Is Shadowing Useful For Language Learning?

Shadowing is a technique you will hear being mentioned lot in the language learning community.

Personally I think it is pretty good if used at the right time and it can have a place in your studying, so I will go through what it is and how to use it and explain the good and bad points around it. 

What Is Shadowing In Language Learning?

Shadowing is pretty simple; it is just copying someone to sound like them. This is also why it is sometimes called parroting. Both a shadow and parrot copy everything.

The idea is that you copy someone who is speaking correctly and therefore if you can do it properly, you will be speaking correctly too.

If you think about children who are learning to speak, they basically do this. They will try and copy what their parents are saying to them and while it may not be perfect initially, they keep doing it until they can actually say the words properly. This is exactly the same process you use or shadowing.

How Do You Shadow When Learning A Language?

When I say “just copy someone” it’s a little vague so I will quickly explain how you actually shadow when you are trying to learn a language.

1. You need to find a short videos or audio clip of a native speaking in the language you are learning. This is the real secret. This way you can listen to it as many times as you want until you can copy it perfectly.   
2. Listen to the audio a few times and get a feel for it.
3. Try and copy what you are hearing. Just do it in short bursts that you are comfortable with and as you get more comfortable you can try and go for longer and longer until you are copying full sentences or more.
4. Record yourself so you can listen back and see how close you are to the original audio.
5. Just keep repeating this until you have mastered it.

There is often a debate about how exactly you should do it. Some people like to listen to the audio, stop it and then repeat it back, while others like to talk over the top of the audio, so you are both speaking at the same time.

You can do either, but I would probably start with speaking at the same time, this way you will make sure you are copying the speed and intonation exactly, and then as you feel more comfortable you can try it without the audio playing at the same time.  

Why Is Shadowing Useful For Language Learning?

There are a number of reasons why shadowing is actually useful for learning a language, which I will go through here:

It Gets Your Mouth Moving

The main thing you will get from shadowing is that your mouth will actually move. A lot of language learning is done quietly and in our minds, but this is not how language works in the real world, where you actually have to speak.

Shadowing gets you speaking and gets you used to pronouncing the sounds of the language. When you try and speak a new language you will realise that it’s quite difficult to make these sounds correctly, which is why we need to practice.

A lot of the time the tongue placement is slightly different and it can take a while to get use to this and you almost have to retrain your mouth, which shadowing is an excellent tool for getting this practice as it forces you to copy the correct way to move your mouth. If you can copy someone perfectly, then you are moving your mouth correctly.        

It Gets You At The Right Speed

Shadowing is also really useful for getting you to speak at the right speed. Often when we are learning we tend to speak very slowly. This can happen when we are going from word to word and the also while saying the individual words themselves.

This is usually down to us not being sure about the intonation of the words and we sort of stumble through them. It can also do with our accent and just generally how we piece everything together.

Shadowing allows us to copy someone who is doing all this properly and if we can match the speed properly we will sound very natural and smooth, rather than having that disjointed flow of a learner.   

It’s Still Input

While the main goal of shawdowing is to help you with your output skills, it is still a form of input. You will be practicing your listening skills and general understanding of the language when you do it.   

You can pick up new words while doing this and it can help with your general understanding of the grammar too, since you will be looking at whole sentences and natural speech.

It Can Give You Confidence

In general, shadowing can really build your confidence. If I just told you to start talking, you would struggle. You might be able to form a few basic sentences but you would not be too sure of yourself and it just would not feel natural.

Shadowing allows you to remove all those worries as all you need to do is copy what you hear. If you can do this, you will be speaking the language correctly. Of course that does not mean you now know everything, but it does allow you to feel like you are doing things right in that moment.

You will see that you can actually speak the language and sound like you know what you are doing. This can boost your confidence and small things like this do make a big difference when you take it back to the rest of your studies. 

(You can read more about – Why Is Speaking A New Language So Difficult?)

Why Is Shadowing Not Always Great For Learning A Language?

Shadowing has many great aspects, but it’s far from perfect. I will go through some of the reasons it is not always the best thing for your language learning:

It Doesn’t Get You Thinking

The main problem with shadowing is that is just reciting. You do not have to think about forming the language yourself, you just copy what you hear. It’s kind of like a verbal version of a word list, which we all know is not a good way to learn words.

When you are just copying what you are saying, you might not understand what you are coping …although, all you have to do is look it up and find out. I don’t think anyone would just keep shadowing and not actually check the meaning of what they are saying. I think everyone would use this as chance to learn some new words.

You do however run into the situation where you might not know how to alter the sentences to fit a different situation. Let’s say the sentence you are shadowing is “can I have a glass of wine” …you are not going to know how to change that to “can I have a glass of water” …although again, you can easily find this out. You can look up the word for water and learn it and then change the sentence.

Of course some sentences might be more complex and harder to change, but I think you can still play around with things and then ask someone who can speak the language to check that your alterations are still correct.

You Don’t Need To Think

It’s also important to remember what the point of shadowing is. It’s not designed to get you thinking, it is designed to get you speaking out loud and get your mouth used to making the sounds, it is more about exercising your tongue than forming the language on your own.

The fact that you don’t need to think is actually better, as now you can put more mental focus on to creating the sounds and moving your tongue correctly. Once you are comfortable with this, then you can worry about trying to think and form the language yourself.   

Shadowing Might Not be Ideal For Beginners

You could argue that shadowing is not ideal for total beginners. It can be too hard for a beginner to hear all the sounds correctly, meaning it is harder to copy them.

If you can’t hear the language properly, you are going to struggle to recreate it correctly. However, if you focus on immersion first and do a lot of input, then you will be good at listening and hearing all the sounds correctly.

If you did this first, which is something I always recommend, then did shadowing as your first introduction into output you will have more success. This will be great practice to get you used to creating the sounds and it will drastically help your output by doing this tongue training first.  

You Do Not Get Feedback

Getting feedback is important as you need to make sure you are actually going in the right direction. The whole point of recording yourself is so that you can give yourself feedback.

However, the biggest issue with this is that most people are not honest with themselves. We are always going to be kinder to ourselves than we should be, which means we may think we are doing great and sounding exactly like the native speaker we are copying …but we are actually terrible.

If you really want feedback, you need to send your recording to a native speaker and ask them to listen to it. This will give you real feedback and you will actually be able to find out if you are making progress or not. 

Conclusion

Hopefully now you can understand what shadowing is all about and see that it can have some use.

If you focus on immersion and then move into output, shadowing can be a good first introduction into speaking. It will give your mouth some practice on moving correctly while allowing you to not be distracted by anything else.

Once you get comfortable with this you can then move on to outputting properly, so really you only need to use shadowing for a small period of time, but it can be worth doing at this point.

(You can read more about – Can You Learn A Language From A Native Speaker?)