Week 2

This week I had to choose my archetype for a project of Deliberate Practice - self-tutorial blog for practicing my pronunciation either in a different dialect or in a different language. For the purpose of this task, I have chosen to practice my German. I think, it will be a good idea for me not only to refresh my German pronunciation, but also to go back to grammar and vocabulary building. My archetype can be accessed directly via the website of Deutsche Welle (German news website). What I really liked about this video is that both the actor of this piece of news and the narrator are females. Having worked at the OPIE Pronunciation Lab we were taught to recommend so that students pick the speaker whose speech they want to imitate of the same sex. It makes the imitation more natural.  This video also has a ready transcript, which means that understanding what was said there would be a lot easier. It also includes not just a slow and comprehensible monologue of a narrator, but a free speech of the main actor here. It would be interesting to try to imitate actual free speech produced by German females.

This is my first attempt to imitate the archetype.

One of the first noticeable differences between the archetype and my own recording is that the original version take a little more than 2 minutes (including musical insertions, etc.), while mine is almost 4 minutes, and I did't even try to show books in the bookstore like the lady in this video! Of course, it tells a lot about the fluency of the speech, its speed and tempo.

The things I need to work on overall:

• fluency
• speed
• intonation
• compound words pronunciation
• consonants
• linking and blending

The things I need to work on during the Week 3:

• translating the transcript, and making sure I understand what's going on in the video/ audio
• consonants articulation with the help of the German consonant chart