The Echo Method is a guide to improving English pronunciation, and I think this is also a good way for you to get used to pronouncing Chinese tones and help you sound more like a native speaker.
This method is created by 史嘉琳 (Karen Steffen Chung), a professor at National Taiwan University. She explained that: one very useful tool to cultivate a new internal model for a new language is the “echo method".
It can help us develop a natural sense of pronunciation or internal voice.
If we pronounce or say something wrong, this internal voice will give us the correct pronunciation and help us self-correct immediately.
I hope this will help you in the same way.
Let me tell you how it works, this method has three steps: listen, echo and repeat.
That is, first just listen carefully, second, let the sounds play again in your head, and the final step is you try your best to imitate the sound and say it out loud.
So if you want to use this echo method to practice your pronunciation, the first thing you have to do is to find some materials.
For example, you can find some TV drama with subtitles or any material that has audio files and transcripts.
After you have the materials, you need to focus on a short paragraph daily.
After You fully understand this paragraph, you can start playing the audio file and using this method.
In the beginning, you’d play just several words every time, going through these three steps and concentrating on how to correctly pronounce these words, and then after finishing this, you’d start playing a whole sentence and focus on the intonation and the inflection of this sentence.
In the end, you can play the whole paragraph and repeat it.
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