Sound like a "robot" when speaking

[Flickserve]

@emuboy

 

did you get through more episodes of Growing Up in China?

 

When I was picking apart sentences from that series doing my intensive listening practice, I might have been doing a lot of subconscious shadowing. When I came to speaking sentences again, almost all the people said my spoken Chinese had become better - not native but more natural. Quite interesting because I hadn't actually spoken to anybody in Mandarin for nearly a couple of months! I put in down to better rhythm of speaking sentence. 

[emuboy]

@Flickserve

 

I ended up getting up to about Episode 40, but I stopped when I moved over here a couple of months ago.

 

That's an interesting observation. I reckon something similar has happened with my listening drills over the last 2 or so months. I don't explicitly shadow but as you repeat it over and over it gets burned into your memory. I haven't had people tell me my Chinese sounds more native or natural but people have definitely told me I've made progress!

 

 

[abcdefg]

On 4/28/2018 at 1:36 PM, emuboy said:

I haven't had people tell me my Chinese sounds more native or natural but people have definitely told me I've made progress!

 

You probably won't ever actually be told that. It's best if you aren't, since then you would have to decide if it's fake praise, i.e., flattery, which is all too common here. The best way to judge your progress is if you just hear less "what?" or get less blank puzzled looks when you say things. 

[Flickserve]

It happened to me for two sentences!

 

不好意思 - I shadowed a taxi driver saying it on a video clip. When it slipped into the conversation, the listener suddenly said "wow, that's really native"

 

多少錢？Shadowed from 'Growing Up in China' with the erhua yin. Again, the listener said "that's really native "

 

So, two times in my life for Mandarin. I believe them because they sounded so surprised. The rest of my speaking was crap though.