Which is More Effective, Shadowing or Repeating? ––Factors Involved in Learners’ Performance

Abstract

This study explores factors involved in the performance of shadowing vs. repeating trainings. Two groups of 24 Japanese university students participated in two sessions of shadowing and repeating trainings, six times each. Their reproduction rates (the ratio of successfully repeated syllables) show that, in the first session, with audio materials shorter than 2 seconds, the learners demonstrate significantly better performance in repeating than in shadowing. With speech ranging from 2 to 2.5 seconds, the two methods show no significant difference. With input over 2.5 seconds, shadowing exhibits significantly higher reproduction rates. These results suggest that the approximately 2-second phonological loop is more deeply involved in repeating. In the second session, however, the participants tend to have greater reproduction rates for repeating even with materials over 2.5 seconds, suggesting the effect of repeated trials. Still, even after five trials, there were six sequences of successive function words and/or alternating content and function words that yielded reproduction rates below 70%, suggesting learner difficulty in perceiving and/or reproducing large stress-related durational variation in spoken English.