Teacher Discussion Forums

Hi,
I have been teaching in korea for three years now and a big part of my responisbility is to teach listening and pronunciation. I have been asked to search for information on "shadowing". If you don't know, it's basically listening to someone or some material and repeating instantly what is being said, kind of like "copy cat". I've found very little resources on this technique on the internet and havn't had much luck in the bookstores either. If anyone knows about this technique and/or knows any books or reference material related to this, please let know.

I haven't seen a lot published on this either. I have used this technique in both my ESL and Spanish classes. I usually pick a passage that includes vocabulary we are studying. This means I usually make up the dialogue and I read it while students "shadow". I don't know how much other teachers use this method, but I love it.

Andrew Lawton
http://drewseslfluencylessons.com

It was a technique used quite successfully years ago in Remedial Eduction or Special Education. You gradually let the students take over when they were able and just filled in words that held them back. It was great on stories that they knew already or stories just slightly about their level. It was a great way to teach dramatics when reading as well and increase their speed. I did it one on one for special education but did use it for my adult ESL groups as well. They found it very useful to get the proper pronunciation of words and a more fluid reading style.

We used the news taped from a TV station as well. You can get the script for newscasts and the students can follow along and try to imitate the newscaster. Since newscasters speak really quickly, it was quite a feat at first to keep up and I just did one or two stories from the newscast. If you use BBC you have a better chance of the words being on tests like the TOEFL.

First, thanks for the input. Second since you guys have already used this method in a classroom setting, I'd like to ask a couple questions. How often would you use this exercise in the classroom (ex. everyday?) and how long each time? (ex. 15mins./ one hr?) I believe I was expected to teach this as a type of class for the first time at this school, but when I was researching, it sounded like it may just be something small that could be implement into the current pronunciation / listening class. Any more help would be grateful, thanks!

If you type in Shadowing in Google you get several detailed descriptions of how to use it. I would say that I used it once a lesson for as long as it took to read the passage, have them read the passage with me, have the students read to a partner and vice versa and then sometimes have one student read to the class. Probably about 15 mintues at the beginning and getting quicker over time. They often asked me to read it again for a last time just to pick up on words with different or difficult pronunciation. We were working on the listening test for IELTS and used material from various already prepared series.

For the students with the most difficulty, I taped the classes and let them take it home to listen over and over.

I have now discovered I have "Notebook" on my Mac and often record the reading and send it to students with computers for homework.