Flow Training Intonation
Have you ever tried to rub your belly while patting your head? At first you screw up the coordination since you don’t have enough attention to focus on the two tasks at once.
But if you practice each movement separately, it becomes much easier to do both at the same time. The man in the video below is a perfect example of that.
Not only is he juggling several objects at once, he is two-stepping and having a conversation with someone on the phone at the same time.
Without a doubt, he learned this by mastering each task alone before putting them together.
We are actually doing three tasks at once when we process speech sound:
- Processing the rhythm
- Processing the phonemes
- Processing the intonation
For our native languages, we already have the Flow down. So each of these tasks requires little attention to carry out. But in a foreign language, each of these tasks requires a lot of attention.
At first, you simply do NOT have enough attentional resources to manage all three tasks at once.
Just like belly-rubbing, head-patting and random-object-juggling, you can learn to do it eventually if you take it step-by-step.
Your Most Valuable Limited Resource
As you will learn, Flow Training is the technique I use to learn rhythm and phonemes through song.
I take song lyrics, slow them down and break them down into sections. Then I learn each section syllable by syllable while focusing on my accent.
Flow training is the best way to train your accent and rhythm mastery for your target language. Yet, it’s not helpful for training intonation since intonation in song is different from intonation in speech.
The only way to learn the intonation of a foreign language is to listen close and mimic. To listen to intonation, you have to ignore the phonemes.
Intonation Training Example
Here’s an example of how you can go about mimicking intonation while ignoring the phonemes.
I found a random recording of Italian, German and Japanese and mimicked it. Again, I only focused on the rhythm and intonation while ignoring the phonemes.
Here, I slow down the audio while keeping the pitch the same because it is easier for me to pick up the nuances of the sounds.
What’s important to remember is that you are NOT going to get it perfect at first.
Intonation in a foreign language is just like any other element of flow. It takes a lot of practice and attention to detail to get it.
Listen to your target language as much as possible in radio, movies or TV. Practice mimicking ONLY the intonation the way I do in the recordings above.
Eventually you will start to recognize patterns. As you get familiar with the intonation, you will start to notice nuances you never noticed before.
Intonation mimicry can feel a bit strange at first, but I guarantee you that practicing it goes a long way. This is actually how you learned your first language as a babbling baby, and that worked out nicely for you didn’t it!
On the next page, we’re going to end this lesson with some tonal mimicry drills for you to practice with.