Hello! There is no single correct way to learn English. Everyone has a method that fits them, but the one that helped me most was the combination of dictation and shadowing. It supported my progress in English exams, including IELTS 7.5, but more importantly, it changed how clearly I could hear English.
The combination is simple: listen until you cannot catch anything more, check the script, then shadow the speaker until the sound becomes part of you.
In this article, I will share the exact steps I used, the problem I found while practicing alone, and why I built an app to solve it.
1. How I did intensive dictation
My approach was to finish one audio source completely instead of moving quickly through many materials. The source can be anything. I used Steve Jobs' Stanford commencement speech.
Step 1: Write down everything you can hear
First, do dictation. Write down every sound until you honestly feel, I cannot hear anything else and there are no more words left to catch.
Do not look at the subtitles or script during dictation. Check the answer only after you have reached your limit.
For a 15-minute audio source, I would listen again and again for about a full week.
Step 2: Use the script to reveal your weak points
After pushing as far as possible, finally check the script.
At that moment, you can see very clearly which sounds you caught and which sounds you missed. Becoming aware of why you could not hear them makes the next step much more effective.
2. Shadow without looking at the script
Once dictation has exposed your weak points, move to shadowing. Because you have already listened deeply, the base is much stronger.
There are two important rules.
- Do not shadow while reading subtitles
- Become the speaker and copy the delivery completely
Repeat it like memorizing lines in a play. Do not only reproduce pronunciation. Copy the speaker's emotion, intonation, pauses, and the whole way of speaking until it is almost memorized.
After going from intensive dictation to acting-style shadowing, I could recite much of the Jobs speech from memory, and English sounds became far more stable and clear to me.
3. The blind spot in shadowing
This method definitely improved my ability, but one question stayed with me after each practice session.
Am I really saying it correctly?
While shadowing, I might feel that I am copying perfectly, but maybe I am swapping a and the, skipping small endings, or smoothing over sounds I cannot actually say.
I realized that with my own ears alone, I could not check the answer for my own speech.
To make shadowing more reliable, I needed a way to check shadowing accuracy, just as I checked dictation against a script.
4. An app for checking shadowing practice
I wanted to remove the uncertainty of not knowing whether I was speaking correctly. I also wanted to practice with videos I genuinely loved, not only with business-like study materials.
Today I am a software engineer, so I built ShadowingGO to solve the problem I felt during my own English learning.
What the app helps you do
- Check shadowing accuracy: Analyze your recorded shadowing and visualize what you said well and what you missed.
- Learn with videos you love: Use YouTube videos that genuinely interest you, just as I stayed motivated with the Jobs speech.
Conclusion: Use material you love and check your output carefully
In language learning, checking where you are now, and what you still cannot do, is one of the fastest shortcuts.
ShadowingGO makes it possible to check not only dictation, but also the part that used to be hard to verify: your own shadowing. I hope it helps you move your English learning to the next stage.