Shadowing Exercises >_< .

こんいちは！　It's a beautiful day outside. I'm in a good mood... Until I remember that my first shadowing exercise is due at midnight tonight. [Cue sad, dramatic music]

Just joking. I'm not too depressed by the prospect of shadowing exercises. However, I do have a confession: I'm terrible at them! I was so discouraged yesterday by the tongue twisters. I hope that I begin to improve soon...

And on that note, here's my multi-part goal for these pronunciation exercises:

I want to improve my tone. It's such a huge part of speaking authentic-sounding Japanese, so I will work to that end.
I also want to improve my fluency. Japanese sentences are pretty modular, and it's hard for me to smoothly speak a single sentence when I'm trying to focus on its individual parts. No more stopping and starting!
Finally, I want to improve my "reaction time," if you will, when speaking Japanese. I want to be able to speak and reply to others naturally, and I think the best way to do that is to practice over and over, to drill it into my head.

Enough lofty aspirations for one blog post! It's time to go out and enjoy the day with a Snapple from Late Meal. ＾▽＾