Learning Mandarin Chinese: The Benefits of Shadowing

When it comes to smashing through the intermediate plateau in Mandarin Chinese, we need all the help we can get. At this level, extensive reading and listening will probably be taking up most of your study time, but there’s something that else that can be thrown into the mix to really accelerate your learning.

Welcome to the incredibly effective (but not so easy) shadowing technique.

Shadowing is a technique where a learner repeats a native speaker’s speech as closely as possible, mimicking their pronunciation, tone, rhythm, and intonation. Shadowing is considered essential practice by the most advanced learners of languages because it helps develop accurate pronunciation, which is crucial for making oneself understood. This is particularly useful for learning Mandarin – a tonal language with fewer unique sounds and phonemes than many other languages.

This post will outline the ways in which shadowing can improve your Mandarin skills, as well as provide a step-by-step guide on how to use the shadowing technique effectively.

Shadowing improves your pronunciation, accent and listening skills quickly

One could argue that listening to enough native material and speaking practice is all that’s required to develop a great accent over time – especially if mimicking is something that comes naturally to you.

However, by using your mouth to closely repeat what you’re hearing, you are utilising more parts of your brain to engage with your listening material. This helps internalise the rhythm and intonation of the language, which can make your own speech sound more natural and fluent.

Furthermore, by listening to and repeating native speech, you’re turning your listening practice into something a lot more productive. Shadowing is like listening practice on steroids!

Shadowing helps with tones

How many Mandarin learners have you met that have complained about the difficulty of tones?

Probably quite a few.

The main issue with Mandarin learners and tones is many of us are seeking a study hack, secret trick or ‘lightbulb moment’ that suddenly make tones something we’ve ‘mastered’ and no longer have any issue with. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way, and tones are something that are improved with constant exposure and practice.

Shadowing massively increases the speed in which you can produce tones effectively in speech.

By paying close attention to your mouth movements, you can improve your articulation and learn to produce difficult sounds. All you need is audio material that is suitable for shadowing (more on that later).

Shadowing allows you to learn new vocabulary and phrases in context

If you pick your shadowing material wisely (steer clear of chat bot recordings or textbooks/cassettes from the eighties) you have the added benefit of encountering words and phrases used in natural conversation, and you can see how they are used in different situations.

This can help with understanding the meaning of new language and remember it more effectively, particularly as you move through the intermediate plateau (and become rather tired of single-word flashcards).

Shadowing allows you to practice speaking at a natural pace

You don’t need a language partner or a native speaker to practise with in order to get the most out of your speaking practice. Shadowing offers the opportunity to course correct with your speech repeatedly as much as you want.

Granted, your first attempt at shadowing probably won’t go very well. It will feel awkward, difficult, and slightly pointless – especially if you’re trying to shadow with listening content that is running at a normal speed. For this reason, it’s recommended to slow things down initially. Try to get your hands on an app such as Audiostretch – it allows you to import any audio file and adjust the speed.

However, if you stick with it and practise the same selected audio repeatedly, you will be very surprised at how well you can keep up with something that seemed so difficult a week ago.

There is a huge difference between shadowing an audio clip repeatedly and simply listening to it the same number of times.

How to Shadow: A Step-by-Step Guide

In order to feel the full benefits of shadowing, there are a few things to keep in mind. The advice outlined below has been garnered from other advocates of shadowing in the language learning community and from my own experiences.

Use level-appropriate listening material

Finding level-appropriate learning material can be very difficult for a lot of learners.

For Mandarin newbies, shadowing can be especially difficult as they simply haven’t learned enough of the language to able shadow any native material yet.

For intermediate level learners, it’s difficult because there is such a huge gap between beginner and advanced Mandarin. Depending on the learner in question, some intermediate level material might seem like beginner stuff, but some might be completely unintelligible.

There’s no such thing as a perfect learning audio track. When it comes to listening comprehension, I try to shoot for around the 70% mark. If I understand less than 70% of what I’m hearing, shadowing kind of loses its potency and becomes an act of frustration.

Add the end of this post you’ll find links to all sorts of high-quality learning materials you can use for shadowing.

Slow it down

Start by shadowing slowly, focusing on each word and repeating it as closely as possible to the native speaker’s pronunciation. As previously mentioned, I use the Audiostretch app to slow down the recording down to around 60-70% of its normal speed.

Gradually increase the speed at which you shadow, trying to match the rhythm and intonation of the native speaker.

Repeat, repeat, repeat

To really reap the benefits of shadowing, repetition is vital.

Lele Farley is perhaps one of the best non-native Mandarin speakers on the internet, and he recommends shadowing the same audio track multiple times a day for a whole week.

This might sound boring to a lot of people, but once you notice how much more language you pick up from repeated exposure, you’ll see why it’s so important.

It’s also why you have to shadow using material you’re really interested in.

I also try to keep my shadowing audio tracks fairly short – usually around 10-15 minutes. Any longer than this and the potency of shadowing starts to wane – along with your attention span and motivation.

Don’t forget to READ

To give you the best chance of getting the most out of your Mandarin studies, a shadowing/reading combination is incredibly effective.

I and many others have written at length about the importance of extensive reading in improving your Mandarin skills. If you want to reach a level of Mandarin that makes the effort worth it, extensive reading is going to be key.

If you’re shadowing and reading the same content repeatedly, you’re hitting the language from all angles – reading, listening and speaking. This gives you the best chance of understanding all aspects of your learning material and remembering it.

You can write out/transcribe your shadowing material by hand as well if you want to, but as I’ve argued in previous posts, this might not be the best use of your time if your ultimate goal is to communicate in Mandarin Chinese.

Good learning resources for shadowing

The content that you use for shadowing might look slightly different depending on your level. For example, it obviously isn’t recommended for newbies to try and shadow clips from a physics podcast. Conversely, it’s not a great idea for advanced learners to shadow HSK 1 level slow stories.

Below are content recommendations for those at different levels of the Mandarin learning journey. Some trial and error will be involved in the process of sourcing good shadowing material, but once you’ve found something you like, it becomes much simpler to identify good shadowing material.