Parent* I only post via mobile so my posts are probably always riddled with typos! If you see one just overlook it.
I’m having the same experience really, and it’s surprising. I’m thinking, wow if it’s this easy to hear already when doing just a little bit of shadowing, why didn’t I do this earlier? lol
This is really challenging for me too, and I’ve noticed I can only do full speed when I really understand all the words being spoken and have internalized them enough to directly spit them out again unconsciously. If I stop to think, “oh wait I know this word, what syllables does it have again?” it’s already too late. When I am encountering words that I kinda know but only passively, it feels like they immediately get pushed to my active vocabulary from the experience of stumbling over them and figuring out what they really are, which is a fun bonus.
I see, that makes sense. I don’t think I’m interested in limiting myself right now since I already feel quite familiar with the types of speech patterns for different genders and age ranges just from all the content I’ve ever consumed…but it’s something to keep in mind and pay attention to! There was a point in my life where my friend group was mostly Japanese guys and I found myself accidentally slipping out an 行きてー without thinking once in conversation After I said it it was the realization like oh, I have to try not to speak like this, can’t just rely on autopilot brain and the input from these guys. No hate to anyone who does want to talk like that though, it just doesn’t fit the vibe of my existence.
I tried shadowing a while back, decided it was too hard and haven’t really bothered since. That was also before I started riding the comprehensible input train, so I was trying to get myself able to speak (even though I didn’t have the vocabulary to speak). Anyway, apparently the newest hotness is supposed to be chorusing. I have only given that a cursory try as well, but it did feel a lot easier for me than shadowing. It’s also where I started being able to really hear how bad my volitional is when it’s -ろう (which comes up all the time with だろう).
It’s not super applicable to the listening challenge since it’s not really language anymore when you do chorusing, but I thought I’d mention it if anyone is thinking of shadowing and wanted to give this a try also/instead.
If my Japanese was good enough that ppl understand that I make choices and not mistakes, I would 100% use ぼく or あたい and likely male coloured langauge… But I would also definitely use ひどいわ or go あらまあ.
The idea is I think that by repeating the smaller chunks over and over you stop processing it as language and are just listening to sounds. And apparently that uses a different part of your brain that’s closer to that of like singing (hence chorusing) that allows you to hear the differences better. You also get in more “reps” of a given sound too, so it’s more of an exercise.
I don’t know how much of this is backed by any research and how much of it is just things that people say in language learning forums. But I think the main upside is supposed to be that it separates the sounds from any real meaning.
I still don’t understand what the difference between shadowing and chorusing is. They both seem like “talk along to the audio repeatedly, until you can do it accurately and consistently”
Maybe I’m misunderstanding shadowing?
My approach is essentially sentence by sentence "listen to sentence, repeat sentence (or subparts of sentence) with audio until I can say them identically or very close to the speaker, then move on to next sentence. Is that actually chorusing, and I’ve misunderstood shadowing? Or is there some other difference in the process that I’m missing?
At least with the chorusing I’ve done it’s more like you take a sentence and chop it up into very tiny parts, usually just a word or a word plus a particle and say that 10-50 times. Then move on to the next word and the next. You know how when you say a word enough times it loses its meaning? I think that’s the goal of chorusing. Shadowing, is more like, “I’m going to practice this until I’m able to say it with the speaker”. The two techniques approach each other at the limit, but I think what you’re focusing on doing is probably the biggest difference.
Oh nice. I’ll take a look at this. Lord knows I wasted so much time listening to a game of telephone about comprehensible input instead of just going to the research myself
So ya’ll got me to shadow (or I suppose, actually, chorus) today.
I had a sentence that ended in する. ら行 has kinda always been the bane of my existence and I just couldn’t get my する to sound right, no matter what I did. I looked at some pronunciation diagrams to verify that, yep, my tongue was in the right place, but it just wasn’t happening. And then, kinda frustrated, I just ejected the る on one of the loops and it suddenly sounded way more correct. So I think you’re onto something about breath control, above the mouth position and even pitch of your words.
We are all collectively onto something! More evidence for the hypothesis!
Join us….
This thread is accidentally also turning into a shadowing/chorusing thread, but those are also listening improvement exercises so I guess it’s still on topic!
Is it ok that I read this in a slightly sinister voice?
Ok, ok, ok…I’m in.
It’s been a while, but I dusted off SuperNative - Level up your Japanese and did some shadowing and then chorusing with the “Listen+Recall” and “Speak Back” features. I did my best to copy the style of speaking, even when I thought it wouldn’t help with the website’s grading of my output.
It was very helpful; I definitely improved my pronunciation.
1 hour
I’ve had the CDs that comes with the Genki textbooks for some time now and have the audio on my phone, but it never occurred to me until this week to put the CDs in my car’s CD player and play them from there. Why did the thought never cross my mind after all this time? I guess that since the CD era is long gone, I just forgot how to use CDs, or something.
Anyway, what’s my point? My point is that I can now get some listening practice in while driving without relying on my phone to provide audio! And I realized it just in time! My new job is about 15 minutes away, so I can get 30 minutes of easy listening practice in, just like that! Every little bit counts, right?
I only post via mobile so my posts are probably always riddled with typos! If you see one just overlook it. 
lol
I don’t think I’m interested in limiting myself right now since I already feel quite familiar with the types of speech patterns for different genders and age ranges just from all the content I’ve ever consumed…but it’s something to keep in mind and pay attention to! There was a point in my life where my friend group was mostly Japanese guys and I found myself accidentally slipping out an 行きてー without thinking once in conversation 
After I said it it was the realization like oh, I have to try not to speak like this, can’t just rely on autopilot brain and the input from these guys. 
Either way it’s practice
I guess that since the CD era is long gone, I just forgot how to use CDs, or something.
