On June 13th, Mr. Taishi Kaneko (right) made his début as an emcee for guest speakers Mr. Hiroshi Fukushima (left) and Prof. Richard Lavin (center) at the PIGATE gathering in the KGU English Lounge. I hope we'll see and hear from them all again soon!
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| Mr. Kaneko introduced the guest speakers. |
Along with a bit of historical and theoretical background, Mr. Fukushima and Prof. Lavin introduced two types of shadowing. The first focused learners' attention on the sounds of the target language, and the second focused on content–namely vocabulary, syntax (grammar) and meaning.
PIGATE members had opportunities to try a little of both types. Then Mr. Fukushima reported on an on-going study to assess the effectiveness of shadowing relative to standardized test results.
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| Prof. Takaki summed up the session. |
Below are a couple of books on shadowing (Kadota, 2007, and Tamai, 2005) highlighted either in the presentation itself or in Prof. Takaki's summary. The other (Kadota, 2012), which I discovered today at Amazon, JP, appears to be a follow-up on the first.
- Kadota, Shuuhei. (2007). シャドーイングと音読の科学 [shadouingu to ondoku no kagaku: the science of shadowing and reading aloud]. Tokyo, JP: Cosmopia.
- Kadota, Shuuhei. (2012). シャドーイング・音読と英語習得の科学 [shadouingu, ondoku to eigo shutoku no kagaku: the science of shadowing, reading aloud and English acquisition]. Tokyo, JP: Cosmopia.
- Tamai, Ken. (2005). リスニング指導法としてのシャドーイングの効果に関する研究 [risuningu shidouhou toshite no shadouingu no kouka ni kan suru kenkyuu: a study of the effects of shadowing as a method for teaching listening]. Tokyo, JP: Kazama Shobou.
Though there seemed to be a general consensus among audience members about the potential of shadowing for dedicated individual language learners, a question remained about how teachers might adopt and adapt such practices for general classroom instructional purposes.
If you have other key readings to suggest, other questions about shadowing, or suggestions regarding shadowing and classroom teaching practices in particular, please feel free to spell them out in comments on this post.
