Shadowing Practice: Stop Shadowing: Try This Instead - Learn English Speaking with Video
Les maken...
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When you speak English, do you sound slow, flat, robotic?
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Now, shadowing can help you with this,
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but today I'm going to show you something even better that'll make your English sound natural and flow smoothly.
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Let me show you.
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Hello, it's Keith from the Keith Speaking Academy, here to help you become a confident speaker of English.
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Welcome to the Fluency Lab series of videos.
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I'm gonna show you three videos looking at the three main aspects of spoken fluency.
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One, natural sound and rhythm in this video.
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Two, continuous speech.
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And three, retrieving language automatically.
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Today, we're starting with sound, how to improve your rhythm, stress, and intonation.
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We're gonna be using three drills today, humming, mumbling, and imitating.
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And then at the end,
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we'll put them all together with shadowing to make you or allow you to speak naturally and with a nice, smooth flow.
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And remember, as always, there's a lovely PDF
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You can download with lots of practice exercises so you can start practicing this method right now today. Are you ready?
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Then let's begin.
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Okay, let's begin with step one, humming.
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So, take a short audio text.
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Maybe something a bit like this.
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Hello again.
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How's it going?
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I'm so pleased that you're learning English.
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Good job.
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OK.
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Listen to a few seconds and then pause after each phrase and repeat the phrase humming.
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You can hum or you can dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee.
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Or you can da da da da da da da.
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Whichever you like.
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For example, let's do this together.
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Listen.
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Hello again.
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How's it going?
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I'm so pleased that you're learning English.
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Good job!
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Get it?
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So what you're doing here is picking up the melody of English, the musicality.
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Lovely word, musicality.
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And it's important you're just humming or dd-ing so that you're focusing a hundred percent energy on the sound,
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the rhythm, the stress, the intonation.
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There's no thinking about the meaning, the words, because that's a heavy cognitive load.
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You want a hundred percent focus on the musicality.
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Lovely word.
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And this is important because many learners will stress every word the same and it sounds flat.
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Maybe because your mother tongue stresses every word or every syllable.
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English doesn't.
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It has different word stress, sentence stress and rhythm or intonation.
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So this is really helping you focus on that.
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Let's move on to step two.
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Okay, step two is mumbling.
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To mumble, another lovely word.
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Musicality, mumble.
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Mumble is to speak not clearly.
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Now it's a bit like this.
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Hello there.
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How are you doing?
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We're going to come and see you.
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Yeah.
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I'll get you a cup of tea.
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You can almost make out the words, but what you hear is the group of sounds,
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the shape of the phrase, the musical shape shape.
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So here, again, we're getting closer to real English, but we're focusing on the sound, the stress, the intonation.
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But we're focusing on the shape of sounds, if that makes sense.
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Let's do this together with the same phrase.
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Listen to what I do and then you try as well.
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Okay, here we go.
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Hello again.
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Hello again.
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How's it going?
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How's it going?
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I'm so pleased that you're learning English.
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So pleased that you're learning English.
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Good job.
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Good job.
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So you're picking the shapes, you're getting contractions and certain sounds, but it's not clear English.
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And again, this is important because it's, there's no cognitive load.
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You're not thinking, not thinking about the words.
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You're just focusing on the sounds, the group of sounds.
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I know it can sound a bit silly, but that's okay.
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It's all part of the learning process.
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Why don't you try?
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Ready?
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Hello again.
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How's it going?
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I'm so pleased that you're learning English.
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Good job.
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Sometimes it can help to close your eyes as you're listening.
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Certainly do not read the sentence.
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Use your ears.
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Let's move on to the next step.
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Right, the third step is imitating, which is repeating exactly the same thing.
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So this is the next logical step to producing real English.
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You're focusing on the sounds, the rhythm, the stress, but you want to produce the exact words.
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Don't focus on the meaning yet, just focus on the sounds.
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It'll look something like this.
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Let's do it together.
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I'll play, you say it, then I'll say it.
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Hello again.
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Hello again.
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How's it going?
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How's it going?
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I'm so pleased that you're learning English.
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I'm so pleased that you're learning English.
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Good job.
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Good job.
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Right?
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So we're taking a logical progression from the sound, the DDD, to the mumbling, to the real words and repeating them.
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OK, a final step that is important, actually, is then to go and check you understand the meaning of the phrase.
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Because the intonation and the meaning are also connected.
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So you want to just check any words in a dictionary.
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Just make sure you understand what you're saying.
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And then the very final step is where we shadow.
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Now, the difference between imitating and shadowing, imitating, you're stopping and repeating.
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Shadowing, you're speaking at the same time as you listen.
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So you're a second behind the speaker, but you're speaking on top of them at the same time.
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we're putting all of these steps together, right?
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Humming, mumbling, imitating, and shadowing.
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Let me just show you how shadowing works.
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Hello again.
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Hello again.
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How's it going?
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How's it going?
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I'm so pleased that you're learning English.
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Good job.
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Good job.
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You see, we're speaking at the same time.
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The big difference with shadowing, of course, is you're not pausing.
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You're going straight through the whole text.
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Put all of these together and it's a killer combination.
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The humming, the mumbling, the imitating and the shadowing, all of that together, one after another with the same text.
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It's really going to have a big impact on your intonation,
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your rhythm, your stress and speaking smoothly and sounding more like a native speaker.
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So this method is much better than just shadowing alone.
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It's much better than reading aloud.
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All of this together is really going to help you with your fluency.
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It's just one aspect of fluency, right?
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In the next Fluency Lab video, we'll be looking at continuous speech, how you keep talking over a long period.
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Remember, the secret is in the practice.
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Don't just watch me.
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Download the PDF, have a look through it.
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In there, you'll find examples of audio you can listen to.
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I've broken it down how you can do it so you can be practicing again and again with different kinds of texts.
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The link is in the description below.
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By the way, if you want to have fun improving your fluency, get ready to join the Speaking Fluency Club.
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Coming soon, starting in September, you'll be able to join.
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It's aimed at upper intermediate and advanced level students, B2, C1.
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And it's a chance to join live lessons with me, speak to other students on the course,
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and build your fluency in a fun and engaging way.
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Keep your eyes open.
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It's coming in September this year, the Speaking Fluency Club.
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In the meantime, thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video.
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All the best now.
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Bye-bye.
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Boost Your English Fluency: Ditch Basic Shadowing for This Game-Changing Method
Speaking Goals for This Clip
This video targets a key fluency milestone: making your English sound natural, smooth, and free of the "robotic" tone many learners struggle with. It goes beyond the traditional shadowing technique by focusing on three core skills—rhythm, stress, and intonation—to help you speak with the musicality of a native. Whether you’re prepping for IELTS speaking practice or just want to communicate more confidently, this method will transform how your speech flows.
Phrase Bank
- "How's it going?" – A casual greeting to sound friendly.
- "Good job!" – Encouraging feedback that’s easy to use in daily conversations.
- "musicality of English" – A key term to describe the rhythm and intonation that makes speech sound natural.
- "heavy cognitive load" – A useful phrase to explain why focusing on meaning can hinder pronunciation practice.
Fix Your Weak Spots
Many learners rely on shadowing (or "shadowspeak") but still sound flat because they focus too much on words, not rhythm. The video solves this by replacing basic shadowing with three drills: humming (to capture English’s melody without worrying about meaning), mumbling (to blend sounds smoothly), and imitating (to mimic native stress and intonation). These drills eliminate the "every word stressed" problem, common in languages where syllables are equally emphasized. By combining them with shadowing, you’ll reduce that heavy cognitive load and speak with flow—perfect for IELTS speaking practice or real-world conversations. Ready to try? Grab the free PDF (mentioned in the video) and start today—you’ll hear a difference in no time!
Whether you’re using a shadowing site or practicing on your own, this method moves beyond "shadow speak" to build genuine fluency. Say goodbye to slow, robotic speech and hello to natural, confident English!
Wat is de Shadowing-techniek?
Shadowing is een wetenschappelijk onderbouwde taalleermethode die oorspronkelijk is ontwikkeld voor professionele tolkentraining en gepopulariseerd door polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. De methode is eenvoudig maar krachtig: je luistert naar native Engelse audio en herhaalt het onmiddellijk hardop — als een schaduw die de spreker volgt met slechts 1–2 seconden vertraging. In tegenstelling tot passief luisteren of grammaticadrills, dwingt shadowing je hersenen en mondspieren om echte spraakpatronen tegelijkertijd te verwerken en te reproduceren. Onderzoek toont aan dat het de uitspraaknauwkeurigheid, intonatie, ritme, verbonden spraak, luisterbegrip en spreekvaardigheid aanzienlijk verbetert — waardoor het een van de meest effectieve methoden is voor IELTS Speaking-voorbereiding en echte Engelse communicatie.