What tools help English students make faster progress in speaking and accent?

Why progress stalls between lessons

Speaking is a physical skill. A correction in class is information; it becomes a habit only when the student says the corrected version many times, spread over days. Most students do not, because they do not know what to practise, have no model to copy, and cannot hear their own mistakes. Good homework fixes all three: a model, a drill, and a recording.

Homework that works

1. Shadow a short model. 30 to 60 seconds of speech you chose, ten minutes a day: repeat phrase by phrase, then along with the speaker.
2. Record one take and compare. The student plays it next to the original and writes down one thing they hear themselves. Then they send it to you.
3. Drill your corrections. Every correction from the lesson becomes a phrase to repeat on three different days, not a note in a notebook.
4. Narrate the day. Ask students to talk to themselves in English through the day, out loud where they can: I'm putting the kettle on, the bus is late again. Each sentence they could not finish is something to bring to the next lesson.

Tools that help, briefly

Students already have some of what they need. Online dictionaries with audio, such as Cambridge and Merriam-Webster, give the stress and sound of a single word. A phone's voice recorder lets them hear themselves. Video calls carry the lesson itself. What these do not do is turn a whole script into a drill: phrase by phrase, repeated, slowed down, compared with a model and tested from memory. That is the gap Shadow fills.

How students use Shadow on your material

1. The exact material you set. Students paste your script, dialogue or exam answer under "Your text", and Shadow voices it in a natural British or American accent. Or they screen-record a clip you chose, or add the file, and Shadow cuts it into phrases.
2. Drilling. Repeats and pauses per phrase, speed from 0.2x to 2x, and hands-free mode so practice happens on the commute.
3. Practice mode. The original and the student's take play back to back, with both pitch lines on screen, so intonation becomes something they can see.
4. Record with camera. A full take on video with a teleprompter, beside or over the original, exported as a short video they can send you.
5. The quiz. The hardest words in each phrase are hidden, and the student says it from memory.
6. Sentence formation through repetition. Patterns you teach become drills, and the coach can generate examples or a dialogue around a pattern.
7. Learned after three days. A phrase is marked Learned only after practice on three different days, which matches what you want from homework.

What Shadow does not do

Be clear with students and with yourself. Shadow has no teacher dashboard and no class accounts: you do not see a student's practice unless they send it to you. It does not score pronunciation automatically; it plays their take next to the original and shows the pitch lines, and the judging is theirs and yours. It does not replace the lesson.

What the research says

Foote and McDonough (2017) is close to this homework model: 16 learners shadowed short dialogues on a phone for eight weeks, at least four times a week, recording themselves. Listeners rated their free speech as more comprehensible and more fluent afterwards; accentedness did not change significantly, and participants were largely positive about the activity. A systematic review of 44 studies (Whitworth and Rose, 2025) found shadowing can improve comprehensibility, fluency and prosody, with weaker evidence on individual sounds. For classroom use, Hamada (2019) suggests learners start with shadowing for listening and move on to shadowing for speaking; Kadota (2019) is the book-length account of the method.

Correcting a take

The useful loop: the student records in Practice or with the camera, compares with the original, notes what they hear, then sends the take. You correct the one sound or stress they missed, and they drill that phrase again.

One concrete case. Photograph is stressed on the first syllable, PHOtograph. Photography moves the stress to the second, phoTOgraphy, and the first vowel shrinks. British and American dictionaries agree on both (photograph, photography in the Cambridge Dictionary). Plenty of learners carry the first pattern into the second word and never notice. A teacher hears it in two seconds, tells you which syllable to move, and you drill that one phrase until it comes out right.

Frequently asked

Can I see my students' progress in Shadow?

Not directly. Shadow has no teacher dashboard or class accounts. Students send you their recordings or videos, and each phrase on their phone shows whether it is Started, Learning or Learned.

Does Shadow score pronunciation?

No. It plays the student's take next to the original and shows both pitch lines. The judging is done by the student and by you.

Can students practise the exact text I give them?

Yes. They paste it under "Your text" and Shadow voices it in a British or American accent, then cuts it into phrases to drill.

Is it suitable for exam preparation?

Yes, for the speaking side of IELTS, PTE and TOEFL: rehearsing answers, Repeat Sentence and Listen and Repeat style drills, and recording timed takes. It does not give exam scores.

Who is Shadow for?

Adult learners. The app is rated 18+, so it suits university students, professionals and adult private clients.

Sources

• Foote, J. A. & McDonough, K. (2017). Using shadowing with mobile technology to improve L2 pronunciation. Journal of Second Language Pronunciation, 3(1), 34-56. DOI
• Whitworth, B. & Rose, H. (2025). A Systematic Review of Research on the use of Shadowing for Second Language Pronunciation Teaching. Research Synthesis in Applied Linguistics, 1(2), 239-269. DOI
• Hamada, Y. (2019). Shadowing: What is it? How to use it. Where will it go? RELC Journal, 50(3), 386-393. DOI
• Kadota, S. (2019). Shadowing as a Practice in Second Language Acquisition: Connecting Inputs and Outputs. Routledge. DOI