how it goes.

I hope it helps you.

All right.

Thanks for watching.

Talk to you soon.

Bye.

************************************************************************ Go Natural English - Gabby Wallace

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