Does anyone use the “shadowing” technique when learning languages? What do you think about it?
Shadowing is when you listen to audio in a foreign language and repeat the sounds as you hear them in order to improve your accent and learn the rhythm and intonation of the language.
Very, very long time lurker here (3-4 years) who never actually started using most of the memory techniques. Finally, something I do know about!
I used the shadowing technique to practice speaking Mandarin. It was recommended to me by some YouTube videos that showed how to correctly pronounce pinyin. While I could do it with some effort, there was no way I’d be able to actually string them around into words.
After memorizing some sentences and drilling down on them (about 30-60 as-close-to-perfect-repetitions), I could say one sentence pretty fluently. After that I either got bored and gave up or did it with some other sentences and forgot about it.
Shadowing was fun however. There was a specific show I watched where there was a comedic scene where 3 dudes talked to each other at the lunch table and realized that they were describing the same “girlfriend”. It was funny and exaggerated, so the rhythm and intonation was easy to hear. That’s just one example of shadowing helping me.
Personally, shadowing helps my listening skills more than my speaking ones. While it enabled me to get fluent enough to string sentences together on the fly and passable intonation, it didn’t help accent and rhythm much. That might’ve been because I didn’t put much effort into “correctness” and only used short phrases, however.
My listening skills, on the other hand, got really good at distinguishing words, sensing rhythm, hearing the intonation, recognizing accents. So it helped a lot with that. Before I used shadowing, I didn’t feel that I was progressing my listening skills much. After I started it felt significant. Might’ve been because I didn’t do much listening before that though.
Yes. Shadowing is a highly effective for developing speaking fluency and accent as well as listening comprehension. Bear in mind it also can be very difficult and can be tiring.
If there was any “magic” technique I could pick where I could see actual results in a short period of time (like a month) then shadowing is that.
If you are practicing shadowing on a mobile phone I recommend the software WorkAudioBook at http://www.workaudiobook.com/. Its free on desktop but paid on Android.
A explanation on Shadowing is provided by Prof A Arguelles here:
He goes into a lot of detail and his other videos are worth checking out.
Yup. Don’t underestimate the difficulty.
It sounds easy (just repeat the words bro) but paying attention to the pronunciation you hear, trying to replicate it, remembering how to position your tongue for that particular sound again, and doing it all repeatedly makes it very easy to slide into quick and dirty attempts which instill bad habits.
Happened to me. Treat it like a difficult exercise: not too many, not too soon.
I have never heard of this technique but I’m completely sold on this so far. Thank you for the link.