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14 Comments

March 14, 2023

Shadowing – A New Coffee Shop

A New Coffee Shop

Shadowing practice for improving your Japanese pronunciation, vocabulary, and listening.

Note: This is our first attempt at creating a resource to help with pronunciation (as well as vocabulary, grammar, sentence structure, and listening). The text  (and most of our other material) could be read by males or females, but in the future, we'll do these sort of casual speeches by gender. If you are male, it's best to practice shadowing other males. If you are female, it's best to practice with female sound files.

Do you have suggestions for improvement? If so, please write them in the comments below. Thank you!

  • Dialogue: A New Coffee Shop
  • Style: Casual
  • Gender: Suitable for Men or Women

Recommended Steps - Read Me First

Steps 1-3 (Pre-Shadowing Listening and Comprehension Exercises)

Hear and Read the Paragraph

  • Step 1

  • Step 2

  • Step 3

Listen and Understand

First, listen to the sound file. Do you understand it well? If so, go to Step 3. If not, don't worry and go to Step 2 (click the tab above to jump there). 

Steps 4-7 (Line Breakdowns, Repetition, and Shadowing)

Repetition and Shadowing

  • Step 4-5

  • Step 6

Lines with Breaks + Repetition

Step 4: Study the accents and intonation of each line

Step 5: Practice repeating after the speaker first with the slightly unnatural "with breaks" version and then try the native level version. Refer to the pitch accent/intonation image and imitate areas where the speaker's accent rises and falls. Continue with each line until you can say it fluently.

Note: The audio is set to auto loop. This is to make it easier to practice, but if you find this annoying, right click (or long tap on mobile) and uncheck the "Loop" option.

LINE 1

With Breaks

NORMAL

LINE 2

With Breaks

NORMAL

LINE 3

With Breaks

NORMAL

LINE 4

With Breaks

NORMAL

LINE 5

With Breaks

NORMAL


Please let me know what you think of this. We haven't worked on much to help with pronunciation and so I tried to think of something I would want to help with shadowing. If you have any suggestions for how to format this better, please leave your ideas in the comments. Thanks!

Sharing is caring!

  • Awesome, I feel that I am practicing a lot. I look forward to it and let us know if you make a series, to which plan should it belong and I would want it.

    • Glad you like it! I’ll definitely do more in the future, but it may be a little bit before I can do another one. This took a while to put together. 🙂

      • Yes, I know it takes a lot of time, I tried once to make one similar but for myself and got tired quickly to just do it, that’s why you should put it into a bigger plan and speaking through myself I would definitely buy it since your step by step work deserves it. Thanks

        • Hopefully, week after next I’ll be able to focus on it. Do you like the current steps? Or do you have any suggestions to make it more useful? Basically, the steps are to trick (in a good way) people to repeat and repeat the content. Also, what topics would you like to see?

  • After so many years of studying Japanese, I still have a problem with listening/understanding and I usually freeze when I have to talk. This is an excellent way to break the ice for both issues.

    • Yes! I think so. Shadowing is great for getting your tongue used to actually speaking (and also training your ears to hear different sounds).

      Another idea is to have a conversation with yourself (preferably when you are alone!). You can pretend someone asks you a question such as 「出身はどこですか?」 (Where are you from) and then take off with a self-introduction with follow up questions by your imaginary interviewer.

      • I do that but in my head 🙂 I’m too embarrassed to talk Japanese aloud even when I’m alone. I started recently working on speaking out loud what I read. And these lessons are a good way to make a habit of speaking aloud.

        • I totally get the feeling. Silently in your head is good, but next time you are driving down a lonely road by yourself or when you are in the shower, start a conversation with yourself. I do it all the time and for me the best thing about it is I can quickly identify vocabulary or grammatical patterns I don’t know (I get to control the subject and complexity of the conversation). Plus, it makes it so much easier to actually speak with someone about the same subject. がんばって!

    • Great! If there’s a demand, I’ll make more. I was thinking I might do the next one as a series of similar phrases rather than a monologue/dialogue. In other words, I would take a phrase or sentence like 「パッと思いついた」 (In a flash, I thought of… or It just came to me that…) and then also do several similar phrases such as 「ふと思いついた (ふとおもいついた)」 or 「突然浮かんだ (とつぜんうかんだ)」

    • Thanks! It’s also good for getting your mouth used to speaking Japanese. It can be scary to speak with a native Japanese speaker, but by practicing with audio files, it can help get over that hurdle.

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