Variable Read Aloud Speed to Support Shadowing of Speaking

Suggestions
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If I could slow down the audio on reading it would
(1) give more time to recognize the words and
(2) allow me to practice reading out loud along with the audio. This second outcome would be especially nice on certain texts (and podcasts), and provide an invaluable opportunity to practice speaking while staying in a bit of a “flow” state - balancing comprehension and articulation together. I don’t know any other tool which currently provides that. FWIW, Lingopie has transcriptions along with its movies, and does allow variable audio speed, but the movie dialogue tends to jump around too much, with no look ahead, and it is often too terse. So I think this is another case where readlang could provide a unique and desperately needed language learning service at very minimal cost.

Steve, I hope you will read this FluentU explanation of what this would mean for accelerated language acquisition (which distinguishes, perhaps more than any other habit, the strategy of polyglots: An Introduction to the Shadowing Technique | FluentU

The essential point from the article: " Put simply, language shadowing is repeating aloud what you hear, word for word, with as little delay as possible.

Linguist and polyglot Alexander Arguelles is considered the inventor of language shadowing. He’s created a series of videos focused on teaching and demonstrating the technique.

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You can now alter the playback rate of uploaded mp3 files here:

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The Shadowing Technique sounds like a useful method.

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I’ve given more thought, and practice, to this. Rather than slowing down the reading throughout, could you easily add an option to automatically pause at the end of each sentence? I guess I am asking if sentence endings are clear enough in most/all languages so you could just make that an automatic pause point if the reader desires that?

This would be better for Shadowing, because trying to speak, – clearly and comprehensibly – while the audio continues on its merry way, gives neither time to concentrate on enunciation nor comprehension. So it is worse for practicing comprehesion (listening) and is extremely poor for attempting to mimic the sentence (I fear it actually will engrain BAD diction!). And, of course, only allowing slower speed on downloaded audio puts me at the mercy of not having good audio (emphasizing clear diction) to upload in the first place.

I’m hoping this is something which would be both relatively easy to impliment (as a close cousin to the existing ability to pause, back up twelve words, and jump forward (space; “j”; "“k”). Indeed, I believe you brought it up as an alternate when the discussion of the “j” & “k” jump feature was first discussed?

The feature exists in Lingopie, but – unfortunately – I am not finding Lingopie (watching a video or movie) to be nearly as good a tool for learning how to listen and mimic speaking) as I had hoped. (Probably becuase the speaking is too disjointed, and too often really poor as a model of how to speak correctly and in a neutral accent).

On the other hand, I’m finally getting narrowed down on the best Spanish podcasts and books – with lots of clearly enunciated speech and full transcripts available – so I could get busy concentrating on Shadowing … but I don’t have the ability to automatically pause at the end of each sentence (so I can reflect on meaning AND practice emulating the speech with proper diction).

Also, of course, to check my diction, I often need to full-stop pause, in order to use speech recognition software (I use Apple translate, included with my phone and ipad). I can’t do that, if I can’t play/speak a sentence at a time, distinctly into my translator.

P.S. I would realy appreciate any upvotes or written comments the rest of the readlang community might have my request for better “shadowing” support in general . . . and this ability to auto-pause at the end of the sentence in particular. (autostop at end of a complete sentence… or to continue to next sentence, ideally with “j” (back) key still working).

Thanks!

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I would just like to add something. I sometimes do something like shadowing, (or rather, “pre-shadowing”), using the Pause button. When you press Play again, however, it repeats the last word spoken (the highlighted one). This is not a big deal, and you can get round it by delaying pausing till it’s just about on the next word (it highlights it just before saying it). But I think it would be nicer if it just automatically went to the next word, as in normal Pause/Play behaviour.

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Thank you very much for reminding me I can use the pause button, followed by the “J” key to back up a few words, and get something close enough to what I was asking for for shadowing practice.

So I guess I will withdraw, or at least suspend, my feature request while I try this out a bit more.