Mid-term spoken chinese preparation

[BanZhiYun]

Hello, everyone! First of all, sorry for posting me speaking in Chinese below, it's just a way for a reference at what level I am right now, and what I need to get at for this mid-term exam. Basically, what we have to do for the mid-term is to dub a documentary movie, the teacher picked it and it's called 《舌尖上的中国》, my part is in episode 6. We're about 16 students in the class, 2 episodes altogether for the whole exam, so everybody gets about 6-7 minutes of dubbing.  This is my part: 

酸是一种奇妙的味道(the sentence that I start from)（25分37）——（31分30）它给川菜烙上了鲜明的印记 (the sentence I finish at) Here is a link to the video itself: http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNDAxMTUyMjcy.html?from=s1.8-1-1.1

Basically, the hardest part so far is to finish all the sentences in time. I don't find the pronunciation itself so hard, the hardest is to do it in time. Here is a video of me speaking Chinese in front of people without much preparation, so you guys can get an idea of where I am at right now. (I have a few mistakes in the tones here, sorry for that) http://bridge.chinese.cn/s08/Media/videodetail/id/155

Really looking forward to your suggestions! Thanks in advance.   

[edelweis]

Well I can't say that I've ever done this kind of thing. But if I had a such a midterm coming up (how much time do you have to prepare?), I'd probably treat it as a music performance.

 

First you practice at a reasonable tempo (speed), you record yourself, you take note of every part which is imperfect, you work on those parts specifically (perfect repetition makes perfect), then repeat the whole thing again and check that there is some improvement on the hard parts.

Gradually over the days you increase the speed.

But you can't really use a metronome for speech, it would sound unnatural I think.

 

If you haven't already you might want to download the video and use a tool such as VLC to separate the audio and video tracks.

You might try to play the video track as a speed which you are comfortable with and increase the speed over the days.

The audio track you can use in Audacity, for instance you might want to time each sentence as a reference point.

And also, separate each sentence (and if needed smaller clauses) that you play back in a loop while shadowing over and over.

You can also use audacity to record yourself and time your sentences too.

 

All this may not be useful or practical but I hope it gives you ideas.

[BanZhiYun]

Wow, that was amazing! Thanks! I have no idea how to do all these computer "tricks", even though I have VLC.   I guess need to do some basic learning on it, lol. But sounds like a great idea! I have about a month to prepare, so I want to do it good, it's plenty of time after all.

[edelweis]

Here is the method to use VLC to loop part of a video Looping Video

I think that's the easiest thing to do technically, provided that you succeeded in downloading the video.

You can just mute the sound when you want to record yourself, and unmute when you want to shadow the sound.

There are methods for splitting the audio and video tracks with VLC or other programs but perhaps that's overkill (?)

And you can use any program to record yourself. I like Audacity but it's not the only one.

[BanZhiYun]

@edelweis Thanks for the advice! I actually have the video on my PC, so let me try and open the google link you gave me, my VPN isn't working properly today. But looks like looping it will be the best thing to do!

[edelweis]

ah sorry. I pasted the link from a forum search page and didn't notice the Google thing. Here's the direct link

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/37783-looping-video/