[HPsquared]

That's the Pimsleur method. They have you listen and repeat sentences. You listen to a conversation between native speakers and repeat after them to practice the sounds and get a "feel" for it. Speaking is a physical thing with muscle memory.

[andrewla]

Maybe this has evolved, but the version of this I was exposed to was in the context of French, where you would play these "ecoutez et repetez" things and the class would say things out loud. Pimsleur has a most likely well-deserved reputation for language fluency training, but I would go a step further.

For me the critical thing is hearing the playback of your own voice and being able to learn to hear the difference. I've encountered this with professional mimics / celebrity impersonators -- the most important thing to do is to hear what your voice sounds like.

[8n4vidtmkvmk]

I think there's something to the hearing. Some of my friends speak other languages and I'll try to repeat something but apparently I'm speaking gibberish because my pronunciation is so bad, but I simply cannot hear the difference. I've heard comedians make this joke about English speakers trying to speak Chinese too.

I think there's a similar thing with faces. I knew some identical twins in school and at first I couldn't tell them apart, but after seeing them a bunch it became instant. I think it's similar with facial recognition of races we don't see often.

So yeah, something about repetition until you can spot the difference seems to be beneficial.