A very useful habit that I stumbled on almost by accident is that of “shadowing,” in which one listens to and speaks along with native audio. This is one of the highest leverage practices you can adopt to sound more like a native speaker.
Back in 1991 when I made my first trip to Japan, my friend Matt who was living in Nagoya at the time had one of these Sony IC-Repeat cassette players. It had the ability to take an audio sample from the tape up to eight seconds long, then endlessly loop it, repeating it until you were ready to move on.
I thought that was the coolest thing around (language nerd) and bought one on the spot since they weren’t available in the States. I carried it everywhere and it became a part of my daily routine.
What is Shadowing?
Shadowing is a way to develop and internalize the physical skills of articulation. In other words, you learn to speak like a native. Just take a short piece of audio content and play it repeatedly while speaking out loud and attempting to mimic it as closely as possible. Listen carefully to your own pronunciation (you can even record it for bonus points) and evaluate how well you match the speaker. Begin by listening, then repeating, simply echoing the speaker. As you progress, my preference is to try to speak at exactly the same time, as if in a sing-along.
I cannot even begin to estimate how many hours I practiced this. Whenever I had spare time, while commuting to work, during breaks and so on, I’d play whatever material I was studying, sample a phrase or sentence, then parrot along until I felt I was accurately mimicking the speaker’s accent, pitch and cadence. Only after I mastered that sample would I move on to the next. Over time, the amount of effort it took to get it right gradually decreased and both my listening and speaking improved dramatically.
Technology has advanced and I no longer use cassettes, but I still look for what’s called “A/B Repeat” capability in any mp3 audio player I have so I can maintain this practice.
If you want to improve your own pronunciation, I cannot recommend this enough. Get yourself an audio player with “A/B repeat”, find some content you’re interested in (podcasts, soundtracks from your favorite TV show or YouTube clips, whatever) and start speaking along. You don’t even need to understand all the words, just listen carefully and repeat, doing your best to imitate the speaker. Do this regularly and after a short time your friends and teachers will be stunned and amazed at how well you speak!