The attached file is the second audio sample I recorded during my second semester of Japanese. Unlike the other audio sample, this sample was a "listen and repeat"-style recording. While this would have normally deterred me from choosing it as fulfilling any sort of goal, this audio sample in particular was filled with vocabulary and grammatical structures that I had never heard before.
Naturally, this made the sample significantly harder to record, since simply listening through it, I couldn't distinguish what was being said. There was no script in the book to follow, so I wrote my own:
This worked out surprisingly well, giving me ample opportunities to translate spoken Japanese to written Japanese, determine where words end and begin, and, given my best attempt at transcription, work through the gist of what was being communicated.
I ended up spending a lot of time on this sample, working on it significantly longer than I have any of my other ones thus far, perhaps because of the scripting issue. However, because I didn't really know what I was saying or where words were broken up, I think I paid more attention to the inflection and sounds in the sample (as evidenced by all my vague little up-and-down arrow markings and boxes, to show me where things were supposed to flow together), and as a result, it sounds better than I would have sounded simply speaking Japanese on my own.
All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed the challenge offered by being thrown something that was a little bit out of my league. I think it offered a great learning opportunity, especially when writing and getting feedback on my script - in doing so, I was able to discern a bit more of the meaning of the sample and learn a little bit of new vocabulary. This assignment really allowed me to work on interpretive skills, both listening and reading, and I'm pleased with the experience and results.