Why are so many people on here against pronunciation practice?

I wanted to know why I see so much hate towards pronunciation practice (e.g. shadowing) in the comments, and asked one of the moderators, who kindly permitted me to share this in a thread. He said:<br><br>> It's true that many people in the chamber are against pronunciation practice. It's because we've seen so many instances of people getting obsessed over it, becoming masters of pronunciation, but struggling with basic communication in their target language. It's really sad.<br><br>> In my opinion, the main cause of this is that people want to avoid feelings of embarrassment. Pronunciation practice can be very comfortable because it often doesn't require direct communication. It's so much easier to mimic what someone is saying in a recording than to engage in a conversation. Then, people get stuck and stay in their comfort zone forever.<br><br>> On the flipside, pronunciation practice can be quite fruitful. It helped me a lot when I was starting and many others have had similar experiences and successes. It really does work very well when used in moderation. It improves a lot of things at once and it's something that can be done at the beginning (alongside grammar). It has a profound impact on the brain and can significantly improve listening and speaking skills. On top of that, we all want to sound like a native speaker when we speak, don't we? <br><br>> It's just really important to keep in mind that pronunciation practice should be kept to a minimum. It should be done for a short period of time, sometimes with breaks in between. We shouldn't get too obsessed with it because there are a lot of other skills to work on. Then, people can easily fall into this trap of being a "pronunciation master" but unable to communicate. This will interfere with improving other skills.<br><br>> Another reason why we are against it is because we see so many posts praising 5-minute shadowing a day without any other skills practiced. We want to avoid reinforcing bad habits. We know it does work, but we want people to know that there's a right way to do it.<br><br>> I think we just need to be clear that pronunciation practice should be done in moderation. It's not something to be done for extended periods of time every day, especially when we're just starting out. It can be a great tool, but it's also an easy way out.