Its not perfect speaking practice, but you can do it by yourself. You need a script + a recording. You listen to the recording, you read the script, then you play the recording AND talk at the same time (possibly reading from the script). Songs are a good start, but you also want to practice “normal speaking melodies / normal speaking rhythms” if at all possible.
The idea is you want to match EVERYTHING with the native speaker. Accents, melody, rhythm. Exactly everything. Shadowing at EXACTLY the same time is your best shot at matching perfectly.
I haven’t heard of that before but I will try it! Since it’s a casual hobby for me, I’m not too worried about learning it perfectly. At one point I considered learning German instead (it comes up much more often in work opportunities) and Deutsche Welle is what I was going to start with as a resource. How do you find it so far?
At the very least, shadowing is invaluable for muscle memory, just getting the pronunciation and prosody somewhere close to right. Can always record yourself if you’re not able to get native feedback.
Have you tried shadowing?
Its not perfect speaking practice, but you can do it by yourself. You need a script + a recording. You listen to the recording, you read the script, then you play the recording AND talk at the same time (possibly reading from the script). Songs are a good start, but you also want to practice “normal speaking melodies / normal speaking rhythms” if at all possible.
I’ve been using songs + a German A2-graded news script here: https://learngerman.dw.com/de/kurz-und-leicht/s-69137519 . Its free for me, but you’ll have to search in your target language for a similar resource…
The idea is you want to match EVERYTHING with the native speaker. Accents, melody, rhythm. Exactly everything. Shadowing at EXACTLY the same time is your best shot at matching perfectly.
I haven’t heard of that before but I will try it! Since it’s a casual hobby for me, I’m not too worried about learning it perfectly. At one point I considered learning German instead (it comes up much more often in work opportunities) and Deutsche Welle is what I was going to start with as a resource. How do you find it so far?
Nicos Weg (from Deutsche Welle) is probably the best free source of German study in the whole internet.
So yeah, definitely use dw.
At the very least, shadowing is invaluable for muscle memory, just getting the pronunciation and prosody somewhere close to right. Can always record yourself if you’re not able to get native feedback.