The Personal Introduction Monologue or 'Island'

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The Personal Introduction Monologue or 'Island'

Postby zKing » Thu Dec 13, 2018 9:02 pm

I've been pondering ways to give my speaking fluency and pronunciation a kick in the pants from perhaps another angle and I keep coming back to variations of "Islands" from "How to Improve Your Foreign Language Immediately" by Boris Shekhtman. I also recently saw a YouTube video by Tim Ferris in which he was asked how he got his pronunciation of Mandarin to such a high level... and he credits a similar process to what I have below (along with a militant instructor who forced him to do it). I've toyed with this idea for a long time, but never really pulled the trigger on it. So after some noodling, I've created a (perhaps ambitious) version of this method that I might try to tackle.

I'm curious to get either opinions or any experiences others have had with similar methods.

To head off some likely questions/comments:
The idea is NOT to drop a five minute monologue on anyone who asks for your name. You would almost certainly never actually use this monologue in its entirety. BUT, you will likely use elements contained in this speech almost every time you use your TL.

Perfecting this monologue will give you, given its length and content:
- a very large portion of vocabulary that you PERSONALLY need when speaking to others about yourself and many topics related to you.
- a very large slice of the most common generic words and grammar of your TL.
- a VERY strong base in accurately pronouncing all or almost all of the sounds of your TL.
- a very fluid delivery on many model sentences and phrases that would be reusable in other contexts.

While this method would be rather intense and time consuming to complete, I'm suspecting it would be worth the trouble to boost one's speaking skills for those in the A2/B1 range.

The Steps:
1. Write a ~500 word monologue in your NL (Something likely to take 3-5 mins to read out loud)
    a. Introduce yourself
    b. Talk about personal history, family, profession, school, hobbies, why and how you are learning your TL, whatever is most personally important to you...
    c. Be sure to talk a little bit about your past, the present and your hopes/goals for the future
2. Attempt to translate this monologue into your TL by yourself
    a. Look up words and grammar if you need to, but give it your best shot
3. Get your TL translation corrected by a TL native
    a. They should make it as natural, smooth and 'native like' as possible
    b. Change anything anything that is "technically correct, but we wouldn't say it like that."
    c. Ensure it isn't overly simplified: If you are an adult, it should sound like a native adult speaking. Not the short choppy sentences of a child or 'beginner speak'.
4. Practice reading the corrected TL text out loud to yourself until it is as smooth and as correct as you can get it
    a. Speak in a loud clear voice, don't subvocalize.
    b. Be sure that, at least in your own mind, you are certain of the proununcation of every element.
    c. Don't slur over parts you are unsure of, find out what they should sound like and practice them that way.
    d. Start slowly and carefully, but build your speed to a comfortable pace. It doesn't need to be newscaster fast, just not unnaturally slow.
5. Record yourself reading it out loud
    a. Take a couple of recording passes if you need to, but get one single pass that you are fairly happy with.
6. Give the recording and transcript to a native, have them mark your mistakes
    a. The native should highlight/underline (on the transcript) mistakes as they hear them in the recording. (Don't ask them to correct on-the-fly, it is too messy and you want an accurate record of the mistakes)
    b. Go over those mistakes with the native, make notes as needed.
    c. If needed, record the native saying any phrases you are having trouble with so you have a model to follow
7. If your delivery was not nearly perfect, goto step #4.
    8. Now Memorize the text
      a. If you have trouble with this... search Google, there are numerous memory tricks for memorizing short speeches.
      b. Without the visual anchor of the text, try to mentally connect more with the meaning behind what you are saying vs just parroting the next word in front of your eye.
      9. Practice saying the whole thing fluently from memory
    10. Perform the whole thing from memory in front of a native (perhaps recording it simultaneously)
      a. The native should highlight/underline (on the transcript) mistakes as they hear them
      b. Go over those mistakes with the native, make notes as needed.
      b. If needed, go back to step #9.
    Thoughts?
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    Re: The Personal Introduction Monologue or 'Island'

    Postby rdearman » Thu Dec 13, 2018 11:32 pm

    When I gave my speech at the last gathering in French (which wasn't great so you might want to ignore this advice) I had a native speaker (2 actually) correct it as you mention below, but also record themselves saying it. I then used those recordings for shadowing and working through with WorkAudioBook. This did help my pronunciation but it all went a bit south under the pressure of 40 people looking at me. :)

    Still it is a step I think you should incorporate.
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    Re: The Personal Introduction Monologue or 'Island'

    Postby tommus » Fri Dec 14, 2018 12:36 am

    zKing wrote:Thoughts?

    I think it is a terrific idea. I think many people think that making, memorising, improving and actually using "language islands" is a terrific idea. The challenge is to actually do it. I have been dabbling with such islands for several years but I am still "planning" to really take the matter seriously. I have developed some Dutch languages islands complete with English translations, plus a lot of parallel text from which islands can be made. These are on our Wiki at:

    Dutch Language Islands

    I am hoping that zKing's initiative will get me moving forward to really make some very useful islands and work hard on getting them well rehearsed and used. I think one of the keys is to spend a lot of time developing very specific islands in your L1 that you know that you really need and would actually use in your L2. That is probably more important than the actual quality of your translation into your L2. So you have inspired me to get to work. Maybe we need a serious "language Island" section of our Wiki where we can put L1 islands with a request that they be translated into our L2s by native speakers. It could become a very important part of our Wiki.
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    Re: The Personal Introduction Monologue or 'Island'

    Postby snowflake » Fri Dec 14, 2018 12:37 am

    zKing wrote:1. Write a ~500 word monologue in your NL (Something likely to take 3-5 mins to read out loud)
    a. Introduce yourself
    b. Talk about personal history, family, profession, school, hobbies, why and how you are learning your TL, whatever is most personally important to you...
    c. Be sure to talk a little bit about your past, the present and your hopes/goals for the future


    I suggest breaking this down into smaller separate pieces. It's more difficult to tackle such a large chunk at one fell swoop. So you might break it down into 2 minute pieces on
    ....your family
    ....your profession
    ....hobbies
    ....etc
    You can put them together later.
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    Re: The Personal Introduction Monologue or 'Island'

    Postby zKing » Fri Dec 14, 2018 1:17 am

    snowflake wrote:I suggest breaking this down into smaller separate pieces. It's more difficult to tackle such a large chunk at one fell swoop. So you might break it down into 2 minute pieces on
    ....your family
    ....your profession
    ....hobbies
    ....etc
    You can put them together later.

    A fair point, and this is part of why I said it was ambitious, but at my current level I think a translated 500 word monologue wouldn't be too much trouble. (So I say before actually trying it.) But I do agree that someone more A2-ish should probably try something that is a bit shorter, as you said, 2 minutes might be more appropriate. I do think that one should be careful not to make it too short; I don't think a 10 sentence paragraph is going to translate into the same level of benefits... on the other hand, there may be an 80/20 rule at play here as well. Perhaps I'm just inclined to bite off more than I can chew. :lol:

    And expanding on these topics and making more of these islands would definitely be a good next step if it works well.
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    Re: The Personal Introduction Monologue or 'Island'

    Postby zKing » Fri Dec 14, 2018 1:36 am

    tommus wrote:The challenge is to actually do it.
    Perhaps a Language Challenge? :D
    Although, frankly I've never been all that motivated to take on a Language Challenge in the past. I never felt like I could commit the time.

    But I also have been thinking about doing islands for quite some time. They've always seemed to stay on the back burner/to do list and just weren't a priority.

    Perhaps a Language Challenge is a good idea. And to make it fit various levels / time commitment limits we could do some kind of graded thing:

    One completed Island =
    At least 2 minutes of speech, delivered from memory/without a script. (Perhaps bullet point notes would be OK?)
    Must be originally written by you (corrected by a native).
    Delivery must be smooth and fluid and not unnaturally slow.
    Pronunciation should be quite accurate as judged by a native.

    Bronze = 5 Islands
    Silver = 10 Islands
    Gold = 20 Islands

    I don't know, I'm not good at coming up with this sort of thing.

    Hmmm, I suspect this is essentially what half the YouTube polyglots are doing to make their videos in other languages, no?
    :D
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    Re: The Personal Introduction Monologue or 'Island'

    Postby Iversen » Fri Dec 14, 2018 3:15 pm

    I had understood the 'islands' of Boris Shekhtman differently. The idea should be 1) to choose a topic (any topic, not necessarily something from your own life), 2) try to learn a lot of words with relevance for that topic, 3) find out how to say or write entire sentences which you might need in communication about that subject. Of course you would want to be able to say (or spell) those sentences correctly, but as I understood it it shouldn't be part of the deal to publish videos (or memos) about each island. Which of course doesn't hinder this from being a splendid idea, since you at some point have to do something active, and then doing a video is as relevant as writing a rant on the topic on a forum.

    The problem is the expectation that you need to document anything, and that you have to involve some kind of native mentor or teacher in the process. First, I'm slightly sceptical about the idea that native speakers should check your formulations - though in case you really do publish your musings this might spare you some serious blunders with subsequent loss of face in the polyglot community. Personally I can't even remember whether I ever have let anybody do a check on something I intended to say in public or publish - unless you count the one and only discussion in 1979 with my thesis advisor midway during the writing process, and that discussion was mandatory according to the rules of the university.

    Second: if building islands is the purpose, then stage fear or blank-paper-phobia or problems in finding native censors might delay the whole data collection process. In my opinion you should build your islands first, and then you only need to document them if you think it's fun or positively call for corrections. The fundamental question here is of course whether you see learning as a social process or as an essentially private activity. I'm in the second camp.
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    Re: The Personal Introduction Monologue or 'Island'

    Postby zKing » Fri Dec 14, 2018 8:10 pm

    Iversen wrote:I had understood the 'islands' of Boris Shekhtman differently.

    Yes, sorry if I wasn't clear, this is variation on his idea and probably is closer to the Tim Ferris version... and I'm making no attempt to remain faithful to anyone's method in particular. I'm just outlining a method that I feel might be most effective for me.

    Iversen wrote: [...]but as I understood it it shouldn't be part of the deal to publish videos (or memos) about each island. Which of course doesn't hinder this from being a splendid idea, since you at some point have to do something active, and then doing a video is as relevant as writing a rant on the topic on a forum.

    I agree, I don't feel there's necessarily any language learning benefit (to the original student at least) to actually publishing videos/audio. I'm not pushing for that and I don't plan on doing it myself. The only people who are going to see/hear mine are me and my wife. The content of these monologues will almost by definition contain a lot of personal details and I'm much too private to share such things with the unwashed masses. :)

    I may have been unclear with my musings about a Language Challenge: like many of the output related challenges, there would be no need to publish the resulting content anywhere. It would be an honor system.

    Iversen wrote:The problem is the expectation that you need to document anything, and that you have to involve some kind of native mentor or teacher in the process.

    Yes, you are absolutely correct that this task would require the help of a tutor / willing-native-victim-of-your-output. And this would be a fatal weakness of the method for anyone who doesn't want to or can't make use of such a person.

    Iversen wrote:First, I'm slightly sceptical about the idea that native speakers should check your formulations - though in case you really do publish your musings this might spare you some serious blunders with subsequent loss of face in the polyglot community. Personally I can't even remember whether I ever have let anybody do a check on something I intended to say in public or publish - unless you count the one and only discussion in 1979 with my thesis advisor midway during the writing process, and that discussion was mandatory according to the rules of the university.

    I agree with all of the above if someone was trying to do a more Shekhtman-like version of this process. Creating a non-native-corrected version and practicing its delivery would provide a lot of benefits. I'm thinking that I'd like to take this process one step further and use them to perfect pronunciation and prosody to a much more refined level as well... and with the benefit of a native, smooth mistakes that I myself would not notice.

    Iversen wrote:Second: if building islands is the purpose, then stage fear or blank-paper-phobia or problems in finding native censors might delay the whole data collection process. In my opinion you should build your islands first, and then you only need to document them if you think it's fun or positively call for corrections. The fundamental question here is of course whether you see learning as a social process or as an essentially private activity. I'm in the second camp.

    Yes, the documentation in this case is really only to benefit your interaction with the tutor/native and to ensure you are initially guided to a complete text that is known to be correct TL with no errors.

    I'm certainly not presenting this as the 'only proper way' to do these types of monologue/islands... just one that I'd like to try.

    Thank you for the feedback, Iversen! (I'm a big nerdy fan of yours. :D )
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    Re: The Personal Introduction Monologue or 'Island'

    Postby luke » Wed Jul 21, 2021 2:48 pm

    Iversen wrote:I had understood the 'islands' of Boris Shekhtman differently. The idea should be 1) to choose a topic (any topic, not necessarily something from your own life), 2) try to learn a lot of words with relevance for that topic, 3) find out how to say or write entire sentences which you might need in communication about that subject.

    In my opinion you should build your islands first, and then you only need to document them if you think it's fun or positively call for corrections. The fundamental question here is of course whether you see learning as a social process or as an essentially private activity. I'm in the second camp.

    I'm in the second camp too, and sorry for removing your delightful humor. Just trying to be like those good natured folks in a technical thread that expect that others will read the thread, and therefore discover on their own that you are very funny!

    Um, but I'm looking for ideas on how to approach this and haven't read Boris Shekhtman's book and prefer to just get a foothold in how to get started.

    So, topics, done, or at least begun.

    Then learn lots of words. I guess these will come from figuring out what you want to say and trying to fill in the gaps with a dictionary, etc. Your system doesn't need to be documented per se, but may involve a notebook or scraps of paper that your dog won't do away with before they've served their purpose.

    And these gaps probably involve some words, so you might use your system of choice there.

    And the gaps may involve some grammar, so we have the interesting aspect of discovery there as well.

    And perhaps and idiom or two.

    So, thank you for bringing me ideas on how to get started getting started :)
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    Re: The Personal Introduction Monologue or 'Island'

    Postby jeffers » Wed Jul 28, 2021 9:11 am

    I've been planning on writing personal language islands for a long time, but just have made small attempts so far. There's always the problem of how to get started, and then how to continue it. Then there's the question of idiom: is this the approach a native speaker would use to desribe themselves? Are these the sorts of phrases they would use?

    Today it occurred to me that a great way to start would be to find self descriptions written (or spoken) by native speakers, and simply rewrite them to be about yourself! Once you've done that enough times it would be fairly simple to set them aside and write one entirely by yourself. The benefits would be that it would be an easy way to start, and it would ensure that you are thinking idiomatically when describing yourself. The difficulty would be finding these sorts of descriptions written by native speakers. Does anyone have any ideas where to find such things?
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