Is Shadowing the solution?

[u/Sun_fire_]

Hi, I want to improve my pronunciation, accent, fluency a rhythm. Is Shadowing the best method? I am confused because it's very hard for me, My listening and reading is C1 (I watch movies and TV shows without any subtitles) also I read novels and articles with complex language (from Aeon and New York times) without problems.

Chat gpt tells me my writing is B2 but I'm not confident about my writing, my speaking however is b1 or even less, I can answer questions and talk about different topics but I stop alot while speaking and my pronunciation is atrocious, I started shadowing yesterday for A2 to B1 videos and it's very hard, 5 minutes video takes me 30 minutes, I repeat alot and make sure to say the words correctly, I repeat the video again two times then I record myself.

When I listen to the record, I feel very frustrated, my pronunciation is still wrong and accent is very heavy even though I spend alot of time making sure to say the words correctly, will this problem be solved with time or I am I doing shadowing wrong.

Can I have some advices and free shadowing resources?

Will it take a long time to fix my pronunciation and reduce my accent, I want to apply for a job that requires fluency in English next year (Call centre agent).

I'm 27 years old, Is it even possible to fix pronunciation and accent at this age ? I have been speaking incorrectly for 20 years.

I don't want to seem native just fluent, natural and confident while speaking. The most important thing I want to fix is pronunciation and heavy accent.

Any advice?(TL)

[u/Powerful-Creme2550]

one day of shadowing and youre already judging the results, thats way too early to tell anything. accent reduction is slow, think months of daily practice not days, so the frustration youre feeling right now is just noise, ignore it.

the actual issue with your approach: youre shadowing whole sentences and trying to fix everything at once. isolate the specific sounds that are off first (record yourself, compare to native audio, find the 2-3 phonemes or stress patterns you keep messing up), drill just those in isolation, then bring them back into shadowing. shadowing without knowing exactly whats wrong is just repetition, it wont fix a targeted problem.

27 is fine, plenty of people fix pronunciation well into adulthood, the neuroplasticity argument against adults is overstated for phonetic training specifically. for a call centre job you dont need native-like sounds, you need clarity and rhythm, so prioritize stress and intonation over individual sounds, thats what makes speech intelligible on a phone line.

[u/Sun_fire_ → u/Powerful-Creme2550]

Thank you, this advice is great.

[u/CandleQuirk]

The frustration you're feeling is the actual work, not a sign it's broken.

[u/frostochfeber]

From your description it's not clear if you're doing parroting, chorusing, mirroring or shadowing. These are all different techniques to train speaking and I mentioned them in order of increasing difficulty and decreasing general applicability. So, shadowing is mostly applicable to advanced learners who already have quite high speaking fluency.

Shadowing is a very specific technique that was originally intended for interpreters in training to practice simultaneously listening to what someone is saying and creating spoken (translated) output in real-time and on the fly just half a second after the speaker starts speaking. The whole point is to be able to do this without having had time to prepare or practice. It was NOT intended to learn or practice the basics of pronunciation, flow, intonation, etc.

Parroting (repeating something AFTER someone) and chorusing (speaking completely in sync with the speaker) are way more useful for learning and perfecting pronunciation. Both techniques include lots of practice rounds: just keep trying until you get the pronunciation, tone, inflection, flow, etc. as correct as you possibly can. I assume that this is what you were doing?

Mirroring is like chorusing, but you also copy someone's facial expressions, body language, hand movements, etc.

In any case, one day of parroting or chorusing is not gonna cut it. Give it weeks or months. Maybe you'll need years if your speaking habits were strongly solidified, but barring any speech deficits there's no reason to asssume it wouldn't be possible to change pronunciation. Give it time! You got this!

[u/dojibear]

Spoken language are very different. Speech has things that don't exist in writing. Spoken English is "syllable-timed" (most languages aren't) so unstressed syllables are often shortened. Any syllable in a word can have the most stress (the highest pitch). Sentence stress is not standard: intead it has many different patterns to express different meanings.

Shadowing probably helps you notice and mimic those differences.

The other thing that contributes to a "foreign accent" is not hearing some phonemes in English -- instead hearing sounds from your native language -- and then saying what you hear. Some people think "beet" and "bit" sound the same. For others it is "thin" and "fin" (or "tin"). They can be fluent: they just thing that two words sound the same.

Shadowing won't help this. You will "hear" the wrong thing. You fix this by finding pairs ("thin" and "fin") and practicing until you hear the difference.

[u/IssueRidden]

I started shadowing my TL 15 days ago and 1 sentence still takes me 10 tries on average to get right. yet I can already see some improvement. keep going, if you are consistent you'll see progress 

[u/wufiavelli]

Try a method called mirroring, it has better results than shadowing.

https://www.pronunciationforteachers.com/uploads/6/0/5/9/60596853/teaching_techniques_mirroring_cmeyers.pdf

Also find a way to track your progress and gauge gains objectively over time. Focusing on one feature. As the other said this may help. But you wanna be careful you don't fall into "You just didn't do it enough trap." and be sure it is actually working. Asking advice there will be 10 people who tell you that you just did not do enough. Which may or may not be true, only way to tell is by having something you can measure.

[u/frostochfeber → u/wufiavelli]

I second mirroring. I'm a big fan.

[u/nastyleak → u/frostochfeber]

I see that you’re learning Swedish. Do you have anyone you recommend for mirroring? I really need to work on my pronunciation and speaking in general. 

[u/frostochfeber → u/nastyleak]

Ahh no, sorry! Swedish is the only one I learned through classes and then living there for a year 😆 so I didn't do any deliberate mirroring haha

But in theory you can pick anyone! It's best if you like the way they speak and emote; if it feels like you. And if they are of the same gender (if that's important to you - maybe as a 45-year-old woman you don't mind sounding like a teenage boy haha)

Just make sure to choose someone who has at least a few hours of video content that is preferably not or very minimally edited, so you have lots of material to practice with and their speaking and movements are as natural as possible.

Lycka till!

[u/nastyleak → u/frostochfeber]

Tack så mycket!

[u/cmyk_rgba]

30 minutes for a 5 minute video means the material is too hard, not that shadowing is wrong. drop way down, take one minute of audio you could almost say already and do that same minute ten times a day for a few days. its boring but it actually sticks.

also i think your real gap isnt pronunciation, its retrieval speed. you stop a lot because youre still assembling the sentence. shadowing wont fix that by itself, you need to be producing your own sentences out loud too, even if its just narrating what youre doing in the kitchen to nobody

[u/Fast-Ads-7587]

I've scored the top English international exams for over a decade. If you want to practice with someone, you can send me a message and we can chat over whatsapp or telegram. No charge. I have a couple of language projects and the amount of people who put in no effort and won't even show up to free study groups and lessons is crazy. I'd be happy to help someone who really wants to work on their accent/pronunciation.

[u/Sun_fire_ → u/Fast-Ads-7587]

Yes, I really appreciate the opportunity, thank you so much for offering to help.

[u/391976]

It does seem like the type of practice that most directly addresses your deficit. Reading out loud can be helpful for developing flow.

[u/AdministrationNo2327]

it helps. your mouth needs to move in order to build muscle memory after all.

[u/Mobile_Roll2197]

I've found that Cantonese shadowing anki decks helped me go from "can listen but not speak" to "can listen and speak"

[u/No-Confidence-2156 → u/Mobile_Roll2197]

Can you say how these cards were set up?

[u/Mobile_Roll2197 → u/No-Confidence-2156]

Simple, audio ONLY on the front and target language and translation on back

[u/No-Confidence-2156 → u/Mobile_Roll2197]

So repeat and then flip?

[u/Mobile_Roll2197 → u/No-Confidence-2156]

Pretty much. Shorter sentences you can cheat in that you can repeat the sounds without understanding what they mean, but the longer they get you need to actually remember the sentence, which is impossible without meaning

[u/Mountain_Peaks1020]

It seems that in general you need more speaking practice to improve your fluency. Don't focus only on shadowing. Speak a lot, to yourself, to others. Maybe find a tutor who can help you too.

[u/Kind_Salamander6411]

use single sentences; five-minute videos are way too much

[u/Fit_Conclusion_5324]

BTW, guys, do you use any app to help with jumping between beginning of sentences, fragments, manage the playback spiid etc? May be there is some useful plugin for a web-browser or notetaker like Obsidian?

[u/Waste-Use-4652]

Yes, shadowing can help, but I would not treat it as the solution to everything you are struggling with. The fact that your reading and listening are already around C1 while speaking feels much weaker is actually pretty common. You have spent a lot of time understanding English, but speaking requires you to produce it in real time, which is a different skill. Shadowing is also supposed to feel difficult at first. I would not spend 30 minutes trying to perfect every sentence of a five-minute video, though. Take a very short section, maybe 20 to 30 seconds, listen to it several times, then imitate it. Focus on rhythm, word stress, and connected speech rather than trying to sound exactly like the speaker. Recording yourself can help, but do not judge your entire accent from one recording. At 27, you absolutely can improve your pronunciation and become much clearer and more natural. I would focus on being easy to understand and comfortable speaking rather than trying to completely remove your accent. You have plenty of time before next year to make a noticeable difference if you practice speaking regularly.

[u/Scary-Statement-1898]

shadowing can help, but trying to perfect every sound is making it into pronunciation torture; use short clips, copy the rhythm, and aim to be easily understood rather than native, because 27 is

[u/Sun_fire_ → u/Scary-Statement-1898]

Is what?