Shadowing can be one of the most powerful ways to improve your speaking, your pronunciation, your accent, but only if you do it right. In this video, I'll walk you through exactly how to shadow depending on where you are in your language learning journey. Whether you're just starting to focus on pronunciation and learning all the sounds of English, or whether you're already deep into accent training and working on sounding more natural and fluent.
Welcome back to my channel, or if you're new here, hi, I'm Veronica. On this channel, I share everything I've learned or am still learning about language learning to help you achieve your fluency goals and speak with more confidence. If you want to support my work, make sure to check out my notion templates.
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So, if you want to join my growing community of over 40,000 people there, make sure to sign up by using the link in the description. Okay, so let's begin our conversation and talk about why shadowing works. Shadowing did work for me personally in an amazing way.
Like one of the reasons why I have the accent, the pronunciation I do right now is exactly because of shadowing is because I decided to intentionally practice and work on my pronunciation. So shadowing is when you repeat after a native speaker in real time. So you kind of act like an echo.
That's why it's called shadowing. Like you're being their shadow. As the speaker talks, you speak along a few seconds later.
You try to copy absolutely everything. The speaker's speech, their pronunciation, their intonation, and their rhythm. This method was actually originally used to train simultaneous interpreters.
And because it was so effective, other people, other language learners started using it. And personally, I have found four reasons why shadowing has been so powerful for me. The first reason is not really about your pronunciation, about your accent.
It's about your attention. Because a lot of us language learners, we don't have a lot of time. Sometimes we feel lazy and so we turn something on in the background and think that we are learning.
I'm kind of listening to this podcast, so let's count it. You know, today I have practiced this language. And shadowing works in a completely different way because it forces you to actively pay attention to the language because you're listening and speaking at the same time.
So obviously you have to pay attention to what you're listening to and to what you're saying. And I always say that attention is absolutely everything. Whatever you focus on grows.
You become what you give your attention to. The second reason why shadowing is so powerful is obviously because you improve your pronunciation. You improve your accent.
Shadowing helps you learn how to pronounce more accurate speech sounds, phone names, and natural intonation patterns. You're constantly training your mouth and also your brain because your brain has to create new neural pathways because if your native language doesn't have the sound the for example obviously your mouth will have to work like the muscle memory and all of that on learning how to even make this sound and also your brain will have to learn how to recognize this sound. Reason number three why shadowing is so powerful is all because of speaking.
Shadowing provides a safe bridge to speaking. If right now you don't really feel confident when you speak, if you feel very shy, if you stumble upon your words very often, shadowing might really help you here. Because when you shadow, you have to practice speaking complete sentences.
But there's no pressure to actually think of words, think of grammar by yourself. And finally, because you know I love working with my brain, helping my memory, I think shadowing is an amazing cognitive workout because you're constantly dividing your attention between listening and speaking and that really engages your brain's working memory. Okay, so now that we understand that shadowing is really good for you, let's talk about how to shadow.
I like to talk about shadowing for all the different levels. And I personally separate these levels into two categories. So the first category is just pronunciation foundations.
You have never really worked on your pronunciation on your accent. And that was my category because I could already speak English really well, but I had never worked on my pronunciation. Like I kind of knew, you know, the rules of some sounds and some pronunciation rules, but that was it.
like I had never intentionally worked on my accent. And the second category is fluency and connected speech. Maybe you have already worked on your pronunciation like you know how to pronounce the most basic sounds and now you really want to go deeper.
So let's talk about the first level first your pronunciation foundations. So, you are a beginner, but not a beginner in English, but a beginner when it comes to your accent and your pronunciation. 12 seconds later.
Hola. Okay. Later.
So, if you're here, level one, your main focus is actually not going to be shadowing full sentences. I see it all the time. like a person who has never even worked on their pronunciation.
They don't know how to pronounce like specific sounds and they have a lot of questions, a lot of you know unknowns, they immediately jump into shadowing full YouTube videos or movies and if you like it, if this system works for you, that is great. But for me personally, it didn't work because at the very beginning of my accent pronunciation journey, I felt very confused. Like I just felt like I had to be doing everything.
And when I learned that I didn't, it actually helped me make progress faster. So your main focus here is going to be building a solid base of sound recognition. So how do you build the solid base?
Right now I'm going to share all of the key actions that you're going to take. So the first thing is you have to start with sounds not sentences. Go back to the alphabet.
Go back to phone names. The book recommendation that I have for you guys here is mastering the American accent. I have personally used this book literally cover to cover like I did all of the exercises absolutely everything.
The most important thing here is you have to use the audio. like don't just, you know, read all the rules and be like, "Okay, I got it. " If you're not using audio, how are you going to learn what sounds you need to learn and how to make them?
And that took some time because, as I said before, if you don't have this sound in your native language, that is absolutely okay that you can pronounce it well. Like, don't be too harsh on yourself. It is going to take some time and that is absolutely okay.
If you don't want to get this book, that is okay. You can just look up specific sounds on YouTube. For example, the American R, just like Google, how to pronounce the American R, how to make the th sound in American English.
I'm just talking about American English because that is something that I'm working on. The two YouTube channels that I personally used and I really like are Accurate English. So, that is actually the YouTube channel of the author of this book.
Also, I always talk about Rachel's English. I absolutely love her YouTube channel. Okay, so the second thing you're going to move on to here to progress to here is shadowing minimal pairs.
And what minimal pairs are, it's something that I struggled with so freaking much. For example, leave or live, bet or bat, thing or think. to make sure that I did not pronounce these pairs of words the same.
It took some work for me as a native Russian speaker. I was not used to some of these sounds like bet and bat. I would just say bet.
Like literally, I would pronounce these two words the same. So, the next thing, step number three that I did that my English teacher at the time really recommended was practicing tongue twisters. So you can just go to YouTube and just type in best tongue twisters for clear pronunciation.
Okay. And finally here your step number four is going to be shadowing basic phrases with audio plus transcript. So you're moving on to actual you know basic phrases maybe sentences but very very simple very easy sentences.
Let's say you have a real book on your hands like Atomic Habits for example. You already know that you can practice shadowing. you know, you just open the book and you have to search for like the audio to this book and you're just opening it up and then practicing shadowing this way.
But here is something super super cool. You can actually import your book into link, which is an app that I have recommended before many times. Once the book is in link, you can tap on any word to hear how it's pronounced as you read along.
Sophomore. Even better, you can generate audio for the entire book with just one click. It's basically like creating your own audio book.
From there, you can just go through it sentence by sentence. Listen to the pronunciation and shadow along. On the final day of my sophomore year of high school, on the final day of my sophomore year of high school, I was hit in the face with a baseball bat.
I was hit in the face with a baseball bat. Compared to reading a physical book and then searching for audio, this method with link is so much smoother. And the best part, you can use Link on your phone.
So you can listen to the same content anytime, anywhere. Link was actually created by Steve Kaufman, who's a well-known polyglot and someone I've had the pleasure of interviewing for my YouTube channel. Actually, Steve always talks about the power of comprehensible input.
And this method has changed my language learning, too. Okay, so now let's move on and talk about level number two, fluency and connected speech. And you're probably going to be at this level.
If you are already continuing your pronunciation journey, if you have already done all of this work connected to specific sounds, the alphabet, phone names, and minimal pairs, and then some phrases, and then you already practiced a lot of tongue twisters and short and simple sentences. So now you really need something to hone in your pronunciation skills. like you're really looking to improve your accent even more to sound even more native like if that is your goal.
It obviously doesn't have to be your goal but if it is here is what you can do. So your main focus here is going to be just shadowing as much as possible. And you're going to be focusing on intonation on reduced sounds and also native like rhythm because I remember for me when I actually learned like all the different sounds and all the different rules and I didn't know how to link words together and that is how native speakers talk all the time.
They're constantly linking words together. So that is why these are going to be your key actions here. So the first one is connected speech.
You're going to learn how English speakers link words. For example, going to, wanna, and stuff like that. Reduce sounds instead of did you.
Did you? Did you do something stress rhythmically content words get emphasized? And obviously for that, if you're going to be using the book Mastering the American accent, you're going to be using the later chapters of this book because this book does talk about, you know, linking words together, connected speech.
It is really, really amazing because it covers pretty much everything. If this book is not for you, you can use Rachel's English YouTube channel because there she also has like breakdowns and she actually goes through a specific clip in a TV show like Friends and she shows you how the native speakers there are linking words together. So, it's more advanced type of practice.
It's not just individual sounds, right? Like, oh, here's how to make the American R sound. No, it's an episode where she breaks down how people actually speak.
Your key action number three is going to be shadowing with real content. But again, try to start short and simple like choose vlogs where people speak more naturally and obviously use subtitles. Choose something that you love.
Like you don't have to go and shadow a very complicated movie because all of the dialogue there is scripted, right? So, there's a very high chance people don't actually talk like that in real life. Obviously, their accent and their pronunciation is still on point, but the words they're using and the way they're maybe stressing some words is very specific for this specific movie, for this specific scene.
And your action point number four is going to be using link for more intermediate and advanced practice. Because once you feel ready to shadow more advanced content, link becomes even more powerful. It's not just books that you can import.
You can import music, podcasts, and even TV shows. So, let's say you want to shadow a scene and learn English from friends. Link gives you the full transcript, breaks it down sentence by sentence, and lets you save new words into flashcards.
I've had a really good time tonight. You know, I rarely connect with someone this much on the first date. I've had a really good time tonight.
You know, I rarely connect with someone this much on the first date. Whether you're just starting with pronunciation or you're ready to shadow full conversations and native like speech, Link gives you the tools to create your own audio books and turn TV shows into lessons so that you can learn from content you love. If you want to give it a try, make sure to use my link in the description.
And I want to say a huge thank you to Link for sponsoring this video. Okay guys, so I think it's going to be it for today's video. If you liked it, please don't forget to give it a thumbs up and subscribe to my YouTube channel.
Don't forget to check out my notion templates, my language learning corner to organize all of your language learning, and also my free weekly newsletter, Veronica's Weekly Vibes. All the links to absolutely everything are going to be in the description below. One thing that you always ask me about is how to stay consistent in your language learning.
Like I don't have enough time. I can't be consistent. What should I do?
Like I really want to have this consistency in my life. But for some reason I can't. For some reason I always say I don't have enough time.
That is why I'm not improving. And so I have a YouTube video that talks about this specific problem. how to stay consistent in your language learning even if you don't have a lot of time.
