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Imitation and Repetition: Not Just for Beginners!
25 days agoThe practice of imitation and repetition in language learning may call up the outdated image of a strict teacher mercilessly drilling a crowded classroom of absolute beginners in the basic sounds of the target language. Intermediate level learners often feel they have outgrown a pedagogical approach more suited to children, preferring to concentrate on increasing vocabulary or mastering grammar. But there is a value to continuing the practice of imitation at higher levels. As your linguistic fluency grows, it follows that your accent and pronunciation should improve also. To do this, the muscle movements of your tongue, lips, and mouth require frequent repetition of target language sounds so that you gain more ease and confidence in speaking. This is what we all do as infants acquiring our mother tongue, of course. However, as adult learners we have to consciously re-train ourselves in the physical aspects of speaking by imitating and repeating features such as rhythm, word and sentence stress, intonation, and relaxed informal speech.
Fortunately, instead of the stern classroom teacher, we nowadays have access to many audio apps that present distinct phrases spoken by native speakers of the target language. You can make it part of your study routine to simply repeat some of these phrases for a few minutes each day without worrying about choosing the correct word or verb tense. As with any daily exercise workout, you’ll notice the gradually improving sounds you produce will carry over into real life interactions and conversations. So give yourself that learning edge and increase your pronunciation fluency with just a few minutes imitation and repetition a day.
Good luck!
