Justfindit.se Magazine

Imitation Technique and learning a language

Imitation Technique and learning a language. Why can listening, reading but also repeating at the same time be good for learning?

Sometimes people want to learn a new language but they actually do not have time for attending a course. There are different learning methods available online and many of them are for free. One way of learning is imitating another speaker. We call this way of learning Imitation Technique.

We have tried to look closer in to this kind of learning. How does it actually work? Is it efficient? Can it be applied to all languages?

It is required to have at least some experience of a language to be able to practice it by Imitation Technique. This way of learning is more like improving the existing skills than learning something new. It is of course possible to learn new words and phrases too but this is not for those who are absolute beginners. It is not fun to imitate someone without understanding a word.

How does it actually work?

There are three moments in practicing the Imitation Technique:

• Listening and reading the text
• Listening, reading and repeating parts of or whole sentences
• Listening and shadowing at the same time

This last method actually means that we must say same things at the same time as the person we listen at. (It should preferably be a native speaker or someone with similar pronunciation.)

Why is listening and reading at the same time good? Well, it helps ut to see written words at the same time as we hear how to pronounce them.

Repeating what we have heard helps us to improve our pronunciation. It is the same way that children learn to speak from their parents - they learn by imitating them.

Listening and repeating helps us to practice, manage and understand word stress, sentence stress, pause
and intonation. So, the Imitation Technique is worth trying.