 
Mastering Pronunciation

of a

Foreign Language

For Independent

Language Learners

### By Ronald Tichenor

#  Copyright

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2017 by Ronald Tichenor

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

For permission requests, contact the author at the address below.

MasteringPronunciation@language-learning-advisor.com

# Mission Statement

I see this ebook as primarily for two sets of language learners -

  * Those who are just beginning study of a new language, whether it's your first or not.

  * Those who have already studied a language to some degree and want to fix a flawed accent or just improve their pronunciation.

The sequence of techniques I propose to use in this ebook can be helpful for either case with only a few slight adjustments.

There are two fundamental features of your target language that you need to identify and begin to use in order to pronounce it correctly and speak with a good accent.

  * The Sound Set of the target language, that is, the inventory of sounds that the natives use to speak the language.

  * And what I call the Dynamic Signature of the language \- the patterns of rhythm, stress, and intonation that natives use.

The purpose of the techniques I propose is pretty straightforward. They will allow you to identify the Sound Set and the Dynamic Signature of the language and begin to practice and use them right from the beginning, even before you have learned anything else in the language.

You can do this alongside any other language learning materials you are using and studying from.

It doesn't have to cost anything more than what you have already invested. I will offer recommendations and suggestions for additional materials, none of which are very expensive and many can be found for free.

I believe this can be done with any language, although there are some languages that will have some limiting factors and caveats that I will get into later.

What I'm offering you in this ebook is just one approach.

There are, of course, other techniques, tools, and methods that you can use outside of what I recommend in this ebook.

I don't want to **tell** you what to do but rather to show you what **can** be done.

I believe that creating our own language learning plan and defining our own individual process is the key to being a successful language learner.

The approach I propose with these techniques and tools features a focus on pronunciation and accent improvement that provides a clear and simple path to develop and fine-tune pronunciation of a foreign language.

I believe that anyone using this approach can achieve an exceptional accent in any language in a more efficient manner and at a vastly improved rate over the typical approach.

# Table of Contents

# Copyright

# Mission Statement

# Table of Contents

# Preface
# Introduction

# Overview of This Ebook

# Who is this ebook for?

# Step 1 – The Pronunciation Guide

# What materials you will need

# How much time to spend on this step

# Using the Pronunciation Guide – A First Run-Through

# A More Thorough Run-Through

# Isolation

# Approximate

# Exaggerate

# Re-integration

# The Circuit

# Your Native English Sound Set

# Constructing Your New Sound Set

# Step 2 - Reading Aloud

# What materials you will need

# Reading Aloud

# The Dynamic Signature - Rhythm, Dynamics, Stress, Speed, Intonation

# Uncovering the Dynamic Signature

# Variations on Reading Aloud

# Getting the Most out of Reading Aloud

# Notes on Non-Roman Writing Systems

# Moving Forward

# Step 3 - Shadowing

# What materials you will need

# What is Shadowing?

# Variations on Shadowing

# Physical Training

# Putting It All Together

# A Natural Progression

# The Keys

# Listen a lot

# Speak a lot

# Establish a Routine

# Set Goals

# Diminishing Returns

# Evolving Use Over Time

# Wrapping Up

# Appendices

# A - Pronunciation Neglected By Native English Speakers

# B - Why the Approach Presented Here Works

# C - What Do I Mean By 'Mastering' Pronunciation Anyway?

# D - Case Studies

# Case Study #1 - Darren

# Case Study #2 - Sophie

# Case Study #3 - Andre

# Acknowledgements

#

# Preface

When I wrote out this ebook in a first draft, I looked back at it and realized that I placed all of the background and support material in the first chapters. It seemed logical to lay out that part first to make it easiest for you, the reader, to understand how and why the techniques I am proposing here work, and how I came to write this.

But then I realized that you aren't here to read my ebook for its own sake. What I mean is, you're not here as just a reader. You are here as a language learner. Being a learner, especially a language learner, is a far more active role than being a reader. I think it requires a different mindset than learning other subjects.

So I turned everything on its head.

Now, I just have a brief introduction describing how this ebook works and who it is for. Then I get right into the techniques.

I eliminated much of that support and background material or moved it to the end. You can look at it whenever you like. I shouldn't assume that you need it or even want it, so I'm not going to force you into reading that stuff. You want action. Let's get down to it as quickly as possible.

# Introduction

If you are studying a foreign language and you want to focus on your pronunciation, you need to use techniques and tools that will help you do exactly that. You also need to spend a significant portion of your study time specifically on pronunciation and speaking, over and above what is normally expected in a typical language learning regimen.

That much may seem obvious, but - the _earlier_ you do this, the better.

Of course you are going to say "hey, how can I possibly focus on pronunciation and speaking when I haven't learned _anything_ in the language yet?" A very reasonable question. However, with a few caveats, that's _exactly_ what we are going to do.

What I am proposing is this –

You should specifically focus on pronunciation _without concern for meaning_.

You can do this very early in your language study, before you are burdened with having to understand any grammar and vocabulary.

I'll show you how you can do this.

You will be doing a lot of listening in order to get the sounds of the language into your head, so that you know what it is supposed to sound like coming out of your mouth.

But through isolating and exploring the sounds of the language, Reading Aloud, and Shadowing techniques, you can develop your pronunciation from the very beginning. You will achieve rapid early progress with your pronunciation, allowing you to spend time fine-tuning your accent through the rest of your language study.

When front-loading your language learning regimen by focusing on pronunciation like this, the results are quite interesting. It has an effect on the rest of your learning from that point on -

  * Greater pattern recognition with regards to word order, verb forms, noun cases, and other grammatical types

  * Easier vocabulary recognition and learning

  * Better parsing skills

  * Improved overall listening skills

This comes about by being exposed to a lot of intermediate and advanced language, before you even know what it is, and by interacting with that material intensively. The process of learning the grammar and all that vocabulary is made easier – you're giving meaning to all those patterns that you've already begun to recognize and internalize. It's like clarifying something you already knew. It's almost like re-learning a language you had forgotten.

Usually, when we try to learn a language we try do everything at once – learn the grammar, word order, how to construct sentences, learn and remember vocabulary, learn about the culture, improve listening comprehension, and try to pronounce this new language – all at the same time!

It's too much.

I like to isolate parts to work on separately, especially the parts that I know will be tricky.

That's what this is all about – isolating and focusing on the act of pronunciation.

But pronunciation is fundamental – all your language depends on it. That's why it's best to do this early. It's also difficult. Focusing on it right away lets you set a strong foundation to build upon.

This isn't a 'method' for studying a language. I hesitate to even call this a 'system' for studying pronunciation. It is merely a focus on pronunciation _during the ordinary course of study_.

This approach doesn't replace any language course or method.

It complements it.

This approach uses a handful of techniques well-known to advanced language learners, but perhaps less known to the vast majority of independent learners who stumble along learning a language.

I've never heard a successful language learner say that they learned a language with only **one** course or only **one** technique. Invariably, the most successful learners use a variety of resources, including real-life native resources, and adapt them to their own needs and use them concurrently with study materials.

That's the idea that we'll be emulating here.

My core approach is to use a typical language course, such as a book with a couple of audio CD's, as a general course to follow and set goals around. I then complement it by using perfectly ordinary language resources (novels, audiobooks, news reports, etc) and using them in creative, intensive, and not-so-ordinary ways.

What I'm presenting here is that kind of complementary approach with a particular focus on pronunciation.

### One Minor Thing

For practical reasons, for the rest of this ebook I am going to make the assumption that you are a native speaker of English. I have specific reasons for this which I will get into later. If you are not, please don't take offense by this. Simply adjust and apply my suggestions to your own situation. There is no reason why these techniques won't apply to a native speaker of any other language attempting to master pronunciation of a foreign language.

## Overview of This Ebook

After this introductory chapter, the next three chapters focus on the three basic steps of my approach.

First, you will use a Pronunciation Guide for your language in a far more engaging way than most learners do, and even more than most courses recommend you do. This step introduces you to the sounds of the language you're learning, the Sound Set that I mentioned before. You will begin to identify and define it by close listening, making the sounds yourself, comparing that to the sounds of English that you already know, and comparing yourself to the natives.

Then, in Chapter 3, we begin the process of Reading Aloud. You read that right – Reading Aloud in the language that you may know nothing about! There will be a lot of listening and a lot of trial and error. This step will introduce you to the Dynamic Signature of your new language. Just like with the Sound Set, you will identify and define it, and begin to duplicate it by emulating native speakers.

And lastly, Chapter 4 introduces Shadowing. I'll explain what it is later, but it is **very** efficient as a language learning technique. It's also extremely intensive. It takes the training wheels off of Reading Aloud. It forces you to get the language coming out of your mouth _up to speed_. It's a technique you can continue to use as you learn your language, even as you are fine-tuning your pronunciation and accent to master-level.

In Chapter 5, I talk a bit about putting all this information together and how to get the most out of these techniques.

As I mentioned earlier, the background material for what led me to write this ebook and why I think these techniques work comes afterward in the Appendices.

There is also one final section that I think will be very helpful for some people who want very much to succeed at studying languages on their own but still need to see how it can be done. The last part of the Appendices features a few case studies of real language learners, just like you and me, who used these techniques to achieve their learning goals.

## Who is this ebook for?

The simplest answer is that this ebook is for anyone who wants to master the pronunciation of a foreign language.

The techniques I present here will enable any language learner at any stage of their learning process to focus on their pronunciation and learn to emulate native speakers.

This ebook is especially designed for language learners working on their own. But even if you have a teacher or tutor, you can use these techniques to complement your study.

It's not, however, designed to stand on its own as the **only** study you need to do to learn your target language. You should have another, more comprehensive, course to follow while using these techniques to complement that study.

Of course, there are a few obvious questions – what if I'm a complete beginner in the language? What if I've never studied another language before? Or, what if I've already studied the language before and I just want to improve my accent?

The good news is that this will work whether you are a beginner or if you've already studied the language, but there are a few differences in application.

### Those who are just beginning study of a new language

There are actually two subsets of this category – those who have _never_ studied another language before and those who _have_ studied another language before. I want to deal with these two cases separately, even though your approach will essentially be the same.

### Those who have never studied a language before

If this is your first foreign language, I want you to be aware of something - you have an innate set of language learning skills. The problem is you haven't used them very much lately. Not since you were a young child and you learned your native language.

As you begin studying your new language, you will be developing that skill set and getting it back up to speed. It will take some time and some work to do that, though. Be patient.

I have good news for you. You can put the techniques in this ebook to use even if you are just starting out in a language and even if you have never studied a language before. I would even argue that you can achieve surprising results with your pronunciation and accent even as you are just fumbling through your initial chapters getting to grips with the grammar and vocabulary. I have written the steps with the beginner in mind.

You can do this. Anyone can do this.

Give yourself time to adjust to the new skills you are learning and the old ones you're re-awakening.

### Those who have studied another language before but are applying these techniques in learning a new language

These are the polyglots and intrepid language learners who are ever trying new approaches, toying with new techniques, and tackling new languages.

If you have studied a foreign language before, then your language learning skill set ought to be primed for another one. Learning languages gets a little easier with each one as your language skills get honed to a fine edge.

The most dramatic results will come to those who do these techniques from the very beginning of language study, especially those who have studied a foreign language before, those who have already developed some of their language learning skill set.

You already have some experience in constructing a language Sound Set and identifying the Dynamic Signature of a language as I describe it below.

Go through the steps and techniques of this ebook as I suggest, keeping the following in mind -

The Pronunciation Guide – Being a more experienced language learner, your more finely tuned ear and your experience producing sounds outside your native Sound Set give you a good starting point. Slow and careful work at this point will serve you most of all. The work you do here will bear fruit when you begin the next two steps, so resist the temptation to rush through it!

Reading Aloud and Shadowing – Experienced language learners can really have a field day with these techniques. They are ideal for you. Take the time and try these techniques in different ways. Find the right way to use them for yourself. They can continue to serve you throughout your language study and long after you have stopped studying formally. Make them your own.

### Those who have already studied a language to some degree and want to fix a flawed accent or just improve (or master!) their pronunciation

The problem with retraining our pronunciation in a language is that we may have already settled into bad habits. In many ways it is easier to train oneself to speak a new language than it is to re-train oneself in a known language.

You must fight against complacency. If you know you have pronunciation problems, you must be diligent in addressing them. Be critical and be persistent. As you go through the steps, be mindful of the following points -

The Pronunciation Guide – You have likely already gone through this process to some degree, and you already have a foundation for pronunciation of your language. But, don't neglect this step. If you intend to fix, improve, or master your pronunciation, you are probably already aware of your problem areas. Focus on them. You may not need to spend as much time with this as a novice language learner, but go through this step carefully as suggested and give your critical ear some practice. You'll know when you're ready to move on.

Reading Aloud and Shadowing – Your lack of satisfaction with your pronunciation is most likely due to the Dynamic Signature of your language. These techniques will hammer that problem into shape as long as you work at it. Use your language learning skill set to your advantage. Practice and improve your ear for the language and be critical of yourself as you fine-tune your pronunciation.

There is another problem that is a bit trickier, however. I mentioned that for those just starting out, we have taken comprehension of the texts we are working with out of the loop. But you already have experience with the language. You've already made many associations with vocabulary, recognize grammar, and will have some understanding of texts you work with. Some comprehension will already be there.

Don't worry. This isn't a deal-breaker by any stretch. It just means we have to approach it a little differently. Comprehension of the text we are Reading Aloud and Shadowing isn't a problem. It's just that it can be a distraction when we are trying to focus on pronunciation.

Naturally, we focus on comprehension because that is the point of language – to understand what someone is trying to communicate to us.

What you need to do then is just voluntarily suspend your focus on comprehension. You can partially offset the natural tendency by using resources with extensive vocabulary you are not familiar with, or new or unfamiliar grammar forms. But for the most part, you will just have to concentrate hard and focus on the sound.

As you'll see later, you can continue to use these techniques to improve your listening, speaking, and comprehension of the language, and in the long-term in a maintenance capacity. So, ultimately there will be increasing comprehension creeping into your use of these techniques as a natural consequence of learning the language anyway. It just means that your purpose for using the techniques may change over time.

# Step 1 – The Pronunciation Guide

You need to have a starting point for learning how your target language should be pronounced. That's what the Pronunciation Guide is for. But we're going to work with it a bit more than most people do. You really need to start getting comfortable with these new sounds and to start refining your ear for the language.

In this first part of our approach, you will focus on the individual sounds of the language. You will break them down and really figure out what they are supposed to sound like, how to make them yourself, how they interact with other sounds, and how to work around the really tough ones. You will do this through a process of

  * Isolating

  * Approximating

  * Exaggerating

  * Re-integrating

It sounds like a long and complicated process. It's not. You will get it quickly, work through it and move on to the real work of pronouncing and learning the language.

## What materials you will need

First, you will need some kind of Pronunciation Guide.

Just about every coursebook or textbook I have ever seen has one in it. It is usually the first chapter, but sometimes even just a section in the introduction. I'm thinking of the kind of self-learning book you would find in a bookstore or online such as Teach Yourself or Living Language. You can also likely find some kind of free online tutorial with a Pronunciation Guide for just about any language you might want to learn.

However, it would be ideal if there was an audio accompaniment with the Pronunciation Guide. Obviously, we want to hear what sounds we are expected to make. The courses I mentioned, and many others like them, usually come with a CD or two of audio. If you already have a course that has audio and a Pronunciation Guide, then you are good to go for the first part of our approach. Even if you do have that audio, it might be a good idea to have a secondary source to work with.

If your course does not have audio, find an online pronunciation tutorial for your target language.

## How much time to spend on this step

You should probably spend a few hours on this, broken down over many sessions. Not dozens of hours, that would be inefficient, but also not 15 minutes like most people do when going through this part of a language course.

Have fun with this. Go with the flow and enjoy it. Do it in whatever order you want but make sure you have exhausted all possibilities with each sound before you go on to the Reading Aloud and Shadowing sections. You must have a handle on making these sounds before you move on. You want to forge good pronunciation habits before you begin to pronounce the language for real.

Work through the sounds carefully. Maybe do it a couple of times a day over the course of a week or so. Get the sounds in your head, but also get them coming out of your mouth. That's the important part.

Keep in mind that you will be doing this apart from your regular work with your course. You can go ahead and begin to learn the vocabulary and grammar, following whatever course you're using. Just look at this time focusing on pronunciation as complementary to that study. As you progress into the Reading Aloud and Shadowing exercises, you will get way ahead of anything you are studying in your course. That's all ok.

## Using the Pronunciation Guide – A First Run-Through

Take a look at your Pronunciation Guide.

Most pronunciation tutorials will usually describe the sounds of the language relative to the sounds of English or perhaps other sounds or sound effects that you are likely to know how to make.

Work through the guide just as they present it to you, but I would like you to try something quite specific. As they describe each unique sound as it is heard in your target language, try to pronounce it **without** first listening to the audio. Try to rely on the narrative description of the sound first and then produce it. They may also give you one or more words in which that sound appears. Say those words as well.

It may seem obvious, but you **must** do this out loud. Work through the whole Pronunciation Guide in this way.

Now listen to the audio.

How did you do? Were you close or way off? Say the sounds and words again but try to reconcile your first attempt with the native audio. Listen closely, both to yourself and to the audio, and figure out what the differences are. Where you went wrong and what you got right.

One of the things you are doing at this early point is acclimating yourself to the language. Every aspect of it. You are specifically acclimating your mouth to producing some new sounds. You won't get them all at first, but you'll begin to have an idea.

Another thing that you are doing now is identifying. You are identifying what is working for you, what seems like it might be difficult, and what is going to take a lot of work. This is good because you can tailor your pronunciation practice to target specific problem points.

You are also honing your ear. Hearing another language takes practice. And it is often overlooked that if you can't precisely hear _how_ a native speaker is producing a sound, you won't be able to figure out how to produce it yourself. So, you need to fine tune your ability to hear the language.

Keep in mind that your first impressions of these sounds will probably change over time. You may find that a sound that you thought would be difficult turns out not to be so bad. You may also find that something you thought was just like English actually has some subtle variations. Be prepared to have an evolving experience with your understanding of your target language and how it is pronounced.

This first run-through is more or less what everyone does with the Pronunciation Guide. Your course or tutorial may _suggest_ that you go further than this, but most people just do this once, focus on the new, unique sounds a little bit and then just move on. Everybody wants to get to the nitty-gritty of learning the language. But just a little extra work here will go a long way. It will pay big rewards in the next steps.

## A More Thorough Run-Through

Now you are going to go through the guide again using some selective targeting.

If they tell you that a particular sound is exactly like English, give it some close listening. If you don't hear anything unusual it's probably safe to move on for now.

If there is a new, unusual, exotic, or alien sound, then definitely go through the following process. If they tell you that there is something different about a sound, even if you don't hear it at first, go through this process. Or if you just notice something peculiar, even if the guide doesn't mention it, go through the following process.

### Isolation

What your Pronunciation Guide has already got you to do is isolate those individual sounds – take them out of words and phrases so you can just focus on the individual sounds you need to make. This will help you identify which sounds require some deviation from what you already know.

Use the following techniques of Exaggeration, Approximation, and Re-integration to take this isolation to an extreme, really analyze that sound and how it is made, and recognize how Re-integration back into words affects that sound, how it is made, and how it affects the sounds around it.

But first, I'm going to talk a little bit about some linguistics. A very little bit.

Obviously, knowing some things about linguistics can help you in learning languages, but it is definitely not required. You don't **need** to know anything about linguistics to learn a language or be able to pronounce it. But I am going to go into something that is critical to what we're talking about. I'll use just two simple terms that can clear up a lot about how to make sounds in foreign languages - Place of Articulation and Manner of Articulation.

Place of Articulation is simply **where** in your mouth you are supposed to make a sound such as –

  * Lips

  * Teeth

  * The hard ridge behind the teeth

  * The soft area on the roof of your mouth

  * The nasal cavity

  * The throat

There are more and there are lots of very specific distinctions.

As you start making foreign sounds, take some time to explore some of these areas in your mouth and what kinds of sounds can be made. Most likely, there will be some sounds in your target language that are made in a different way or in a different place in your mouth than anything you have experience with. The more you explore the possibilities yourself, the more comfortable and prepared you will be pronouncing a foreign language.

Manner of Articulation is simply **how** you are supposed to make a sound -

  * Is it voiced or unvoiced?

  * Is there a stoppage of breath?

  * What's your tongue doing?

  * Is there any friction produced in the mouth?

  * Are your lips rounded, open, closed?

Again, there are lots of possibilities. There are _hundreds_ of different sounds that occur in human languages. English only makes about forty five of them. You need to expand that repertoire if you want to master the pronunciation of another language.

Hopefully, your guide will tell you something about where and how a sound is made.

In any case, you need to play around with these sounds in your mouth to identify where and how they're made and what the possibilities are. You don't need to know anything more about linguistics to do this. You can do it naturally and intuitively. You just need to listen and try stuff.

#### An example

I'm going to use myself as a brief example of how to use this idea.

I'm beginning to study Tagalog as of writing this, in March 2017. I'd started studying it once before but had to abandon it before long, so I am essentially still a complete beginner with it. After working through the pronunciation guide - it's a Living Language course book - I started listening to some audio in preparation for Reading Aloud and Shadowing. I noticed that the letter 'k' is sometimes made a little farther back in the mouth. It has a little bit of a gargled sound to it.

The Pronunciation Guide said nothing about this. I even looked at the guide in another course book and in a phrasebook. Neither mentioned it. I didn't detect any patterns in how it was used compared to the more English 'k.' It's being used either way in the same word sometimes and even by the same speaker. I listened to the dialogues in the first few chapters of the course and the sound appears there too.

So I played around with the sound a bit, trying words with both sounds, playing around with the range between the two. I slowly started Reading Aloud and trying this range as I did so, and repeating back the words from the dialogues also trying different sounds within the range.

The course may mention it later or they may not. It may be the tendency of particular speakers or a regional accent. It may just be part of the acceptable range for the 'k' sound in Tagalog. At this point I am still a beginner and I just don't know. Since the Pronunciation Guide didn't mention it, it may not be particularly important. But I am aware of it.

This is exactly the kind of thing we want to discover in order to master pronunciation. I listened for anything unusual, I identified something going on, I isolated the sound and explored it a bit playing around with the Place of Articulation. So I'm ready to use that sound more effectively once I learn what's going on with it.

By isolating sounds, working through the Pronunciation Guide, and listening very closely, you will begin to discover the many ways your target language is unique.

Sounds aren't always pure. There is often a range of possibilities that can be very subtle. If you listen very closely to some of the sounds we make in English, you can hear it there too.

Sometimes it's a feature of the language with a rule behind it. Eventually you'll learn those rules. And sometimes it's just practical – adjusting one sound to make it flow more easily into the sounds around it. It happens naturally and unconsciously through the everyday use of the language.

You want to hear the range of sounds that are acceptable to a native speaker so that you can be prepared to identify them when you hear them and to produce them yourself within that acceptable range. It can make a huge difference in your accent.

### Approximate (if you must)

So, you've been introduced to the individual letters and sounds that you will be expected to make in your target language and you've isolated them. You've also probably identified a few things that you know you'll need to work on. You may have identified something that you can't get right away, maybe not even close.

There may be others that you _believe_ are right but might still be very subtly off. Be prepared for that.

At this stage, that is all expected and it's ok.

For those sounds you think you have right or you think are the same as in English, go ahead and use those. You will probably discover later some discrepancies as your ear gets more finely tuned to the new language. But for now, what you are doing to make those sounds is acceptable so you can move on and focus on your known problem areas.

But, for those sounds that are really tricky ...

If you just can't seem to get it, not even close, then I'm going to offer an option - _approximate_ them.

You don't want to get bogged down with just one or two sounds that you can't get right away and that you know are going to be long term problems. Find some kind of compromise.

The Pronunciation Guide will probably even suggest something. You're not the only person to have a problem producing these sounds. Teachers of that language and publishers of language courses know what those problem sounds are going to be. Even the native speakers know and will probably be very tolerant of foreigners trying to use those sounds. Pick something close to it that you can do comfortably and be prepared to use that as you continue to study the language. You don't want your inability to get one sound to create a bottleneck that prevents you from studying everything else about the language that you could be learning.

This ebook is about improving and mastering, so why am I suggesting you should approximate or cheat? I'm not exactly recommending it, but I am offering it as a temporary band-aid solution just to be practical.

It's great to be a perfectionist and work hard to get things right, but don't be inefficient – there is lots of time to work on improving and perfecting these sounds. Approximate at first, but continuously work on it to develop your new sound set.

Let's look at a real-life example.

Think of a French person with a strong accent saying the word 'together.'

How would they pronounce that 'th' sound? Probably like a 'z.'

Why? What's happening here?

The 'th' sound is not a native sound in French. It's an alien sound to them. It's difficult for them to hear and differentiate. Making the sound is as uncomfortable or unnatural as some of the sounds from their language are to us.

They are approximating the 'th' sound using a sound they are comfortable with, one from their own language, one that sounds 'close enough' to them.

Think about how these sounds are made. The 'z' is actually just in the wrong Place of Articulation. The 'z' is made at the flat area just behind the teeth. If they moved the tongue forward a bit, just touching the bottom of the upper teeth, they would have it.

It's effective and practical, but actually pretty egregious. And it's more than just noticeable. It's actually part of the character of the French accent. It's a marker that gives away their native language. But what if they worked a bit harder and actually learned that 'th' sound? They would sound much less French, much more fluent and natural.

I happen to like accents. But, isn't it interesting that people who speak with a stronger accent are perceived as speaking less fluently, even when that may not be true? A speaker using this shortcut would sound more fluent if they actually used the correct sound, even though it would not change their actual fluency level.

That's what native speakers of other languages think when they hear us doing the same thing in their language. These sounds that are alien to us are one type of marker for a foreign-sounding accent. That means that natives will often notice it and be able to recognize where you are from by how you make that sound incorrectly.

When you approximate sounds, you will most likely use sounds familiar to an English speaker which you are more comfortable with. But this is also part of the character of our accent in their language – you will sound American, or British, or as generically English–native speaking to them.

It is a fixable problem with a relatively small amount of effort and by identifying it early.

So the bottom line here is this –

I'm not saying you **should** approximate a sound, I'm saying it's ok to do so at this very early stage. **If** you are aware of it, need a viable alternative, and are intent on improving it.

I might get some heat from some quarters for suggesting this, but it is probably most efficient for you to do this so that you can move on. Spending too much time trying to perfect something at this point in your journey would be inefficient. You'll have plenty of time and opportunity with the next two techniques to fine-tune those sounds.

**But** , you are _aware_ that you are using a temporary placeholder, and you will work on it. You **know** what the problem is and you intend to fix it. Let's get on with doing that.

### Exaggerate

When you do these first few exercises, think about those sounds that are different from English, the ones that are just slightly or subtly different. But especially, the ones that are unique to that language, the ones that don't exist in English.

How do you feel saying them? Whether you think you're saying them correctly or not, are you comfortable making those sounds? Or are you uncomfortable, or worse?

If you dread trying to make a particular sound,

If you are afraid to do it,

If it makes you feel self-conscious, or

If it makes you feel embarrassed,

then it will only be that much more difficult for you. It will make it harder for you to learn vocabulary and practice dialogues where these sounds appear. Plus, it will hinder your ability to communicate when the time comes.

Nip these feelings in the bud now.

If you start to play with them and make some kind of game out of it, you will get over those feelings.

Take those sounds and **exaggerate** them.

Go further than you have to. Say the sound with greater force and more emphasis. When you make that sound in a word, make it two times longer that you should, three times longer. Make it louder. If you work on these sounds and don't make them strong _enough_ , it will be much harder for you later on. When you exaggerate, it will be much easier to dial it back when you want it to sound more natural.

Even if you are entirely comfortable making these strange sounds, and not a little bit self-conscious, you want to be sure you are saying them correctly. But, also, you want to be saying them _with conviction_.

You don't want to hesitate on them. It will slow down your learning, hamper your communication, and degrade your accent.

By exaggerating the unique sounds of the language in your practice, you will gain facility with them. They will become comfortable to you.

It will do you some good to have fun with this.

### Re-integration

Ok, you're exaggerating sounds, approximating sounds as you need to, exploring the possible ranges of some sounds. As I mentioned earlier, there are probably some possible variations that you are just not aware of yet. You're still constructing the Sound Set for your target language.

You've already tried pronouncing words with those different sounds in them. But now you need to do that systematically to feel and hear those sounds in different contexts. Take those sounds you've isolated and put them back in words, phrases, and sentences to see how they lay in that landscape. Listen closely. You will likely find that they change a bit when they are re-integrated in a variety of ways –

  * How you have to produce those sounds may change, depending on what sounds come before or after

  * They may be harder or easier to pronounce in different combinations

  * They may have an effect on other sounds before and after

You've already started doing this a little as you've worked through the pronunciation guide.

What we're talking about here is reading a word, phrase, sentence, or body of text and attempting to say it with the best and most accurate accent you can muster, based entirely on whatever you know at this point, no matter how limited that is. Then listen to the audio for that word or text and compare your result with the native speaker.

I specifically want you to try it without hearing the audio first. This will help you identify the differences between what you think they mean in the written description and what the native actually does. In the Pronunciation Guide, you probably did this just with short simple words that mostly highlighted the one sound they were getting you focused on. But once you start trying this with multi-syllable words, phrases and whole sentences, funny things start to happen to those individual words and sounds. This is where those stress patterns and dynamics between words start to interact. We will begin to tackle that in the next section.

For now, look for multiple examples for each of the different or unique sounds. Go through your coursebook or text, looking a few chapters ahead if you need to. Look for a wide variety of individual words, short phrases, and even short sentences. Especially check out dialogues, because there things will be said more like in everyday life than they are completely in isolation. What we want to listen for now is the variation and range of each sound.

As you are going through this process of listening very closely to what you are saying, and comparing yourself to the native, I want you to be aware of something.

There is a circuit that develops here.

## The Circuit

You hear the language, you identify and process the sound, you make associations and extract any meaning, you determine what you need to do to produce those sounds, you try to produce the same sounds, you hear your result, and then compare it to what you heard from the native.

You can isolate any specific points in that process to improve upon if you think you need to.

Did you hear it all clearly? Listen again if you have to. Listen many times, over and over again.

Do you think you're making that sound right? Should it be longer or shorter? Louder or softer? Exaggerate it to get the feel for it.

Are you making it in exactly the right part of the mouth? Explore the range of possibilities for each sound.

You need to repeat this process over and over again. Try it with individual words and phrases and whole sentences. There is a lot of trial and error here.

Repeat words and phrases and sentences, not 2 or 3 times. 10 times. 20 times. Try to say it in different ways.

And then repeat the process a few hours later, and a day later. And every day if you think you need to.

And notice that we completely took _understanding_ out of that circuit. You'll have that creep in to the process as you learn the language. Of course, that's the most important part of learning a language, but it's also the most difficult. By taking it out at this early stage (or voluntarily suspending our focus on it if we already understand some of the language) we can focus only on the sounds.

There is a trick here that you can use.

Record yourself while doing this process.

Just record yourself reading and pronouncing the target word or phrase and then listen back to it. Hearing a recording of yourself is very different from listening to yourself as you're saying something. Many people hate to listen to themselves in a recording. I know I do. But nobody else has to hear this and it is important that you do this a few times if you can. Do it with short words, long words, phrases, sentences, and multi-sentence text. Listen to yourself and compare. Again and again and again.

Focus on those individual sounds, how they change, how they interact.

Keep in mind that the longer the text is that you're listening to and attempting to pronounce, the more of those dynamics you are going to hear. Don't focus on those dynamics and stress patterns just yet. Keep focusing on the individual sounds and their variations.

## Your Native English Sound Set

As I mentioned earlier, what you have been doing is constructing the Sound Set of the language – the inventory of sounds that your target language uses to construct words.

The problem you are contending with is that Sound Set is different from English. And you have an inborn tendency to use only your own native Sound Set. It will always color the way you speak and make sounds.

Every language has an inventory of sounds that that language uses. The Sound Set of just about every language is unique, even those that are closely related. Any two languages will have some of their sounds in common, with only a few sounds in each language that doesn't appear in the other, the sounds that we regard as 'foreign' sounding.

But that isn't the whole picture.

Even sounds that are common to both languages can be subtly different. Most of the time, as we are learning a foreign language, we can focus only on those uniquely foreign sounds to work on, while those sounds in common we can accept as equivalent in the short term. Eventually we will tackle those too, but initially it's those radically different sounds that are our biggest priority.

This unique Sound Set is part of the charm of a language, part of what makes it so unique and part of what we individually might find so interesting about it. It is imperative that you construct a full Sound Set for your target language and begin to inherently use that Sound Set and **only** that Sound Set to pronounce that language.

## Constructing Your New Sound Set

You must, as best you can, construct the Sound Set of your target language as reliably and completely as you can.

You can begin with sounds from your English Sound Set. But one by one you need to erase or replace your English sounds with those of your new language.

At first, the most unique sounds will be added and slowly improved to become more and more like the natives. Later, other obvious variations on sounds will replace those of English. Lastly, you will add the most subtle sounds, the ones you maybe thought were exactly like English at first, but slowly discovered were a bit different. Or the variations and increased range of possibilities on some sounds that English may not have or tolerate.

Ultimately, you want to have a second, complete Sound Set just for your new language. The more complete it is, the better your accent will be. Not only that, the easier it will be to continue to learn the language and to pronounce ever more complex and tricky words.

As you move forward and begin to use the Reading Aloud and Shadowing techniques, every once in a while go back and review some of the sounds and exercises in this section. As I've already mentioned, your experience with these sounds will likely change as you develop and learn. A little review from time to time will help clarify things.

## Let's go over what you've done so far

After several hours of hard work, spread out over several days or a week or two, you have made tremendous progress, even if it doesn't really feel like it.

You've identified problem areas, substituted sounds when needed, identified ranges of possibilities for some sounds, identified subtle variations of similar sounds in English, and begun to use sounds wholly different from anything else in English.

You've constructed a new Sound Set. It's not a hundred percent complete perhaps, but it's improving.

If you've put the time and work in, you've done far more than most people do at this stage of learning a language. You should be able to pronounce words, phrases, and sentences with some degree of accuracy and confidence, even if you don't know what it means. You certainly won't be confused for a native yet, but your increasing ability with pronunciation won't hinder your ability to advance. On the contrary, it will only accelerate it.

This work will all pay off as you move forward.

Now, the next step is to take those growing pronunciation skills and start _speaking_ the language - at first, at exactly the pace you can handle, without needing to understand what you are saying, and without the pressure of needing to be understood. I'll show you how to do that next.

# Step 2 - Reading Aloud

When you've gone through that initial process of analyzing and trying to pronounce the sounds and words of the language, you've already laid the foundation of your accent. This is the smaller picture, the micro.

Now, you will begin looking at the big picture view of your accent, the macro.

You won't be neglecting those individual sounds, however. On the contrary, as you're working on the big picture view of your accent, you are also **unconsciously** working on fine tuning your pronunciation.

Because of that work you did earlier, whenever you encounter a tricky spot, it won't stop you cold like it would if you hadn't done that work. You can attempt those parts with some confidence and not a small amount of skill.

Now that you have a reasonable handle on what the language sounds like and you can pronounce words in your textbook without pausing or stumbling on every word, I'm going to propose that you Read Aloud some text. **A lot** of text.

This is something you can do very early in your study of most languages. Remember - you don't need to comprehend what you're reading. We're isolating the **spoken** aspect of Reading Aloud without the comprehension. We are just focused on pronouncing the text and analyzing what it is supposed to sound like rather than what it means.

This is surprisingly liberating.

With a language that uses the Roman alphabet, you can do this within days of beginning to learn. With languages with a different alphabet or different writing system altogether - Russian, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese come to mind immediately - it's not quite that simple and I'll talk about that in a little bit.

## What materials you will need

For this step, we will be doing techniques that require you to interact with longer blocks of text along with an accompanying audio read by a native speaker.

If you already have some text and audio in a coursebook, that will be fine to start with. But most courses of this type do not have enough text to do the exercises we'll want to do, at least not the kind of extended passages that we want. Later you will need longer blocks of text.

Ideally you would want to have a text with numerous paragraphs-long sections and audio spoken by a native speaker to go along with it. A whole chapter of a book would be a minimum. You want lots of variety of vocabulary and structures. Not enough text produces not enough variety. That's why I recommend a whole book or novel with an accompanying audiobook. Depending on what language you're learning, you may be able to find some for free online.

The idea is that you want blocks of text and audio of varying lengths. Some shorter, just a minute or two, and others longer, maybe five minutes or more. For the shorter bits, a coursebook will usually have some blocks of text later in the course, but rarely does a coursebook designed for learning a language have the kind of longer blocks of text that you will find in a novel. I especially like novels because you will have description of events, settings and action, but also sections of dialogue which move at a different pace.

Just be sure that the audio and the text are the same version. Sometimes there are abridged audio versions of some books. That makes it a little difficult as one version may have sections or changes that the other version does not have.

It's very common to see people use a popular series such as Harry Potter books for language learning purposes. They work great for this. It's not just that they are so popular, it's also because finding Harry Potter books and audiobooks in the language you're studying is a lot easier than finding just about anything else. And it helps if it is something that you enjoy and that you are already familiar with.

One source I can definitely recommend for finding material is Lingq.com. You can start with a free account with only minor limitations. This site is based on a lot of listening and reading. Although there are other features of the site, I am specifically mentioning this one because they have a large library of texts with audio in several of the more commonly learned languages. You can easily find texts and audio that you can use for Reading Aloud and for Shadowing later.

Another possibility is to find news articles with the audio and transcription. Again, this depends on what your target language is. Some news organizations, such as the BBC or Voice of America, have pretty extensive resources in other languages.

But anything that meets our requirements will do. In fact, I recommend that you try the technique with some short texts first to see how it works for you. We are going to go over several different ways to use this technique, and you may find one particular approach works better for you than others. You might then choose texts to read based on your own preferences.

If you don't yet have the materials to do this, go ahead and read through the Reading Aloud section to see how it works. This will help you decide what kind of material might be just right for you.

## Reading Aloud

Later on I will go into a number of variations of this technique that you can use, but for now what you want to do for this technique is simple – just read the text aloud, pronouncing it as though you were reading it to an audience. Actually, you are – the audience is you! At first, start with a short paragraph and just read it aloud. Then listen to the audio of that paragraph and compare what you've done with the native speaker.

Trying to read a passage aloud before you've heard it is a great test for yourself. You're forced to creatively produce the proper sound of the language using the text as a guide. Your knowledge of the language and your ear for it are limited, so you should expect a lot of discrepancy at this point. That's fine. As you improve at this, that discrepancy will get smaller and smaller.

It may feel strange at first, trying to pronounce aloud a whole passage of several sentences, a whole paragraph, with hardly any idea of what it all means. You just have to get used to it. Developing this _process_ of Reading Aloud, listening to what you are producing, and then comparing yourself to the native is the key to efficiently improving your pronunciation.

And by now you should be getting pretty good at comparing your own pronunciation to that of the native speaker.

So, how did you do on your first attempt?

You probably did ok with a lot of the common sounds and simple words, but maybe had trouble, slowed down or felt uncomfortable with some of the harder sounds and words.

But it probably didn't sound like the native, right? There were a lot of things that just weren't the same. You probably missed a lot of those dynamics I mentioned earlier, the stress and intonation patterns.

**That** is what we are going to work on now.

## The Dynamic Signature - Rhythm, Dynamics, Stress, Speed, Intonation

After your initial efforts to at least introduce yourself to the Sound Set of your target language, there is actually a far more important aspect of speaking and pronunciation that you will need to work on. This will be a greater focus for the rest of your spoken work.

I'm talking about the rhythm of the language, what I'm calling the Dynamic Signature. Every language not only has a unique Sound Set to work with, but also a unique system of stress, dynamics, and intonation that you must begin to identify and incorporate into your speech.

Every language has rules that regulate stress in individual words. Words of more than one syllable may have emphasis or stress placed on one syllable or another. If your language has a relatively straightforward stress pattern, your pronunciation guide might even give you an overview of that, or possibly later on in the coursebook. Other languages have more complex or less predictable stress patterns that may need to be learned on a case by case basis.

This makes our reading exercises more difficult as we can only guess at where the stress is in a word until we hear the native audio. But it also makes our listening, Reading Aloud and Shadowing exercises that much more important.

Just as there are patterns within words, there are also patterns within phrases and whole sentences. Some words will be emphasized more than others. Sometimes the speaker will speed up on certain words and slow down on others. Voice intonation or pitch may rise or fall, quickly or slowly, or remain steady in high, medium or low pitches.

This is especially true of pitch or tone languages. The difference is that in tone languages the change in pitch carries meaning for individual words.

But changes in pitch or intonation are also a general feature of all languages. No language is spoken in a complete monotone at one level pitch and one speed with no stress anywhere. But the patterns and tendencies of each language are unique. It is part of what makes that language sound the way it does. These stress patterns, dynamics, and intonation are all equally important in describing the overall timbre of a language.

The interesting thing is that this rhythm pattern carries over when a speaker of that language speaks a foreign language. Let's imagine our French speaker again, the one with a strong French accent speaking English. They will use the French Sound Set, notably clashing where they substitute French sounds for English ones. But also, the stress and dynamic patterns of French are overlaid onto spoken English.

Just as that Sound Set is a distinctive marker of their native language, so is the Dynamic Signature a characteristic marker of their native language as well. Imagine a strong Italian accent or Japanese. Or Russian. Imagine how their speaking patterns might be different.

Or better yet, how about a speaker of your target language?

## Uncovering the Dynamic Signature

If you can, find a video or audio of a native speaker of your target language speaking English, and actually, the stronger the accent the better.

Listen closely. You can identify many of the general dynamic characteristics of their language if you analyze how their native patterns are exposed when overlaid on English. Try to identify tendencies that are different from a native English speaker.

What kinds of things should you listen for?

  * Where they place stress on things,

  * Which words, and which parts of words, they emphasize or de-emphasize

  * Where they speed up or slow down

  * Where they **don't** speed up or slow down as we would expect them to

  * When their voice rises or falls

Listen to that audio over and over again, keeping a list of anything you notice. Imagine a native English speaker saying the same things, or even say them aloud yourself, and compare it.

Now bring it back around.

Listen to a native speaking _their own language_. Ideally, listen to the same speaker you listened to speaking English.

Take a look at your list. Can you hear some of the same tendencies? Listen for them. Listen again and again until you can identify some things.

You don't need to make any Earth-shattering discoveries this way. You're just looking for some general trends. And it's also not a fool-proof way to uncover some hidden language-learning secret. But it can give you some very interesting and time-saving insights into how your target language works and what makes it sound the way it does. And if you're lucky, you can uncover some real gems.

I wish I could give you more specifics. Every language is different in this way. Everyone's perception of another language can be very subjective and personal. The things you are listening for can be very subtle and hard to clearly define, even when you get familiar with them. Ultimately, you will have to listen to a lot of native audio in order to get the overall rhythm of the language into your head.

Now, considering everything I just said - the opposite is also true.

Our English sounds and patterns will be exposed when speaking another language.

Think about when you first read that paragraph out loud. What might be wrong with it is not so much the individual sounds. You're probably doing ok there. But it still didn't sound anywhere near right because _you're still imposing the Dynamic Signature of English on it_. You're placing emphasis in words and speeding up, slowing down, changing intonation, and speaking with a general rhythm **as if it were English**.

That won't work.

What you need to do is erase the Dynamic Signature of English that you naturally speak with and replace it with the Dynamic Signature of the target language.

Start using those dynamics that you hear the natives using. Find the words they gloss over in everyday speech and start doing that too. When they hang on a particular sound in a word or emphasize one word more than others in a sentence, you should do that too. If they speed up saying a word after emphasizing another, try doing that too.

Eventually, when you have heard so much of your target language, you will be able to do this without thinking about it. You will know what sounds more natural for your target language.

We could do this naturally, over the course of years or even decades, and slowly assimilate those native tendencies. That's the usual approach.

Or, we can do this systematically and with focus, from the beginning, using a process that allows us to accelerate that natural assimilation.

If there is only one thing you take away from this ebook I would want it to be this –

**The single most important aspect of getting your accent right and mastering the pronunciation of another language is figuring out the Dynamic Signature**. The Sound Set is just the first part of the journey, where most people get off the train. Advancing to get the Dynamic Signature is master-level stuff. Get this right and you can achieve an outstanding accent in your target language.

This basic approach of Reading Aloud, listening to the native speakers, and applying this process of analysis can eliminate years of wasted time and poor pronunciation. Working systematically through a text, using Reading Aloud and the Shadowing technique that follows, will allow you to perfect the Sound Set, and identify and master the Dynamic Signature.

But you must work at it consistently and deliberately.

Paragraph after paragraph. Chapter after chapter. Over and over again.

## Variations on Reading Aloud

The basic technique for Reading Aloud, as I mentioned earlier, is to just attempt to read through and pronounce a passage the first time, then listen to the audio and compare yourself to the native speaker adjusting and making improvements, and then repeating this process as needed. You can do this at whatever pace you like, slower and more deliberate, or trying to match the speed of the native. But, there are actually a few variations of this that you can use in order to achieve different effects or goals.

### Read Aloud For Accuracy

As you read through a text, take your time clearly pronouncing each and every word, focusing primarily on the Sound Set. If you repeat it several times and you've listened to the native audio, you are likely also to be adding at least some elements of the Dynamic Signature that you have been picking up. But use this approach to fine-tune your ability to pronounce individual sounds in new words and new combinations of words. You will gain greater proficiency with the sounds, and with complex and unfamiliar words that you will be exposed to. In time this will allow you to increase the speed at which you can Read Aloud.

### Read Aloud For Speed

If you are feeling comfortable with a passage, or if you just want to challenge yourself a bit, try to read for speed. Try reading it faster than the native does. Rush through it pronouncing it aloud as clearly as you can. Just like with Exaggerating an individual sound, when you try Reading Aloud quickly, it will be easier for you to dial it back down later on. Ordinary speed will feel different, like you have lots of time to enunciate.

You can focus on your Sound Set, dynamics, both, or neither – just go for it and see what you can do!

### Read Aloud For Pleasure

Just Read Aloud through a passage at your leisure. Don't worry too much about what's perfect and what's not. Just enjoy the process, enjoy the sound and feel of the language and let yourself live in it a bit. Even if you don't understand 95% of what you are reading and saying. Your brain is still processing and analyzing. Don't overdo it, but in small bouts it's not wasted time either.

I find myself doing this quite a bit, even very early on when I understand almost nothing.

### Listen and Read Along Silently

Try **not** Reading Aloud when you first introduce yourself to a new block of text. Just listen to the audio of it and read along silently, focusing on the dynamics of it all. Do this for analyzing before you try pronouncing it, memorizing the audio, or just working through some hard parts. It's good to change your approach once in a while. Live with the text and the audio for a little while before you pronounce it through.

### Just Listen

Don't read a text just yet. Get the overall sound of it in your head. Repeat the same passages many times to become more familiar with them. This is good for learning how to parse the language. When we first start hearing a language, it just seems like an endless stream where we can't tell one word from another. Listening a lot will help you quickly learn how to parse it all out.

This is a good skill to have, especially later for listening comprehension. Of course, what we're concerned with here is pronunciation, so focus on the sounds – the individual sounds of the Sound Set and any elements of the Dynamic Signature.

Try these different variations of the basic technique to see what you like the best and what works best for you.

## Getting the Most out of Reading Aloud

I believe that the trick to getting the most out of this technique is to listen to a passage so many times that you can hear it in your head just like a song you've heard all your life. When you are at that point, when you read that passage aloud, you **know** what it's supposed to sound like. Every bit of it – the individual words, sounds, the stress patterns, rising and falling intonation, speeding up, slowing down, breath patterns. Everything.

Initially, you will get more familiar with each section of text by itself. But also, as you progress, you will get better at anticipating what each new text needs to sound like. You will be more successful at your first attempts. As you fine-tune the Sound Set and define the Dynamic Signature your accent will sound more and more natural.

We're engaging that cycle again, each time reading through a passage you should be getting better and better. Slowly adding new elements you've noticed, slowly improving some sounds as you continue to work on your Sound Set, continually identifying and applying aspects of the Dynamic Signature that you are becoming aware of.

The great thing about Reading Aloud is that you can go at your own pace. You can choose texts or blocks of text that are the right speed and length for you at that time. And with the variations you can alter which texts you use for each purpose. As you'll see later, Shadowing crushes the idea of going at your own pace, so find your ideal uses for this technique and make them your own.

It is best to develop a routine in how you use this technique - how you introduce yourself to a new passage, how many times you listen to it, or listen and read along, how many times you Read Aloud. Systematically apply it to material you work with on a regular basis, both material you are familiar with and also when you introduce new material.

## Notes on Non-Roman Writing Systems

What I have written so far in this section applies specifically to languages with a Roman alphabet. If you are studying a language that uses the Roman alphabet, or at least some version of it, you will have no modifications to the techniques I am suggesting here. You just may have to learn one or two variations of familiar symbols or even a new symbol or two, along with how they are to be pronounced. That will all be part of your initial work with the Pronunciation Guide.

Many of the commonly learned languages of the world use some variation of the Roman alphabet.

### Different Alphabets

But if you are studying a language with a completely different alphabet, you will have an intermediate step. Languages such as Russian, Thai, Hindi, Arabic, Georgian, and lots of others come to mind.

You will have to learn that alphabet first.

Using it will be slow in the beginning. You are going to have to work quite a bit with it in order to do the kind of reading exercises I am promoting. Your coursebook will probably introduce the written symbols along with how they are pronounced at the same time. Learn them together this way. Practice reading them and pronouncing them aloud. This work will not only be part of your work through the Pronunciation Guide, but will actually begin to dovetail nicely with Reading Aloud.

This extra work isn't necessarily a bad thing – in fact, this is **exactly** the kind of work you need to do in order to wean yourself off of the Roman alphabet and start using your new one.

### Different Writing Systems

If you are studying a language with a radically different system from the English alphabet then you will have an altogether different problem. It's not a simple matter of just learning different symbols for sounds. Some languages, such as Chinese with its ideographic writing system, just don't work the same way.

### Chinese

Chinese presents an interesting problem. It is written in a system that uses one, sometimes very complex, symbol to represent each word. That means that if you wanted to read something, you would have to know hundreds, or even thousands, of different symbols and know how each one is pronounced. It's one of the great challenges in learning any form of Chinese.

For our Reading Aloud technique, you would have to learn all of those characters first before you could read them. This eliminates the possibility of Reading Aloud without comprehension, or of doing it early on in your study. You would not be able to use that technique until much later.

_Unless_ ...

Unless there was another way to write Chinese. A way that we could read it without having to learn all those characters first.

As it turns out, _there is_ a way that Chinese can be written in a Romanized way. It's called pinyin. It's Chinese written with Roman letters but with an extra marker to indicate tones.

What this means is, when you are searching for materials to try the Reading Aloud technique, you must look for materials written in pinyin that also have an audio counterpart. And you would have to learn what the symbols for the tones mean. It will take some commitment and practice just to get a handle on that. But once you do, you're good to go ahead and attempt Reading Aloud exercises.

Of course, I highly recommend that if you are studying any form of Chinese that you invest the time and effort to learn the written form of the language. The written system of Chinese is such an integral part of understanding the language, and one of the great and beautiful creations of mankind. But it can be very difficult to learn and impractical to use sometimes.

Pinyin gives us a good option to use the Reading Aloud technique early in our study. Considering that Chinese tones present the native English speaker with a particular challenge when it comes to pronunciation, we will need that practice!

### Japanese

Luckily, Japanese also gives us an option that allows us to use Reading Aloud techniques. It's called Romaji. It's Japanese written with a Roman alphabet. When you are searching for materials to work with, look for Japanese materials written in Romaji that have an audio counterpart.

And just like with Chinese, I would recommend that you do go on to study the written forms of Japanese. They are a work of art. Use Romaji as an intermediate step, one that helps you get started _pronouncing_ Japanese, but don't rely on it as a crutch.

### Others

Although rare, there are still other forms of writing, such as the syllabary, that you may have to adjust to. Every language presents its own challenges. Be persistent and creative. Adapt the techniques here to your own situation and make the best of them.

## Moving Forward

At this point in your studies you have made tremendous progress over and above what you would have done if you had just been using your course.

You are exposing yourself to language much more advanced than your course is offering. Although you may not yet be learning that advanced grammar and memorizing that vocabulary, you are _using_ it. You are internalizing it to a certain degree that will be useful to you later on.

And you are laser-focused on the sounds of the language in all its subtleties.

Slowly but surely you're improving those individual sounds, even the hard ones. As you continue to listen to and Read Aloud passages, you will consciously and unconsciously be improving every aspect of your pronunciation.

You have mostly moved beyond a focus on the individual sounds of the language to see the larger picture. You have begun to identify the Dynamic Signature of the language and you are actively working to integrate it into your speech.

Are you ready to crank up the intensity?

# Step 3 - Shadowing

In order to really work out the details of figuring out the Dynamic Signature and developing the ability to use it, we need something that can simulate the real-world speaking environment. Something that raises the intensity and the challenge beyond what Reading Aloud can offer.

Reading Aloud is a fantastic technique that has so many side benefits and is a great introduction to the idea of speaking a language aloud for extended periods. But the challenge can become limited. It's an intermediate step that can become a crutch if overused, and begin to lose some of its value if you rely too much on it.

Enter Shadowing.

It's a natural segue from Reading Aloud that increases the intensity level to simulate a real speaking environment. It allows you to continue developing the Dynamic Signature while working on your overall pronunciation with whole new challenges.

This technique is what I believe to be a game changer when it comes to language learning. Pound for pound, Shadowing is more effective than any other technique. It is also more intensive than any technique short of having to survive entirely in-language.

It goes without saying that if you want to learn how to speak a language, you must practice speaking it. So, here you go! Progressing forward from Reading Aloud, Shadowing will give you the opportunity to speak without end if you want it at the pace of the native speakers. Again, even before you know what you're saying!

As you are Shadowing and speaking non-stop, you won't have time to think about it. Not about what you are saying or what it means. Where Reading Aloud gives you the ability to pace yourself and compare yourself to the native, Shadowing takes the training wheels off, forcing you to follow their pace, no matter what!

The benefit of that is that we can focus almost exclusively on what we sound like as we learn to pronounce that language, and what it feels like to be continually producing the sounds of the language more naturally and intuitively.

Later on, when you've learned much more in the language, you _will_ begin to understand, so this technique will serve you well for a long time. But for now, focus on the **sound** of what you're doing.

Shadowing has been popularized by Professor Alexander Arguelles, most notably on the How To Learn Any Language forum several years ago. He has his own website Foreign Language Expertise .com and YouTube videos where he discusses Shadowing, other language learning techniques, and other aspects of many languages.

I don't think Professor Arguelles invented Shadowing, as I have seen a few other versions of it over the years that I believe were independently developed. But he has certainly done the most to develop, promote, and popularize it as a language study technique. Many of the more advanced independent language learners have adopted his method or some variation of it. His version of Shadowing is quite unique and contains a few more elements to it that differ from what I am presenting here, but it is essentially the same technique.

## What materials you will need

For the most part, the materials you use for Reading Aloud will work just fine for Shadowing, keeping in mind that here we are focusing much more on the audio.

Again, just like Reading Aloud, you will want chunks of text and accompanying audio, but depending on how comfortable you are with this technique, you may want to look for sections of different lengths.

I recommend audio that you can break up into chunks, like one paragraph at a time, so you don't burn out, unless you really get into doing this!

Generally I like to keep the Shadowing shorter than the sections that I Read Aloud, a minute or two each. Maybe I'm just weird, but I like to start and stop at clean breaks, like complete paragraphs or at the end of a dialogue or conversation. It just feels more complete to me and it is easily repeatable.

Only by trying the technique with different kinds of audio and texts of different lengths and types will you really get a feel for what is perfect for you.

It also depends on your interests. Ultimately you will begin to understand the material that you are Reading Aloud and Shadowing as you continue studying through your language course and beyond. It would be beneficial to you if you enjoy the texts you work with as you advance in the language.

Just like I said above in the Reading Aloud section - If you don't yet have the materials to do this, go ahead and read through the Shadowing section to see how it works. This will help you decide what kind of material might be just right for you.

## What is Shadowing?

The technique that I am calling Shadowing is as follows -

Listen to a piece of audio, longer than a single word, phrase or sentence. Something several sentences long. Immediately, as you hear the audio play, begin to repeat it aloud. Continue on in this way until the audio ends or you stop it, repeating each and every utterance as you hear it, matching the sounds and rhythm of the speaker as best you can. If you miss something, fake it until you catch up.

Yes, to be clear, you are speaking over the audio as you are hearing it. You are essentially **echoing** what you are hearing **while** it is continuing.

This is difficult to do at first and will require repeated practice attempts, first with short pieces of audio and then getting longer until you can do it continuously without a break. You can try this with a bit of English audio at first to get the hang of how to do it. You may have to adjust the volume of what you're hearing relative to the sound of your own voice. Find a balance that works.

Just focus on reproducing what you are hearing as faithfully as possible. It requires concentration and practice. It is very intensive.

Remember the circuit that I talked about earlier? This technique cranks up that circuit to maximum.

You don't have to worry about grammar or meaning, at least how we are using it here. You certainly can use this technique later on when you can understand the material. In fact, you should! It's the most effective technique you can use. When you get very advanced at this you can do this with audio you have never heard before.

At first though, I highly recommend that you do this with audio you have listened to many times and are familiar with, especially audio you have read through before.

## Variations on Shadowing

### Read Along

You can read along with the text as you Shadow, using the text as a visual guide. It may be necessary when you first start Shadowing to get used to it, as a transition from Reading Aloud.

Personally, I don't like doing this though. I like to separate Reading Aloud and Shadowing, decoupling the text from the audio. I tend to only look at the text to clarify something, and even then, generally not while Shadowing.

### Just Shadow

I think the bulk of your work with this technique ought to be **without** reading along. The text is necessary at first so that you can refer back to it when you are completely unsure of what the audio says. You can repeat a section of audio many times and still find that you can't quite decipher what someone is saying. Trial and error is effective and valuable but you don't want to waste time either.

After a few attempts, check the text to see exactly what was said. Then repeat Shadowing the audio without following the text to see if you can get it.

An added benefit of getting comfortable Shadowing without reading along is that you can begin to go outside your study materials. You can Shadow anything – movie dialogue, radio announcers, commercials etc.

### Jumping in and out

This is something you can do when there are a few tricky parts that keep stopping you up. Listen to the audio, Shadowing the parts that you know you can. Stop speaking when you come up to a part you're not getting and just listen carefully, clarifying the audio. Try to pick up the Shadowing again from that point, repeating the tricky part and continuing. Jump in and out as you need to, focusing on the parts you are not getting. Immediately repeat the entire section trying to include the parts you weren't getting before.

Ideally, you want to Shadow everything. But, of course, we need to be efficient. Going over something again and again when you're not getting it begins to be inefficient.

If, after several passes I keep hitting one or more snags where I am unsure of what I am hearing or need to say, I'll stop and use this approach for one or two passes, just to clarify the audio. I may also look back to the text. But then, I'll go back to audio-only Shadowing, trying to get everything.

It's ok to slow down and change your approach for a moment to clarify for efficiency's sake. But try not to use anything as a crutch. Challenge yourself to do **all** of it.

Shadowing gives you intensive, short bursts of activity at a pace dictated by the native speakers. You want to duplicate the natives, but in time it is ideal to begin to play around with it. Just as you want to find the range of possibilities for individual sounds and use them, you also want to find the range of possibilities within the Dynamic Signature.

As you get very familiar with specific passages, and even in general as you progress at this, you will begin to have a better feel for what is possible and begin to realize other options the native may have used during a specific utterance. Pretend to be a native yourself and be creative with your responses.

Shadowing gives you opportunities to do that.

## Physical Training

What is often overlooked in learning a language is that learning to pronounce and speak a language is actually a form of physical training. You will have to make sounds that you may never have made before. You may use the muscles of your mouth, lips, tongue, and throat in completely new ways. You may have to breathe differently as you speak. This requires extensive training and practice.

Because it is physical training, you need to do it over and over again. You will probably not get many of the sounds right the first time. You might not even be close. You must be diligent in attempting to construct your Sound Set. Keep practicing and you will get closer and closer.

When you progress to Reading Aloud and Shadowing, you must speak for much longer periods of time than just pronouncing individual sounds, words, phrases, or short sentences. You must speak for a minute or two or longer continuously. As you are working on defining and perfecting the Dynamic Signature, you will have to repeat sections over and over again.

You need to do this kind of training every single day, maybe even at several different times each day.

Until your mouth and lips and tongue and throat are actually **tired**.

The techniques I propose to use in this ebook are designed to isolate certain aspects of the spoken language so that you can focus on pronouncing it without worrying so much about grammar or even comprehension. Some have suggested that speaking the language, or specifically, using it in conversation as early as possible, is a viable way to improve pronunciation. But I disagree. Yes, of course, using the language will ultimately improve your pronunciation, but when you are using it you are also involved in and worried about so many other aspects of the language. When speaking with others your intent ought to be communication, getting your point across. Absolutely correct pronunciation or grammar should be an afterthought in that context.

Therefore, I like to look at pronunciation practice as an athlete or musician approaches their training. Athletes will isolate muscle groups, work on speed exercises, or run plays over and over again. Musicians practice scales, work with metronomes to tighten up their timing, and isolate and repeat difficult passages.

Why can't we as language learners do the same thing? Isolate individual sounds and exaggerate them. Imitate native speakers while repeating dialogues over and over again. Practice Shadowing and Reading Aloud without comprehension in order to focus just on producing the sounds. Practice listening intently at the sounds natives produce again and again and comparing that with our own production.

When it is time to perform, the athlete or musician no longer worries about their exercises. They are only concerned with their overall performance. We as language learners don't have to be concerned with every aspect of language when we train. Communicate and enjoy when it is time to perform, but isolate and train when it is time to train.

# Putting It All Together

## A Natural Progression

The three steps of this approach form a natural progression.

Initially as you work with the Pronunciation Guide, you begin to define and construct the Sound Set of the language. Then you expand into using those sounds in words and phrases, still focused on producing and improving the individual sounds.

This is introductory and should be mandatory anyway for learning a language, but I look at it as sort of a preparation for Reading Aloud and Shadowing _specifically_. It's preparation for that physical training.

When you are ready, you begin Reading Aloud and, while continuing to improve and perfect the Sound Set, you begin to identify and define the Dynamic Signature. Reading Aloud naturally flows into Shadowing if you are familiar enough with some of the chunks of text that you have been reading and pronouncing and listening to repeatedly.

The techniques begin to meld together. Although I've defined them as different techniques, they offer you a lot of opportunity for interpretation – use them how you want to. There is enough variation and challenge in these techniques to serve anyone's needs.

## The Keys

I believe that there are four simple keys to getting the most out of this approach – listen a lot, speak a lot, establish a routine, and set goals. I've already talked about them in bits and pieces, but let me clarify them here.

### Listen a lot

You're going to need to listen to **a lot** of audio. I know this ebook is about pronunciation, but you need to hear the sounds you're trying to perfect, spoken by native speakers, and you need to hear the rhythm of the language. Once those things are in your head, it will be a lot easier to get them out of your mouth. Initially it's mostly through trial and error, but once you are really familiar with the subtle sounds of the language, you have a much better idea of what sounds _right_.

Repetition is the most important factor in achieving that. As I mentioned earlier, listening to the same passages over and over again is integral. The more familiar you are with a passage and how it sounds, the better able you will be to reproduce it yourself.

Variety of material is also important. I recommend something like a novel and audiobook to use these techniques because you are presented with many thousands of words and sentences in a variety of contexts and with different dynamics.

But even that is just the beginning. Ideally, you should hear different speakers of the language as well. Men, women, old, young, children, urban, rural, people with different regional accents or different styles of speaking, different types of subject matter etc. The more variety you expose yourself to, the better able you will be to define that Sound Set and Dynamic Signature.

Initially, begin with just one source that you apply these techniques to and become accustomed to. But, eventually, you should expand beyond that and look for others. Listening is a passive exercise that you can do in lots of different places and at different times. Take advantage of those opportunities. Listen to new materials that you may use to expand your Reading and Shadowing exercises.

You can't really listen _too much_ , but you do want to apply the Reading Aloud and Shadowing techniques regularly, so don't spend all of your time listening.

Only you can determine how much listening you want to do or need to do.

You will really challenge and develop your ability to listen as you try to work out what the native speakers are doing, but you must also learn to listen closely and critically to yourself. For some people, this may be the hardest part of developing your pronunciation and the last part of that circuit. You must be able to hear what you yourself are doing and compare it to the native in order to correct yourself.

###

### Speak a lot

Of course, following up listening a lot is speaking a lot. And I'm not talking about engaging native speakers in conversation, at least not for this specific purpose. The Reading Aloud and Shadowing techniques give you an enormous opportunity -

You can speak almost endlessly in the language you're learning, and almost immediately!

There is a lot of trial and error in the beginning. You will make lots of mistakes. Keep forging ahead. You have **a ton** of material to pronounce ahead of you, so there is plenty of time to work out the finer points of pronunciation.

Repetition will serve you well here, too. It is easier to hear in your head something that you've heard a dozen times before. You are then better prepared to pronounce that same passage. And whether you are Shadowing or Reading Aloud, you can repeat that passage many times. Each time you repeat it you can zoom in on problem points and really fine-tune how you pronounce that one passage and all its possible subtleties.

The listening and reading aspects of these techniques are ultimately just support for the speaking aspects. Speaking the language is the **whole point** of practicing pronunciation. Don't lose sight of that. These techniques give you the opportunity to speak in a measured, controlled, 'scripted' way so that you can focus on the finer points of speaking without the demands of _communicating_.

The hours of work you put in focusing on speaking will pay off huge dividends later.

### Establish a Routine

I think it follows then that if you must listen, Read Aloud, and Shadow passages over and over again, then you should come up with a routine for doing so.

After you have tried the techniques I propose here and have worked with them for a little while to get a feel for them, I recommend coming up with a schedule of how many times you read, listen, Read Aloud, or Shadow something. This will help you keep moving forward.

Sometimes there will be a temptation to keep working on one passage to get it to perfection. That isn't a terrible thing. But remember, you don't want to be inefficient. Use your time and efforts wisely. If you have a set routine, you will always be moving forward.

Look to balance your use of the techniques, focusing on your problem areas, but also not neglecting others.

After you have moved on to new passages and new texts, periodically go back and apply the techniques again to passages you have already done days ago and weeks ago. See how you do now. See how much you have improved, or see what new things you have learned since then and can apply anew to old material. Include this as part of your routine.

Here's an example of a routine that I typically follow with a new passage –

Casual listen 1 time or more

For passages I intend to Read Aloud and Shadow later, I may use passive time to listen to audio. I may only listen once or twice, but sometimes I listen many times to a particular passage. When I am working with a new passage I generally mix things up whether I am familiar with it by listening many times, only a few times or whether it is completely new to me. It gives me different challenges depending on that level of familiarity.

Read through silently 1 or 2 times

At this point I am just trying to get a feel for the section and recognize any parts that are likely to be tricky.

Read Aloud 1 or 2 times without listening

This is the first attempt at pronouncing a passage. I usually focus on trying to get the individual sounds and words clear, with only a casual guess at the dynamics depending on how far along I am with defining that Dynamic Signature. If I haven't heard this spoken by the native yet, I have no idea what they are going to do with it, so it's all a guess. If I have heard it before when listening casually, I probably am not familiar enough with it to remember how it was done, so it's still mostly guesswork as far as the dynamics go.

Listen and read along silently 1 time

Here I am mostly listening for those dynamics and any individual sounds that need to be corrected, comparing my first run-through with the native.

Read Aloud 1 time

This is the first run-through after hearing it, so I go through it again trying to clarify the individual sounds, but mostly trying to catch more of the dynamics that I probably didn't get.

Repeat the Listen and Read Aloud as needed to work on problem points

Since it is never completely correct, I will always repeat this process a few times. It may be just a general attempt to improve the dynamics or I may isolate a specific section of the text. I'm not looking to really fine-tune it yet. I am just trying to get the overall flow to a workable position. The fine-tuning I save for Shadowing.

Shadow up to 10 times or more

It usually takes a few passes through a segment just to be able to go through it from beginning to end without stopping or stumbling. So I allow time for this. I may have to isolate certain parts and work through them a few times. Then I want to get comfortable with the passage, going through it a few more times. Typically, I will go through a passage ten times or more.

This is where I spend time trying to fine-tune individual sounds, practice the range of individual sounds, and get comfortable enough with the dynamics to start playing around with them. This is the real R and D of pronunciation.

I will also regularly go back and Read Aloud or Shadow passages I had worked through in the past. I leave that as sort of free time for myself to work on whatever I want. I will occasionally Read Aloud or Shadow a passage outside of the text that I am systematically working through just to change things up a bit. I allow time for this in my overall language learning routine, so I am not interrupting my schedule.

Develop a routine like this for yourself. Adjust to your preferences, strengths and weaknesses, making sure you address your problem points and you also give yourself room to play around a bit. You want to follow a routine to help you achieve your goals, but you also want to have fun with this once in a while.

### Set Goals

You're going to have to set some goals for yourself.

You will have your primary long term goal, which is of course to 'learn' the language, but you should be more specific than that. You need to clarify what your goals are so that you can maximize your time and efforts to achieve them. Breaking them down into shorter term goals will also help you get there.

Long-term goals

This is big picture stuff. Be specific about what level of fluency or what abilities you want to have. This will help you figure out what materials you will need and what you must focus on during your study. It will also help you break down this larger goal into projects that can be more easily defined and managed.

And put a time-frame on it. You want to know **when** you will achieve it.

Keep your pronunciation goals within your overall language learning goals. Don't look at it as a separate goal, but just one specific goal within that larger framework.

Mid-term goals

These will be the larger projects that will lead to your long term goals but that you can break down into smaller, easily manageable, chunks. Goals such as completing a class or coursebook that could take a few months fall into this category.

I think that most people's pronunciation goals will fall within the time-frame of mid-term goals.

We're talking about months rather than years. Once you have begun Reading Aloud and Shadowing, the bulk of your work will be accomplished in a few months time, unless you are working for a near-native or native-like accent. That goal is possible, but not realistic in a time-frame of months. A native-like accent requires years of work, usually living in-country. I will talk about that a bit later.

When it comes to language learning, I find it difficult to set mid-term goals past the first one. Generally I will wait to accomplish that one before I reassess and come up with the next stage. There will be a lot to do and learn between here and there and you never really know exactly what your situation will be at that point. If I set mid-term goals past the first one, I will 'pencil it in' fully expecting that to change as my first mid-term goal nears completion. In language learning, you have to be flexible.

Short-term goals

These are the goals on the weekly and daily level. Break down your mid-term goal into tasks that can be accomplished weekly and daily and you are closer to having your schedule and language learning routine planned out.

Your short term goals will obviously change a lot. You will constantly be readjusting those goals. You will be adding new materials to learn from and trying new techniques. That's ok. It means you are right on top of your language learning regimen. Nobody can tell you better how to do this than you.

Here's an example of setting some goals using myself and my attempt to learn Tagalog as an example.

Long-term goal

I want an understanding of the language used in everyday situations. I'm not studying the language for academic reasons. I also don't need to use it for business or professional reasons. So I don't really need advanced grammar or a lot of technical vocabulary. **I just want basic everyday conversational proficiency.** And, of course, the best pronunciation I can muster.

Ok, how will I achieve that goal? What other goals can I set to get me to that point?

Mid-term goals

My first Mid-term goal will be to complete the 15 chapter coursebook that I'll be using. I want to finish one chapter each week which will have me completing this book in about four months. After that, I'll reassess my situation and come up with new mid-term and short term goals.

I have additional resources that I will work into my routine as well – another course book with audio that is structured differently, a dictionary, and a phrasebook.

For Reading Aloud and Shadowing I will be using a totally different resource. It is a dramatized version of the New Testament. I am not using it for religious reasons, it just happens to be an incredible linguistic resource that is freely available on the internet. It is already divided into easily manageable chunks as the Bible is delineated by book, chapter and verse. You can read a little more about this resource in the Case Studies section in the Appendices.

Short-term goals

The first week is chapter one of my coursebook. I will also begin hand-making flashcards for the vocabulary I am trying to learn. I start working on the Pronunciation Guide tonight.

These are just general goals to illustrate the process. You can micro-manage those short term goals if you need to. For example, once I get going, I will look to establish a routine for Reading Aloud and Shadowing and I can set daily and weekly targets for pronunciation work, study, and using different techniques or resources.

That's the kind of planning you need to do to get started and to keep yourself moving forward.

## Diminishing Returns

There is one peculiar aspect of language learning that you need to be aware of - diminishing returns.

At first you're learning the big things, the most important grammar, the most common vocabulary.

Initially, you make very rapid progress. It's a very exciting feeling. You go from knowing nothing about the language to beginning to learn and use it. Even Reading Aloud whole passages and reciting texts and dialogues in a matter of weeks. It can be intoxicating, really.

But those gains will not continue at that pace. After a little while, you will have learned the most important grammar points. New things you learn will be less _foundational_ and more and more nit-picky.

This also applies to pronunciation. At first you are working on the most basic sounds of the language and in many cases simply substituting English sounds. But you will advance quickly. Once you have a handle on the sounds and you have constructed your Sound Set, then you are spending more of your time fine-tuning specific sounds and the subtleties of the language.

What this means is that the return you get for the amount of work you do will decrease – you will be working harder or longer to make the same _relative_ gains. This is where you start hitting plateaus where you feel like you are working hard, but you don't feel like you are accomplishing much.

You are working on ever finer details of the language. It becomes harder and harder to tick off your accomplishments for the day. Or even to identify what those accomplishments might be.

And this is particularly true with regards to fine-tuning pronunciation and accent. I talked earlier about going over and over a passage to get it perfect. You are fine-tuning your accent to an ever smaller degree with the same amount of effort. How can you even quantify how your pronunciation has improved in the last few hours or minutes of work?

This is the effect of diminishing returns.

Only you, the learner, can determine at what point to move on. Only you can determine when what you're getting out of a task is no longer worth the time or effort. This is all relative to your goals and how much work and time you are willing to put into it in order to achieve them.

But, there is a way to counter the effects of diminishing returns.

Just as our language study will evolve as we advance in the language, our **use** of these techniques, Reading Aloud and Shadowing, can also change over time.

## Evolving Use Over Time

In the early stages of your language study, your focus using the Reading Aloud and Shadowing techniques is strictly on the sounds of the language.

As you progress in learning the language, comprehension of what you're Reading Aloud and Shadowing will slowly begin to creep into your efforts.

Ultimately, this isn't a problem - it's an opportunity. Your attempt to focus on the sounds and dynamics might require greater concentration as you begin to understand more content, but it still serves that purpose.

Eventually, you will advance your accent to a high level, at which point you will begin to question how much time to spend on these techniques, given the effects that diminishing returns will have on your study time.

But that's if you are using these techniques **only** for pronunciation and accent improvement.

The opportunity comes as you enter a more intermediate and advanced level of language.

As it turns out, these techniques are wonderful for **other** aspects of language learning, particularly at the advanced levels. They are great for listening comprehension and gaining a real proficiency with the language.

At this point, one of the great advantages of using these techniques so early comes into play. All that work you did fine-tuning your pronunciation and accent helped to build an enormous foundation for you to begin to _understand_ more of the language. Exposing yourself to such a massive quantity of language, much more than you get in your language course, gave your brain lots of material for pattern recognition.

This is precisely the time to use these techniques for those other language skills. As you shift your focus more to _comprehension_ (reversing your initial focus with these techniques), you **still** also get the benefit of using them to work on your accent.

Comprehension changes our focus and the value of different approaches over time. You may want to change **how** you use these techniques - meaning your routine, or how many times you Read Aloud or how you introduce yourself to new content – but there is no need to stop using them altogether. Simply re-adjust your focus and your short-term goals as you go.

At an advanced stage in the language, you can use Reading Aloud and Shadowing with texts you've never seen or heard before. You can use them to work on different regional accents or to introduce yourself to new subjects and new vocabulary in context. There are many possibilities and it is amazing to see that a technique you once used when you understood **nothing** can continue to be used when you are beginning to understand **everything!**

# Wrapping Up

I hope that this process I have laid out has provided you a new avenue to improve your accent and master your pronunciation of your target language and opened your eyes to new opportunities and possibilities in language learning. At the very least I hope this ebook has showed you how to adapt language learning techniques to make them your own, whether to specifically improve your pronunciation or even adapting other resources to develop other aspects of the languages you want to learn.

I believe this ebook can change the fortunes of many language learners and I sincerely wish you the best of luck. It is an enormous task to learn another language and I have great respect for anyone who even attempts such a thing.

I am most eager to see how other people use these techniques in their own ways. Language learners are among the most creative and independent learners of nearly any subject. Language learning can be art or science or anything in between. I am curious to see how you adapt them to specific cases, such as languages with other scripts, or other circumstances or uses I haven't imagined.

This ebook has turned out to be much longer than I had intended and yet there is much more I have to say. I suppose I babble too much. Regardless, I will continue to study and learn and write and share what I learn through my website as I continue my own language learning journey.

I will also continue to work with other language learners. Wherever possible I am documenting our experiences and I plan to publish more complete and better documented case studies in the future. Having your feedback is an enormous help not just to me, but also to other language learners who read my site and my ebooks. Please feel free to send me your feedback, suggestions, comments, and reviews at

MasteringPronunciation@language-learning-advisor.com

Follow me on Twitter @LLALanguage

# Appendices

## A - Pronunciation Neglected By Native English Speakers

I have taken language courses at every level – in Elementary School, Junior High, High School, Undergraduate, and at the Graduate level. I've also studied on my own with books, audio courses, programs and apps, and used lots of different tools and techniques. I have studied spoken language, focused on other languages only for reading or academic purposes, languages both living and dead, and still others just to get a taste of what the language was like.

In all of that, one thing that I have consistently noticed is that the teaching and promotion of good pronunciation has almost always been neglected. Not ignored, but never given nearly as much focus as I believe it should.

I believe that the biggest reason for this is cultural more than anything else. There is a cultural stigma against the teaching, learning, and use of foreign languages in native English speaking countries and culture in general. It's bound up in the education system and rears its ugly head in commercial language learning products

In the traditional language learning setting, the focus is usually on vocabulary and grammar, the things that are most 'testable.' It comes down to resources. Teacher-student ratios just don't allow for a focus on something as subjective as pronunciation. It is harder to test for and measure, so 'good enough' just has to do. Other aspects of language, like vocabulary, verb endings, and noun cases, are much more teachable and testable for a large class. Language teaching has traditionally not been geared toward practical use. The result is that students end up with some knowledge _of_ a language but little ability to _use_ it.

There are exceptions, of course.

If there is one consistent saving grace in traditional language education it's the teachers themselves. I continually meet language teachers who care more about the outcome for their students than they do about the traditional bureaucracy they butt heads with. They are usually fighting an uphill battle. The culture of language education in native English-speaking countries mostly has not caught up with improvements in methodology and technology. Bad language learning experiences persist.

I believe this mindset often extends to commercial language learning products, where the primary goal is profit. So the 'traditional' model of classroom language teaching is repeated out of cost effectiveness.

Commercial products have to be language-specific, making it harder to duplicate programs and courses for many languages. This is often not cost effective or profitable.

Those publishers that do figure out how to duplicate their product profitably generally don't make a quality product and the only one who suffers is the consumer.

But there are other reasons why commercial products don't focus as much on pronunciation as they should. Most of them are just practical.

Pronunciation requires a lot of practice and oversight. A book or audio program can't tell you how you're doing, so you're left on your own to rough it without as much guidance or emphasis as the process really demands.

Software programs and apps often have a way to test your pronunciation but they are unreliable, unpredictable, and don't actually give you any real feedback on exactly what you are doing right or wrong. So, again, you are on your own.

Pronunciation is difficult to teach in a program or app, or explain in a book. Particularly the dynamics of a language. It's a subject that's very hard to write about or read about. It's something that you just have to **do**.

Publishers don't do a good enough job of promoting the importance of getting the pronunciation right. Neither do they give the learner the opportunity to do it. Most courses give only an introductory explanation of the pronunciation. They will likely follow up with specific points throughout the course, but will also likely never have another chapter on pronunciation again in the course. Instead, improving your pronunciation is relegated to the end of the process, something for you to mull over and work on for the rest of your life!

Courses and classes make some attempt to help the student develop the Sound Set, but little for the Dynamic Signature because it is so much more complex, difficult to identify, and difficult to teach and test for. It is rare to even see the kind of content you need to do this effectively. You have to find that yourself and you have to know what to do with it. It should be integrated fully into the course, and from the beginning. It would make the rest of the learning process go much smoother.

Due to improvements in technology in the last few decades opportunities have vastly improved for language learners to address these deficiencies. But again, we are mostly left to do it on our own!

Ultimately, unless you have a personal tutor, or a language coach walking you through the entire process, or a native speaker to assess your progress regularly, it is up to you to determine how your pronunciation is developing. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. This is what's called **learner autonomy**. You take charge of your own learning process. Since you are going to have to do that no matter how you learn, you might as well commit to it early, fully, and do it right.

## B - Why the Approach Presented Here Works

How these techniques improve pronunciation ought to be pretty clear. But, I made some claims in the Introduction about how using this approach improves other aspects of language learning and actually accelerates our ability to learn the language. I should explain that a bit.

The reason I make that claim is because when we use this approach, we expose ourselves to a massive amount of language very early on. And not basic language either, the kind of stuff you see at intermediate and advanced stages, the 'real-life' stuff.

At that point we're only focused on the sounds of the language, but you're still seeing and hearing advanced language. That's not wasted on our brains. We naturally try to see patterns in things, and there are lots of patterns in language. We expose ourselves to lots of patterns and repeat them over and over again, giving our brains plenty of opportunity to recognize things.

And when we slowly begin to learn the reasons and rules behind those patterns, we already have lots of material to draw from in recognizing those rules at work.

**Grammatical forms and structures** \- we've already seen them over and over again. All those case endings, or verb forms, or just the order that things go in. And then we continue to Read Aloud and Shadow and that just reinforces what we've just learned. It helps those rules sink in.

**Parsing skills** \- initially, the language is mostly an endless stream of foreign unintelligible noise. It is difficult to tell where even one word ends and another begins, let alone understand anything. But when we start this approach we don't need to understand it. We just look at it and listen to it and repeat it back in various forms. Again and again. We very quickly learn how words sound in different situations and combinations. We become experts in parsing very early on.

Combined with the fact that we must listen very carefully to every little sound we hear and every sound we produce, we also become experts at listening. Better parsing and listening skills so early on helps us to communicate much later when we really need it.

**Learning vocabulary** – I'm convinced that seeing thousands of words over and over again, even thousands of _different_ words that we don't know yet, helps with learning vocabulary later. You're learning the boundaries of the language – what a word can look like, what can constitute a word in this language. When your course teaches you a word – likely a very common one – you've already seen it many dozens of times. You didn't know what it means until then, but you've seen it in certain contexts and in proximity to certain other types of words. This is hard to quantify, but I believe this process helps to prepare us to learn vocabulary more easily.

I believe there is a general agreement among language learners that it is best to learn a language quickly.

The temptation is often to take it easy in your first few weeks of learning a language. I suppose the thinking is 'well, I don't know anything yet, so I'll pick up the pace when I have something to work with.' The danger is, of course, that you don't pick up the pace and your motivation descends into disinterest.

What I like about this approach is that it smashes that thought into little pieces. You have **plenty** of material to work with right from Day One. This approach gives you the opportunity to make rapid progress in _some_ aspect of learning the language right away. That may help you maintain your motivation into later stages of learning.

If you can get the language to an intermediate level at least, it becomes self-sustaining. At that point you can **use** the language to **learn** the language, as I like to say. You aren't slowed down by stumbling over the basics and you are already capable enough to use native materials. Reading Aloud and Shadowing sets the stage for that beautifully.

Therefore you should try to get yourself to a relatively high level in the language, like say conversationally proficient, in a reasonably short period of time, let's say 3-6 months. Within this timeframe you can set achievable goals that will really motivate and inspire yourself. And you will get maximum advantage from this focus on pronunciation – your early hard work and rapid success will create momentum to build upon.

## C - What Do I Mean By 'Mastering' Pronunciation Anyway?

When it comes to mastering pronunciation, something I have not really talked about in this ebook is **fluency**.

Fluency is mostly about communication, and not necessarily about good pronunciation.

Bad Pronunciation can certainly be an impediment to communication, but good pronunciation, even a native-like accent, doesn't guarantee communication. You still have to know how the language works to a high-level and have more than a little proficiency with it. That requires a lot of hard work on grammar, vocabulary, and getting a handle on idioms.

Remember - you can be fluent and still have a very bad accent.

I've said before that language learning can be a subjective experience – everyone's definition of fluency will be something different. Also, keep in mind that perception can go a long way in language learning. If you have very good pronunciation, you may be mistaken for being fluent by other speakers of the language, even if you aren't that advanced yet. Oh, that is a good problem to have!

The intent of this approach is to enable the learner so that pronunciation is never the roadblock to fluency, but it will not bring about fluency by itself.

This ebook is really about **mastering the process** of improving pronunciation.

I believe that anyone using this approach will likely achieve results that will set them apart from other people learning the same language who don't approach pronunciation and accent with the same conviction.

Going through this process will train you to be able to improve and fine-tune your accent at any point in your learning track. Working on this for more than a short period of time will almost certainly get your accent to an excellent or outstanding level. One that will impress other learners of the language and even the natives.

I believe that anyone _even attempting_ to use these techniques systematically for a short period of time will benefit from the process and achieve at least above average results.

How far above average? That depends on you.

Once you know how to do this, then your acceptable accent level is entirely up to you. It's subject to what level you are currently at, how much you work on it, and the effect of diminishing returns.

This is mostly what I mean by 'mastering.' Not necessarily that you have achieved some particular level, but rather that you have mastered the ability to improve your accent according to your own wishes. You are not subject to some unknown forces or barriers that force you to speak in a certain way. You **know** what those forcers and barriers are and you know how to confront them.

By 'mastering' I mean that pronunciation of the language never trips you up, at least not much more than a native speaker. You don't stumble on common sounds or words. When you come across new words you immediately know how to say it with confidence and ease and be at least reasonably close to how a native would say it. You may still have a foreign sounding accent to a native, but it will never be an impediment to communication.

This is all subjective – everyone reading this will have a different and personal idea about what their goals are. When we apply that diminishing returns paradigm, we each have to determine our own acceptable end-point for our efforts.

Ok, how about some specifics?

Let's be clear. I'm certainly not equating the idea of mastering pronunciation with achieving a native-like accent, although it is possible.

That level of accent requires years of work with the amount of effort you put into it being subject to diminishing returns over time.

That time might be better spent in other ways, such as improving grammar, expanding vocabulary, or increasing your knowledge of regional accents or idioms. Is it worth three more months of hard work to improve your accent from 95% native to 96% native?

I'm not saying that reaching a native-like accent isn't a worthy or achievable goal or that you shouldn't do it. It's up to you. If that is indeed your goal, then by all means go to it. It is achievable.

But at a moderately advanced point a language is mostly at a self-sustaining and slowly self-improving level, provided that you keep using it regularly. That extra formal study time you have available to you is likely better spent elsewhere.

It's just my personal opinion that it's not efficient to spend that effort for such a relatively small gain unless it is supremely important to you. Realistically, you could use that time to add a whole new language to your repertoire.

What about a near-native accent?

A near-native accent is certainly an achievable goal, but probably not reasonable for most people.

It takes a lot of time to fine-tune your accent to that kind of level and most people just don't have that as a goal. The simple truth is that the vast majority of people who learn a language are comfortable with a much more modest level of language and accent when they reach a certain point.

The satisfaction of achieving that coupled with the realization of diminishing returns usually forces a compromise for those who had loftier goals.

Also, as you actually learn the language, more and more of your time will be better spent in conversation with natives to increase proficiency and approach real fluency. It's more profitable in terms of your time and effort. It's a more comprehensive approach to learning the language by using it. Spending some time tightening up your accent with Reading Aloud and Shadowing new materials will continue to help, but to a lesser degree.

I always recommend to learners to keep their goals reasonable and manageable. You can always readjust later on. Setting goals unreasonably high can squash your feelings of accomplishment.

An accent doesn't need to be native or near-native in order to be pleasant to natives, impressive to other learners, and fulfilling for the speaker. The difference between an outstanding accent, a near-native accent, and a native-like accent is really quite small, but still with a considerable amount of work differentiating them.

The approach in this ebook will help you master the process of improving pronunciation, and help you get to an outstanding accent efficiently, with a strong foundation for further improvement if you choose to do so.

## D - Case Studies

I didn't want this ebook to be a 'How I Did It and You Can Too!' story. I've tried to be objective throughout and here is something a little different altogether.

This section presents three cases of language learners I worked with who used these techniques to successfully break through barriers and improve their pronunciation. Each studied a different language and used different resources. It shows how other language learners adapted this approach to their own resources and needs.

These three cases were, for me in particular, the moments when the value of each of the steps of this approach was proven and I began to see the connections between them as part of a systematic approach.

In all three cases, we worked on many aspects of learning the target language, such as acquiring and remembering vocabulary, learning the grammar, using tools such as flashcards, or trying different techniques. But for the most part, my comments here refer only to our focus on pronunciation.

I hope their stories will help show you how to apply these techniques to your own situation.

### Case Study #1 - Darren

Darren was taking an introductory Spanish class in college, his first foreign language. He was excited about the class, but was feeling a little bit out of place. Although he wanted help with every aspect of the language, he was especially worried about his pronunciation. He was also particularly confused about stress and accent marks in Spanish.

This came up at a very interesting time for me. I had just written a pamphlet for Spanish students on pronouncing Spanish through reading, which included an emphasis on stress and accent marks. So, the timing of Darren's request for help was perfect, especially considering his particular needs. That pamphlet is what ultimately became the basis for this approach and this ebook.

Darren's textbook had an online audio supplement which was a very good and comprehensive Pronunciation Guide to work through. Darren had already done most of what he needed to do. He had worked through it completely and applied it to words, phrases, and simple sentences, both on his own and through his class work. He had a good handle on the individual sounds of Spanish and was developing his ability with the trickier ones.

But he was having trouble figuring out stress in Spanish words and he felt it was holding him back from speaking.

I showed him the pamphlet I had written and worked with him on the rules of stress and the accent marks in Spanish. He had already learned enough Spanish to understand what I was showing him and it filled in some of the gaps that he needed. His pronunciation began to improve immediately. He started to get a better feel for stress in individual words, but in order for this to really take root he needed to start speaking a lot more.

His textbook was very good with some longer sections of text, and its online content was useful. But he also had a dual language book with audio, on a variety of subject essays two to three pages in length. These sources were perfect for Reading Aloud.

Like most people who try Reading Aloud early in their language study, Darren started out slowly. He began using bits and pieces of the audio material in his online textbook until he got used to it. As he did it, he applied what he was learning and what we had gone over about stress and accent marks from the pamphlet. He began to progress and improve, although he didn't think so at first.

Later, when he was ready for some longer passages, he started tackling the essays in his dual-language book. Darren surprised me when he said that he thought the pace of Reading Aloud was too 'artificial.' I pointed out that this was a pretty good indication that he was getting very comfortable with the technique and with his level of Spanish in general.

_That_ surprised Darren. He then recognized how much he had progressed in a short while. All the work he had done in class and outside of class became real to him.

And he was right, of course, that Reading Aloud is 'artificial.' But recognizing that meant he might be ready to try Shadowing.

The material in his online textbook was relatively slow moving compared to real native speech, as it should be for a first semester class. So, I introduced Darren to Shadowing using this material to start with. Once he got the technique he felt that this too was a little 'artificial,' even for the intensity of Shadowing. It was just a little too slow, not very real-life, a 'classroom pace.' He wanted Shadowing to feel more real-life.

So we turned again to the essays, which were more for intermediate students. The pace for some of the essays was just a bit too much for Darren, and on others it was challenging, but he could keep pace with it in short doses and with many repetitions. Although the material was not conversational, it was more like native materials and less like classroom material, which was what Darren wanted out of the technique.

As he developed he learned to adapt his resources and the use of these techniques to his strengths, current abilities, and needs. He appreciated and enjoyed Reading Aloud and Shadowing more and more as he used them.

So, how about Darren's class?

He went from trying hard to blend in and not stand out, not wanting to be singled out or not volunteering to say anything in class, to being the top student in the class. To being the go-to student for trying to pronounce, read, or try something aloud in class. To being willing and able to help out the professor and work with the other students. And it was more than just confidence. His pronunciation, comfort and facility with Spanish improved dramatically by the end of the semester.

Of course, the extra time and effort that Darren was putting into his homework with these techniques was probably more than the other students were doing. But the extra effort working so efficiently and targeting his main problem points made a huge difference.

Until that moment, I hadn't realized how natural the progression from Reading Aloud to Shadowing was. I hadn't put Shadowing together with the Pronunciation Guide work and Reading Aloud as a technique _specifically_ for developing pronunciation so early in the study of a language.

But the results were clear, even with this approach not fully fleshed out. I saw the power of these techniques as Darren blew away the other students in his class and impressed his professor.

### Case Study #2 - Sophie

Sophie had a lifelong dream of learning French and going to France. She was trying for the umpteenth time to study French and just wanted some help getting going. She felt that she was just going through the motions without really making progress. She told me that this time she was trying Pimsleur and hoping that it was going to be more successful than other courses she had tried, but she wanted someone looking over her shoulder, so to speak, to make sure she was getting somewhere.

Before I went to meet up with her I listened to a few lessons of Pimsleur to refresh my memory of their content. I am pretty familiar with Pimsleur but I specifically wanted to engage with Sophie using the exact material she had been working with so that she would feel comfortable.

When I met her I greeted her using Pimsleur's exact phrasing. At first she just smiled nervously and responded in English. I persisted, trying to encourage her by using some more of Pimsleur's dialogue. Eventually she apologized and told me that she couldn't really pronounce anything yet. I was a bit confused by this because she said she was on Level 2 of Pimsleur. There are 30 half-hour lessons in Level 1, and Pimsleur is all audio, with speaking right from the beginning in lesson 1, so she should have done quite a bit of speaking at that point.

After questioning her a bit I discovered something amazing. She confessed that she was listening to the Pimsleur courses, but not speaking at all. She felt like she understood quite well and knew the answers, but she was answering the questions _in her head!_

She hadn't actually started speaking yet and didn't intend to until she was _ready_.

I was astounded.

I later discovered that others have done this with Pimsleur and other audio courses.

I understand the need to be perfect that some people like Sophie have. I am one of those people. We want to be perfect when we begin speaking. So, the thought is that with lots of input, along with repeated listening, analysis, and study, we can eventually have a foundation for perfection and then we can be _ready_ to speak. But it doesn't actually work that way.

The input part is correct – lots of input is good and helps build that foundation. And lots of study of grammar and vocabulary and idioms are all necessary to become proficient with the language. But remember what I said about learning to speak another language being a lot like the training an athlete or musician goes through? That's what Sophie didn't realize and we began to work on that right away.

As we talked, Sophie confessed that she was very nervous about pronouncing French, particularly the 'r' sound. She wasn't alone in that, lots of people have trouble with it. We immediately went online to look for a basic Pronunciation Guide and began working through it carefully. Although she adjusted well and began using the sounds and speaking words and phrases, she was still hesitant to speak full sentences.

Sophie has a very thoughtful and careful personality. She has a slow and deliberate manner of speaking in English and she studied and worked at a similar pace. I expected this would also come out in her attempts to speak French.

So, we adopted a two-prong approach that favored her personality and work habits. I wanted Sophie to be able to get the most out of Pimsleur because I knew it could help her so we adjusted how she used the course. But I also wanted to use her interest in reading so I could introduce her to Reading Aloud.

First, we changed her routine to begin using the Pimsleur courses from the beginning again.

Pimsleur uses a technique called back-formation to teach the pronunciation of a word or phrase when it is first introduced. You're not really pronouncing the word or phrase at first, just pieces of it starting from the end and adding a little more moving forward until you can pronounce the whole thing. It sounds more complicated than it is but it works wonderfully and Pimsleur uses this in all their language courses.

Although she had listened to over 40 half-hour lessons up to that point, Sophie had never even once pronounced any of the spoken content, even these back-formations.

This time she would listen to each lesson twice. The first time, she would do the back-formations if there were any, but when prompted to speak the conversational material she would stay quiet during the silence after the prompt, saying the answer silently to herself, but would then Shadow or repeat the answer aloud when it was given afterward. That little bit of Shadowing was my way of introducing her to that technique early on, which we expanded upon later.

The second time through the lesson, which she repeated immediately after the first, she would again do the back-formations but she would speak the conversational material when prompted. I stressed to her how important it was to not only speak the material aloud, but to try the correct response herself before the answer was given. This new routine allowed her the confidence she needed at that point to work through the course.

It was a compromise between her inner perfectionist and the out-loud work that must be done, with all the mistakes that must come with it, in order to complete the circuit and actually learn to speak the language. Ultimately she got confidant enough that she just worked through the course normally, but she continued to do each lesson twice, using every opportunity to speak the material aloud.

The second prong involved an interest in reading which Sophie shared with her 10 year old daughter, particularly reading Harry Potter books together. She _loved_ the idea of reading Harry Potter in French. She thought that she would not be able to enjoy that until much later, after having studied French for years. She was really excited about using it as a tool to help her learn it.

I was too, because I realized her interest level would be high, it would be fun for her, and she could share parts of the experience with her daughter – all good motivations for her. I was also hoping that Reading Aloud might be a technique better suited to her personality and manner of speaking. She could go at her own pace and choose which passages to work on.

She found the pressure of Shadowing long passages was a bit too much. I expected this given her personality, but I convinced her how valuable this technique would be for her to improve her pronunciation and help her get comfortable speaking. She only Shadowed passages of the text which she especially liked where she was comfortable with the pacing and was familiar enough with it. She did use the technique regularly but not nearly as much as Reading Aloud.

Her accent was actually quite good once she got going. She already had a pretty good foundation in French from all the courses she had already studied from. Her problem was as much confidence as it was needing that physical training.

One thing she was very interested in was to be a good role model for her daughter. Sophie wanted her daughter to see her mom facing a challenge and working through it to achieve her goal. It was a good motivation for her in addition to her own personal life goals. But one fun side note in all this – Sophie's daughter began working through the Pimsleur course and they eventually would Read Aloud passages of Harry Potter in French to each other!

### Case Study #3 - Andre

Andre had met a girl from Surinam whose native languages, in addition to English, were Dutch and Sranan. He wanted to make an impression and was intensely interested in learning these languages. He had resources for learning Dutch and was moving along fine on his own, but he had a particular fascination with Sranan. Unlike with Darren and Sophie, the only thing holding Andre back was lack of materials. He just couldn't find _anything_ for Sranan.

Sranan is actually a creole based on English with a lot of vocabulary from Dutch, Portuguese, and African and local languages. Because it's a creole, it has a simplified grammar and a relatively small number of words, making it an easy language to learn. But, since it is not spoken by a lot of people, there aren't many commercial products to learn it. Hence Andre's frustration.

He found and contacted me because I had recently posted on a blog some research I was doing into Sranan while searching for languages with small vocabularies. I knew this would be a challenge which would require some creative solutions.

I did find a course for learning Sranan in Dutch and also downloaded a free Dutch-Sranan dictionary. Andre liked the idea of having to use his limited Dutch to help him learn Sranan. Actually, it turned out that he didn't use the course as much more than just a reference, but he did use the dictionary quite a bit with another resource I found, one that got Andre really excited.

What turned out to be a great linguistic resource was a dramatized version of the New Testament entirely in Sranan. I mentioned earlier that I was using a Tagalog version which was produced by the same organization.

I don't remember exactly at what point I discovered this resource, but the Sranan version was the first one I examined closely. What blew me away then (and still does today) was the quantity of material you have to work with. Essentially a whole book's worth of audio and text dramatized with music and performed by numerous native-speaking voice actors. Almost everything I would want in a resource to do any reading, listening or Shadowing exercises.

The group that produces these can be found at https://www.faithcomesbyhearing.com/ and they also offer app versions for smartphones and tablets at http://www.bible.is. You can use the online or app version for free, download as podcast, or get the whole production in one language on CD for a small fee. Last time I checked they had similar productions in _over a thousand languages!_ Obviously their motivation is religious in nature, but even if you're not interested in it for religious reasons, it's an _incredible_ resource for learning languages.

Ok, back to Andre.

Since this wasn't a dedicated language course or resource we had to come up with ways for Andre to use it. I introduced Andre to a few options, namely Reading Aloud and Shadowing.

When I explained the resources I had found, he was a little skeptical. But I showed it to him and when I played it, he lit up. He immediately heard what was to him so magical about the language – he pointed to the speakers and said "That's it! That's what I want to sound like!"Andre had already identified that there was a _sound_ to Sranan, what I would, of course, call the Dynamic Signature, and he had heard it in his girl's speech patterns when she spoke English. He loved her accent. I explained what I had in mind for using this resource and he instantly loved the idea.

To this day, Andre is for me the model of what motivation to learn a language ought to look like.

Andre never really went through the Pronunciation Guide process that I outline for two reasons. One was because the individual sounds of Sranan are similar to English because it is an English-based creole. There are no really uniquely different sounds from English. There are differences, of course, but mostly subtle. It's the Dynamic Signature which really makes the language sound different. Plus, with Andre's study of Dutch, which was also an influence on Sranan, he already had experience constructing a Sound Set, so I wasn't too worried about it. I knew he would get that part of it quickly.

The other reason was Andre himself and how he approached the material.

He was a natural mimic, which was partly why he ended up enjoying Shadowing and being very good at it. But also that he intended to work mostly intuitively. He had the mindset that he was adopting this language as someone living within it, that he would develop his own accent, even if he sounded like a foreigner, but one who **lived** the language.

Andre had a very unique approach. I felt that trying to impose a rigid learning system on him was not going to work, and he basically told me as much!

I showed him how Reading Aloud and Shadowing work and he took to it right away. He saw the value in both techniques and used them regularly, but he differentiated the two a bit.

He viewed Reading Aloud as more like 'study' time, which he spent looking things up as he needed to or wanted to, and deconstructing sentences. When Reading Aloud he would not compare himself too much with the native. He used it more as a starting point for his pronunciation and as a reference for his limited grammar work. He found Reading Aloud more difficult than Shadowing. Although he said he wouldn't like a rigid system, he eventually did settle into a fairly regular routine.

If Reading Aloud was his 'study time, Shadowing was 'living the language' time. He really went full force into it, putting a lot of time into listening to sections over and over again, and really trying to make the sound of the language his own. He would repeat sections a number of times, varying the dynamics each time. Andre took the idea of playing around with the language and the Dynamic Signature to an art form.

This all worked out pretty well for Andre. Although the material in the New Testament isn't exactly 'everyday language,' he used the material in the one coursebook and reworked the material from both sources together. He would then practice speaking invented dialogs using this composite material and his increasing facility with the pronunciation and Dynamic Signature.

I like to use Andre as an example, not to show you how someone took what I did and replicated my techniques exactly. Andre didn't do that. He took the tools and techniques I showed him and made them his own – he developed his own language learning method. That's what the most successful language learners do and that's what you should do. I can only show you some options to study and learn a language, it is up to you to fashion it all into something that works best for you as Andre did.

# Acknowledgements

I just want it to be understood that most of the techniques and ideas presented here were not developed by me.

They mostly come from the teachers and independent language learners who influenced and informed me, including many of the visitors to my website (Language Learning Advisor.com) who have shared their own successful (and unsuccessful!) attempts at learning and studying languages over the years.

As such, I am coming from a long line of independent language learners, teachers, translators, linguists, philologists, scribes, writers, poets, artists, and lyricists who developed, tested, and exhausted every way imaginable to learn and use language through the centuries and continue to do so. I believe that language learners are among the most creative students of any subject and I am the beneficiary of that.

If I can participate in any way in that long tradition, add anything, even just my own humble opinion, or pass along even the smallest nugget of information which helps you achieve your goals, then it is just testament to the work and creativity of those others who have influenced me and inspired my own language learning journey. If I fail in that endeavor, the fault lies with me.

