Chorusing: fix your pronunciation by speaking in unison

Most pronunciation practice goes: listen once, say it once, hope. Chorusing replaces hope with volume. You take one short phrase, loop it, and speak on top of the recording until you can no longer hear where the native speaker ends and you begin.

It is dull, slightly embarrassing and very good for rhythm and melody.

What chorusing is

Chorusing is speaking in unison with a recording of one phrase, repeated many times. The audio does not move on. The same two or three seconds come round again and again, and each time you try to land your syllables exactly on top of the speaker's.

Because both voices sound at the same moment, any mismatch is audible at once: you finish late, your pitch rises where theirs falls, your vowel is too long.

Where chorusing comes from

The version learners talk about today comes from Olle Kjellin, a Swedish physician and phonetician who taught Swedish pronunciation to adult immigrants. He described the approach in a 1998 conference paper, "Accent Addition: Prosody and Perception Facilitates Second Language Learning".

What he recommends there:

• Listen first. The learners hear the phrase 5 to 10 times at natural speed before they say anything.
• Prosody first. Rhythm, syllable length and melody are settled before individual sounds are polished.
• Whole utterances. He works with complete phrases and seldom drills single words.
• A lot of repetitions. At least 50 to 100 repetitions of a phrase in the early sessions, falling to around 10 to 15 per phrase once the learner's ear has caught up.
• In chorus. The learners speak together with the model most of the time, with feedback on one feature at a time.

Kjellin is frank that his evidence is classroom experience and not controlled experiments. He also preferred a live teacher to a tape. He later wrote a guide to doing the same thing alone with the free audio editor Audacity, which is how the method reached self-taught learners.

How to do chorusing with free tools

You need a recording of a native speaker, headphones, and something that can loop a selection. Audacity does this, and so does any player with an A-B repeat function.

1. Pick the audio. Clear, natural speech by one speaker, in a sentence you understand.
2. Cut one phrase. One breath group, roughly one to three seconds. In Audacity, drag across it in the waveform and switch on looping (the Loop button, or the L key in current versions).
3. Listen to the loop 10 times without speaking. Notice where the pitch goes up and down.
4. Hum or mumble along. Melody and timing only, no words yet.
5. Speak in unison, quietly. The recording should be louder than you.
6. Keep going for 50 repetitions or more. That sounds like a lot and takes about three minutes.
7. Record one take and compare. Then move to the next phrase.

Why chorusing suits tonal and pitch-accent languages

In Mandarin, Japanese and Korean, pitch and rhythm carry meaning, or mark you out at once when they are wrong.

Language	Phrase to loop	What to listen for
Mandarin	我想喝水 (wǒ xiǎng hē shuǐ), "I'd like some water"	Three third tones in four syllables. In real speech 我 rises before 想, and 想 stays low before 喝.
Japanese	雨が降っています (ame ga futte imasu), "It is raining"	In standard Tokyo speech the pitch falls after the first mora of 雨 (ame, rain). Say it flat and you get 飴 (ame, sweets).
Korean	만나서 반갑습니다 (mannaseo bangapseumnida), "Nice to meet you"	Even syllables with no English-style stress, and ㅂ pronounced as m before ㄴ in 습니다.

Tones learned one syllable at a time tend to fall apart in sentences. The background is in pronunciation and tones and, for Mandarin, in the guide to Chinese tones.

Chorusing, shadowing and echoing compared

The three drills are often confused. They differ mainly in timing.

	What you do	Unit length	Timing	What it trains
Shadowing	Speak along with continuous audio	A passage of several minutes	A beat behind the speaker	Fluency, pace, listening stamina
Chorusing	Speak one looped phrase with the recording	One phrase, 1 to 3 seconds	Exactly together	Rhythm, melody, tones in context
Echoing	Listen, pause, replay it in your head, then repeat	A few words	After a silent pause	Accurate hearing, self-correction

Limits and common mistakes

• Drowning out the model. If you are louder than the recording, you are practising your own version.
• Stopping at ten repetitions. The useful part starts when you are bored and your mouth takes over.
• Skipping the listening. If you cannot hear a contrast yet, chorusing will repeat your mistake fifty times with great discipline. Do some echoing first.
• Expecting conversation skills. Chorusing gives you a handful of phrases that sound right. It does not teach you what to say next.

What to do next

Choose three sentences you say all the time: your self-introduction, your usual order, one question. Get native recordings of them and chorus them for ten minutes a day for a week. Record yourself on day one and day seven. If the second recording does not sound better, Kungfucius will be surprised, and you will at least be able to order water flawlessly.