597504

research-article2015
LTR0010.1177/1362168815597504Language Teaching ResearchHamada

LANGUAGE
TEACHING
Article RESEARCH

Language Teaching Research

Shadowing: Who benefits and

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© The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/1362168815597504
EFL teaching technique for ltr.sagepub.com

listening comprehension

Yo Hamada
Akita University, Japan

Abstract
This study examines common claims associated with shadowing. Studies in Japan conclude that
shadowing is effective for improving learners’ listening skills. Two common claims are that
shadowing is effective for lower-proficiency learners and that it enhances learners’ phoneme
perception, thus improving listening comprehension skills. The former notion lacks sufficient
research and the latter empirical data. Therefore, this study explores these claims by examining
whether shadowing training improves learners’ phoneme perception and listening comprehension
skills, and whether its effectiveness is limited to lower-proficiency learners. Participants comprised
43 Japanese learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) from a Japanese national university.
Nine lessons were conducted using an EFL textbook, following the teaching procedures outlined
by previous studies. The pre- and post-tests utilized part of Japanese standardized tests for English
listening (22 questions) and a 20-item dictation cloze test. Students were divided into low- and
intermediate-proficiency groups using the listening pre-test results. Statistical analyses indicated
that phoneme perception was enhanced in both groups, but only low-proficiency learners
improved their scores for high-school level listening questions. Accordingly, language instructors
may wish to use shadowing to improve learners’ foreign language skills, especially for bottom-up
processes in listening.

Keywords
bottom-up, EFL, listening, perception, shadowing

Corresponding author:
Yo Hamada, Center for Promotion of Educational Research and Affairs, Akita University, 1-1, Tegata-
Gakuencho, Akita-city, Akita, 010-0852, Japan.
Email: yhamada@gipc.akita-u.ac.jp

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2 Language Teaching Research 

I Shadowing in theory
1 Shadowing
Learners of English as a foreign language (EFL), especially Japanese EFL learners, com-
monly face listening comprehension problems: they are unable to recognize target words
or sentences when listening, despite knowing the words or sentences. Though several
factors contribute to the difficulty of listening comprehension for Japanese EFL learners,
the initial bottom-up process, that is, the phonological identification of each word, is one
of the fundamental problems due to the great language distance between Japanese and
English (e.g. in terms of phonology, distinguishing /b/ and /v/, /l/ and /r/, /t/ and /tʃ/ is a
challenge; Avery & Ehrlich, 1992).
Given these circumstances, a teaching technique for listening skills known as ‘shad-
owing’ has become popular in Japan. Shadowing was initially used to train beginner
interpreters who needed to learn how to listen and speak simultaneously in their target
language before attempting to interpret from one language into another. Lambert
(1988, p. 266) defined shadowing as ‘a paced, auditory tracking task which involves
the immediate vocalization of auditorily presented stimuli, i.e. word-for word repeti-
tion in the same language, parrot-style.’ In contrast, recent applications of shadowing
have led to an improvement of learners’ listening skills in an EFL context; Tamai
(1997), one of the pioneers of shadowing research in EFL contexts, defined it as an
active and highly cognitive activity in which learners track the speech that they hear
and vocalize it as clearly as possible while simultaneously listening. Shadowing
involves an on-line process, which requires learners to vocalize the speech that they
hear, with little time to access meanings while shadowing; on the other hand, oral-
reading or rote repetition involves an off-line process, which allows silent pauses for
cognitive activities, such as accessing meanings, before learners reproduce the per-
ceived sounds (Kadota, 2007). In other words, learners are required to store the input
temporarily when repeating, while they have little time to store it when shadowing.
The following examples are based on Murphey (2001).

Shadowing (on-line)

Model: Boston is in America, in the north-east part of America.

Learner:    Boston is in America, in the north-east part of America.

Repetition (off-line)

Model: Boston is in America, in the north-east

Learner:    Boston is in America        in the north-east

A quick look at shadowing reminds us of pattern practice in the audio-lingual method, and
the application of elicited imitation (EI), which is a procedure used to measure implicit
grammatical knowledge (Tomita, Suzuki, & Jessop, 2009). Although shadowing associ-
ates the passive drill of pattern practice, it differs in the sense that learners actively engage
in the process, thus enhancing the function of the phonological loop in working memory

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Hamada 3

(see Section I.2 below). In addition, learners concentrate on meaning in EI, while phonol-
ogy is the focus in shadowing. Hence, EI and shadowing are fundamentally different.
Pioneered by Tamai (1992), several studies have been conducted in an EFL setting
(e.g. Commander & Guerrero, 2013; Hamada, 2011a; Kato, 2009; Kuramoto, Shiki,
Nishida, & Ito, 2007; Miyake, 2009; Mochizuki, 2006; Mori, 2011; Murphey, 2001;
Nakayama, 2011; Nakayama & Suzuki, 2012; Oki, 2010; Tamai, 1997). The results of
these studies on shadowing conducted over many years show that it is effective for
improving listening skills. Similarly, there are two widely accepted beliefs: one is that
shadowing theoretically enhances learners’ phoneme perception, leading to improved
listening skills, and the other is that it is effective for low-proficiency learners.
However, the former notion lacks sufficient research, and the latter lacks empirical
data. Given that the mechanism of shadowing is increasingly known by researchers
(for more details, see Sections I.2 and I.3), research should now focus on how it is
effectively applied to pedagogy. Therefore, this study focuses on pedagogical shad-
owing in an EFL context by concentrating on the two commonly accepted concepts.

2 Mechanism of shadowing in second/foreign-language acquisition

While it may appear to be a simple passive activity, even reminiscent of the standard
audio-lingual method of rote repetition, shadowing actually involves a complex active
process. The function of shadowing is theoretically explained through Baddeley’s (2007)
multi-component working memory model, which consists of a phonological loop, visuo-
spatial sketchpad, episodic buffer, and central executive (Kadota, 2007, 2012). Among
these four elements, the function of the phonological loop plays a prominent role in listen-
ing to the target language. The phonological loop consists of phonological store, which
temporarily retains phonological information and the articulatory (subvocal) rehearsal,
which actively rehearses the phonological information. It processes and stores incoming
information by retaining phonological information for approximately two seconds in pho-
nological short-term store and repeats it in the subvocal rehearsal (Kadota, 2007).
The phoneme perception of most EFL learners, especially Japanese learners, is not
automatized, which disturbs the appropriate processing of the phonological loop. Because
of the immature phoneme perception, EFL learners often have problems in recognizing
the incoming words that they hear. This limits the amount of information that can be
retained in the phonological store, which also limits the amount of information that can be
rehearsed in the subvocal rehearsal. Therefore, the phonological loop does not function as
efficiently as expected. Due to the lower function of the phonological loop, the working
memory cannot function properly, which hinders second-language acquisition (SLA).
Shadowing, the act of rehearsing information one hears in a visible way, which is
normally done in an invisible way in the subvocal rehearsal, is considered to strengthen
the function of the phonological loop. Through the process of trying to reproduce per-
ceived speech simultaneously and correctly in a visible way, phoneme perception
improves, and the amount of information absorbed increases eventually; therefore, more
information is stored in the phonological store and retained in the subvocal rehearsal.
This helps the phonological loop process more information effectively, thus contributing
to better listening performances.

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4 Language Teaching Research 

3 Shadowing in first and foreign languages

In bottom-up and top-down listening processes, learners must first identify the phonemes
of the incoming information. Using the cohort model (Marslen-Wilson & Welsh, 1978),
Taft and Hambly (1986, p. 260) state that ‘a word is recognized via successive reduction
in the number of possible word candidates as each phoneme is perceived. When only one
phoneme remains in the cohort of possible words, the word is recognized.’ For example,
when learners hear the word ‘November’, they recognize the word upon hearing /novem/.
They do not yet recognize the word when hearing the phoneme /nove/, because several
word choices still exist, such as ‘novel’, ‘November’, and ‘novella’. In other words, if
learners fail to identify incoming phonemes, especially the initial ones, there is a higher
chance that the heard words will not be recognized. Thus, learners’ incomplete phoneme
perception skills will affect the subsequent listening processes in a negative way.
Shadowing in first and foreign languages fundamentally differs in terms of phoneme
perception, especially when the ‘language distance’ (relative degree of similarity between
two languages; Richards & Schmidt, 2010, p. 317) is large. Shadowing in the first lan-
guage does not hinder understanding (Carey, 1971, cited in Lambert, 1992) because pho-
neme perception is already automatized; however, this does not apply to the shadowing
in a foreign language. When listening, learners use their cognitive resources and working
memory capacity to treat the various aspects of the incoming sounds, beginning with the
phonological level, and then proceeding to syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic levels.
However, because of their undeveloped phoneme perception, their attention is absorbed
exclusively in recognizing sounds, and few cognitive resources are left for other pro-
cesses. Therefore, shadowing in a foreign language has the disadvantage of being unable
to make full use of contextual information, compared to shadowing in a first language.
Furthermore, the more different the phonological systems of the two languages are, the
more difficult shadowing in the foreign language becomes. For instance, Swedish and
English share the same roots, namely Germanic, but Japanese and English do not have
such commonality (Algeo & Pyles, 2005). Compared to Swedish speakers’ shadowing of
English, Japanese speakers’ shadowing of English is more difficult because Swedish and
English have certain common linguistic features, but Japanese and English are funda-
mentally different in terms of phonology. The improvement of phoneme perception is of
great importance for those whose first language is not alphabetic, such as Japanese,
Korean, and Chinese. To avoid any terminological confusion, when shadowing is here-
after mentioned, it refers to its use in a foreign or second language.

II Shadowing research
1 Past studies
Research approaches for shadowing generally fall into two categories: shorter labora-
tory-type experimental studies investigating its simple effects (e.g. Nakayama & Suzuki,
2012; Oki, 2010; Shiki. et al., 2010) and longer classroom-based experimental studies
applying to classroom pedagogy (e.g. Hamada, 2011a, 2012; Kato, 2009; Mochizuki,
2006) (Table 1). While the former type is conducted in a 90-minute lesson in most cases,
the latter ranges from one week to several months. For the first case, Nakayama and

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Hamada 5

Suzuki (2012) compared the effects of the use of different learning strategies on shadow-
ing performance improvement among 35 university students. When shadowing, learners
cannot simultaneously monitor their performance because of its very nature, notably
on-line. The authors compared the effects of self-monitoring, in which students recorded
their own voices when shadowing, and pair-monitoring, by checking performance based
on a partner’s monitoring. The results revealed that learners’ shadowing performance
improved when they practiced shadowing by monitoring themselves. Shiki et al. (2010)
compared the effects of shadowing and repetition on reproduction rate among 48 univer-
sity students. One group attempted shadowing, while the other repeated the model stim-
uli six times. The repetition group outperformed the other in terms of reproduction rate
only at the first trial, while both groups stopped improving after the fourth or fifth trial.
The results suggest that five to six times of shadowing and repetitions may be sufficient
when using the same stimuli. Oki (2010) examined the relationship among latency levels
(i.e. the time lag between aural input and the shadower’s reproduction) with 81 high-
school students. The participants shadowed six sentences once and then were categorized
into three types: close (latency less than 820 ms), middle (821 to 999 ms), and distant
(longer than 1000 ms) shadowers. Oki identified that close shadowers tended to repeat
pseudo-words exactly as they heard them compared to the other groups, while no con-
sistent evidence was in the error rates of reproduction. In brief, although shadowing
performance was reported to improve after a one-off short experiment, the extent of the
improvement observed in performance level still needs to be examined over a longer
training period. Furthermore, in terms of the classroom application, its effectiveness on
listening skills needs to be studied.

Table 1. Examples of shadowing research.

Research Participants Duration Outcome

Shiki et al. (2010) 48 university students Short Shadowing should be
practiced around 5–6 times
Oki (2010) 81 high-school students Short Delayed shadowing is
recommended
Nakayama & 35 university students Short Self-monitoring is more
Suzuki (2012) effective than pair-monitoring
Mochizuki (2006) 30 high-school students 30 min × 6 Improved listening skills
Kato (2009) 40 university English 5 months (15 min Improved listening skills
majors × 4 per week)
Hamada (2011a) 44 high-school students 25–30 min × 8 Even with difficult textbooks,
learners can improve listening
skills
Hamada (2012) 59 university students 20 min × 8 A combination of difficult
and easy learning materials is
recommended
Tamai (2005) 45 high-school students 50 min × 13 Intermediate and low-
proficiency groups
outperformed those of the
dictation group.

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6 Language Teaching Research 

In the classroom application of shadowing over a longer duration, Mochizuki (2006)

examined its effectiveness on listening comprehension skills by giving six shadowing-based
lessons to 30 high-school students using an EFL textbook designed for Japanese students;
the participants subsequently improved their scores in selected sections of Eiken tests,
Japanese standardized proficiency tests of English, which consist of seven levels (grade 5,
4, 3, pre-2, 2, pre-1, and 1), with grade 1 being the highest and grade 5 the lowest (Eiken,
2013a). Kato (2009) conducted a 5-month longitudinal study with 40 students aged 19 to 22
years. A weekly 15-minute shadowing training session using a variety of materials was
shown to be effective for improving scores in the TOEIC listening practice tests. Hamada
(2011a) similarly gave shadowing-based lessons to 23 high-school students using a well-
known high-school textbook that was rather challenging. After eight lessons, the students
showed an improvement in their listening comprehension skills in the Eiken listening tests.
Hamada (2012) then gave eight shadowing-based lessons to 29 university students using
both difficult and easy textbooks, and 30 university students using only similar difficulty
levels of textbooks. The combination of difficult and easy materials was more effective than
the other in terms of improving listening comprehension skills in a TOEIC listening practice
test. These studies therefore reveal that shadowing can be used effectively in various class-
room situations to improve learners’ listening comprehension skills.
Certain research hints that the types of learners who benefit the most from shadowing are
limited although the number of studies that have investigated this issue is quite small. Tamai
(2005) reported a stronger influence of shadowing training on low-proficiency learners.
With 45 secondary school students respectively in a shadowing and dictation group, the
author gave 13 shadowing-based lessons (50 minutes each). He divided the learners into
three levels based on their scores on the Secondary Level English Proficiency Test, with the
results showing that intermediate- and low-proficiency shadowing group outperformed
those of the dictation group. The reliability of dividing 45 learners into three levels is indeed
questionable, particularly given the classification of the advanced learners (e.g. initial score
for the advanced learners was around 50 out of 75). Next, Kato (2009) reported that low-
proficiency learners improved more than high-proficiency learners, after receiving a weekly
15-minute shadowing training session. Since she divided the 40 learners into high- and low-
proficiency groups with a mean score of 13.05 out of 30, once again, labeling the learners as
highly proficient may be misleading. These two studies at least suggest that low-proficiency
learners will benefit more from shadowing training, especially in listening comprehension.
However, whether the participants’ phoneme perception improved was unclear. Thus, to
confirm the results of these studies, further research is necessary.
In summary, phoneme perception is of great importance for word recognition (Rost, 2011),
and shadowing is considered to improve learners’ phoneme perception, which leads to better
comprehension skills. The past research indicates that shadowing is effective for improving
learners’ listening comprehension skills but it also assumes that it is effective for low-profi-
ciency learners, although a further and detailed examination is required in this respect.

2 Arguments based on previous findings and research questions

The research conducted to date arrives at several common points of agreement regard-
ing the effectiveness of shadowing, but a review of past studies reveals that two

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Hamada 7

commonly accepted concepts are still debatable due to a lack of empirical data. First, as
explained above, how learners’ listening skills improve may be theoretically explained
(i.e. phoneme perception is enhanced, leading to better listening skills); however, this
theory lacks empirical data to the author’s knowledge. Second, the effectiveness of
shadowing on listening improvement is considered to be limited to low-proficiency
learners, but this notion requires greater empirical research. Therefore, this study exam-
ines whether shadowing training improves learners’ phoneme perception and listening
comprehension skills (RQ1), and whether its effectiveness is limited to low-listening
proficiency learners (RQ2).

III Methods
1 Participants
A total of 43 freshmen (26 males and 17 females), majoring in health, education, and
engineering at a Japanese national university participated in the experiment. Since no
one majored in English or international communication studies, this compulsory English
class was considered to be the only English language exposure during the one-month
training period. In order to examine the effectiveness of the shadowing training accord-
ing to their listening proficiency level, the 43 learners were divided into two groups
based on the pre-test listening (22 items from the Eiken test) results: a low-proficiency
group with 25 students (19 males and 6 females) and an intermediate group with 18 stu-
dents (6 males and 12 females). The initial study group consisted of 60 freshmen, but 17
were excluded from data analysis for the following reasons: not working on the task or
taking the tests sufficiently seriously, skipping classes, being absence from tests, or not
receiving a full education in Japan.

2 Materials
This study used the EFL textbook Reading Explorer 2 (CEF: B1–B2 level) (MacIntyre,
2009), which is used by all freshmen at the university. Rather than strictly controlling
the textbook for this experiment, an ordinary textbook was chosen, because the effec-
tiveness of shadowing is generally assured regardless of textbook difficulty (Hamada,
2011a). Three stories were selected from the textbook and divided into nine passages.
The number of words in each passage and its readability are summarized in Table 2.
Flesch Reading Ease indicates how easy the selected reading is (i.e. the higher the
score, the easier), with 100 being the maximum score. Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level is
an index that is based on school grades in the USA, wherein 10th means the 10th grade.
According to the readability and CEF level, the passages used in this study were con-
sidered challenging for participants. However, students are able to improve their lis-
tening comprehension skills even by practicing with difficult materials (Hamada,
2011a). Hence, the difficulty of the materials as a negative influence on the results was
disregarded. The average speed of the audio-recording was 157 words per minute, so
it was read at a relatively fast pace.

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8 Language Teaching Research 

Table 2. Word number and readability of the material.

Class number Number of words Flesch reading ease Flesh–Kincaid Words per minute
grade level
Class 1 97 55.2 9.5 153
Class 2 129 62.8 7.3 168
Class 3 108 50.6 10.6 146
Class 4 72 73.6 5.9 176
Class 5 103 73.8 6.1 168
Class 6 133 59.5 8.6 148
Class 7 117 67.6 7.4 148
Class 8 161 68.0 7.7 164
Class 9 184 60.3 9.4 142

In relation to the improvement of phoneme perception, a 20-item dictation cloze was

used. Dictation-cloze questions were previously used in another shadowing study to
measure learners’ phoneme perception (e.g. Kuramoto et al., 2007). The passage used in
this experiment was taken from the Voice of America (VOA) Special (VOA Special,
2011), read at approximately 127 word per minute, since materials in the VOA Special
are adapted to EFL learners. A total of 20 parts of function words, such as articles and
prepositions, were duplicated with blanks to best reflect an improvement in phoneme
perception. The aim was for participants to be less influenced by the context and to test
words known by all learners so as to eliminate differences in their vocabulary. If content
words were included, it would test word recognition skills, possibly influenced by differ-
ences in vocabulary knowledge as well. For example, the majority of blanks were ‘a’ and
‘the’ in order to test participants’ phonological perception rather than word recognition,
which may have required knowledge of other factors, such as lexical, syntactic, and
semantic features. Additionally, so as not to allow the participants to predict the answers
from the context, they listened to the audio once and, the moment they finished, they had
to stop answering. Due to the language distance between Japanese and English previ-
ously mentioned, predicting the target function words from the context was considered
to be quite difficult. The perception of articles is affected by participants’ first language
differences (Pierce & Ionin, 2011), but this concern was disregarded because they all
were native Japanese speakers.
To examine learners’ listening comprehension skills, two types of listening tests were
selected from the Eiken pre-second grade Part II (10 questions; Eiken, 2013b), and Eiken
pre-first grade Part I (12 questions; Eiken, 2013c). Eiken pre-second grade is a mid-level
test for high-school level, while pre-first grade is the second highest test for mid-univer-
sity level (Eiken, 2013a). Learners are supposed to select the best answer from among
the four choices written in the booklet after listening to a short dialog lasting 30–40
seconds (for an example, see Appendix). This question type was selected because it tests
the ability to understand the short speech with relatively easy expressions, which are
theoretically most likely to reflect an improvement in listening comprehension skill
through phoneme perception.

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Hamada 9

3 Procedures
Participants were given shadowing-based lessons twice a week for a month (nine times
in total) by following the procedures that previously showed their positive effectiveness
on learners’ listening comprehension improvement (see Tables 3 and 4; for more details,
see also Hamada, 2014). The first 50–60 minutes of the lesson were dedicated to learning
the target contents. Learners were engaged in vocabulary learning, collaborating with
their partner, worked on comprehension checks with a bilingual script, and then reviewed
target sentences that contained complex grammatical items or sentences that were diffi-
cult to interpret, with the assistance of the instructor.

Table 3. Lesson procedure in each lesson.

Step Instruction Description

1 Vocabulary learning Check pronunciation with the
instructor; check meanings in
pairs
2 Content comprehension Individual study with a bilingual
script
3 Key grammar check Check target sentences, with
instructor’s explanation
4 Shadowing practice See Table 4

Table 4. Shadowing procedure used in the experiment.

Stage Instructions
1 Listen to the passage and answer comprehension questions
2 Mumbling once (silently shadow the incoming sounds without text)
3 Parallel reading once (shadow while reading the text)
4 Silently check one’s understanding with the text (both in English and
Japanese translation) for 3 minutes
5 Shadowing three times
6 Review the text for three minutes, to clarify difficult sounds and meanings
7 Content shadowing once (concentrate on both shadowing and the meaning)
8 Listen to the passage

After learners finished learning the content, each lesson was followed by shadowing
training, lasting 15–20 minutes. Participants practiced shadowing based on a set of rec-
ommended procedures (Table 4) (Kadota & Tamai, 2004), which was recommended both
theoretically and practically. Theoretically, the adequate number of times to shadow the
same passage was to be considered to be five or six, because learners’ reproduction rate
was reported to plateau after the fifth time (Shiki et al., 2010). Learners thus practiced
shadowing five times according to this procedure (steps 2, 5, and 7). At every stage,

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10 Language Teaching Research 

when students were engaged in shadowing, they worked on shadowing the entire target
passage without pauses. The instructor played the audio stimuli (CD), and all partici-
pants continuously shadowed, no pair work being involved. A sample of the practice is
as follows:

Audio: In the service of Kublai Khan, “the most powerful man in people and in lands
   S:   In the service of Kublai Khan, “the most powerful man in people and in lands
Audio: and in treasure that ever was in the world,” Marco was able to learn and
   S:   and in treasure that ever was in the world, “Marco was able to learn and
Audio: experience many things that were new to Europeans.
   S:   experience many things that were new to Europeans.
Note: The entire target passage was played, not sentence by sentence. S= Student

The pre-tests for listening and phoneme perception were conducted prior to the exper-
iment, with the post-tests being held afterwards. Although there remains the possibility
of practice effects, the same tests were used in the pre- and post-tests to minimize the risk
of reliability when using two different assessment materials. Past studies showed that
shadowing improves listening comprehension skills, and that phoneme perception also
improves theoretically. Thus, the improvement observed in this study would result from
shadowing training. To minimize the disadvantage of the test–retest method, after the
pre-tests, all test papers with the questions were collected, while approximately one
month elapsed between the pre-test and post-tests; learners received no explanation
about the test content after the pre-test.

4 Data analysis
Data were analysed in the following manner. First, to divide learners into intermediate-
and low-proficiency groups, the listening pre-tests were used. The cut-off line was drawn
between 10 and 11 based on the mean score of 10.44 and maximum score of 22 (total
number of questions). Learners with total scores of 10 or less were categorized as low-
proficiency learners, while those with 11 or more were categorized as intermediate learn-
ers. The upper half of the participants was labeled not as the high-proficiency group but
rather as the intermediate group so as to avoid the misrepresentation of the two extremes
as low and high proficiency. Some studies classify two groups as high and low, but the
upper half in this study was not necessarily highly proficient, since their mean score was
just 13.42 out of 22 (61%). On the other hand, the mean score for the low-proficiency
group was 8.24 (37%), which is certainly low.
Second, descriptive statistics were used to describe the main features of the collected
data. For a clearer data presentation, scatter plots of the pre- and post-test scores were
created. Then, to compare the improvement of each group for high-school-level and
university-level questions, and phoneme perception, a mixed-design of two-way analysis
of variance (ANOVA) was employed for each. Proficiency was the between-participants
factor, and time the within-participants factor.

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Hamada 11

IV Results
Regarding phoneme perception (the 20-item dictation test), both groups showed an
improvement with the mean increasing by 1.12 from 8.36 to 9.48 in the low-proficiency
group, and by 1.78 from 11.50 to 13.28 in the intermediate group (Tables 5–6 and
Figure 1). The learners showed a similar pattern of improvement (Figure 1). A mixed-
design of two-way ANOVA showed a statistically significant difference for time [F (1,
41) = 22.84, p =< .01, ηp2 = .36] and proficiency [F (1, 41) = 12.07, p =< .01, ηp2 = .23];
however, no significant difference was observed for interaction [F (1, 41) = 1.18, p = .28,
ηp2 = .03] (Table 6). The large effect sizes (d = 3.29 and 3.23 for low and intermediate
groups, respectively) along with these results indicate that both groups improved their
phoneme perception skills to a similar degree.

Table 5. Test score results for the low- and intermediate-proficiency groups.

Skill Group Pre Post

Mean SD Mean SD Effect size (d)

High-school level Low 4.84 0.36 6.20 0.36 2.90 (L)
Intermediate 7.78 0.42 7.72 0.43 0.13 (S)
University level Low 3.40 0.38 3.68 0.38 0.59 (M)
Intermediate 5.72 0.45 5.83 0.45 0.19 (S)
Phoneme perception Low 8.36 0.68 9.48 0.67 3.39 (L)
Intermediate 11.50 0.80 13.28 0.79 3.23 (L)

Notes. For effect size, L = large, M = medium, S = small (Oswald & Plonsky, 2010).

Table 6. Summary of the ANOVA Results.

Factor Measurement

High school University Phoneme perception

Time F(1,41) = 3.53 F(1,41) = 0.28 F(1,41) = 22.84*
ηp2 = .08 ηp2 = .01 ηp2 = .36
Proficiency F(1,41) = 26.89* F(1,41) = 24.12 F(1,41) = 12.08*
ηp2 = .40 ηp2 = .37 ηp2 = .28
Interaction F(1,41) = 4.16* F(1,41) = 0.05 F(1,41) = 1.18
ηp2 = .08 ηp2 = .00 ηp2 = .03

Note. *p < .05.

Regarding the high-school-level questions (the 10-item Eiken listening test), only the
low-proficiency group improved their scores, with the mean score increasing by 1.36
from 4.84 to 6.20, compared to a decrease of 0.06 from 7.78 to 7.72 in the intermediate
group (Table 5 and Figure 2). Unlike phoneme perception, a clear linear line was not
observed in Figure 2 because those with lower scores in the pre-test showed a greater
improvement compared to those with higher initial score. In particular, those with quite

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12 Language Teaching Research 

20

16

Post-test score
12

0
0 4 8 12 16 20
Pre-test score

Figure 1. Learners’ phoneme perception.

low scores in the pre-test, that is, less than 3.00, showed a great improvement in the post-
test. A mixed-design of two-way ANOVA showed a statistically significant difference for
interaction [F (1, 41) = 4.16, p < .05, ηp2 = .08]. The simple main effect of time was sta-
tistically significant in the low-proficiency group [F (1, 41) = 9.17, p < .05], but not in
the intermediate group [F (1, 41) = 0.01, p>.05]. The simple main effect of proficiency
for the pre-test showed a statistically significant difference [F(1, 41) = 28.82, p < .01] as
did the post-test [F(1, 41) = 7.44, p < .01] (Table 6). The large effect sizes, d = 2.90, for
the low proficiency group and the minimal one, d = 0.13, for the intermediate proficiency
group, along with these results, suggest that only the low-proficiency group improved
their scores for the high-school questions.

10

8
Post-test score

0
0 2 4 6 8 10
Pre-test score

Figure 2. Learners’ listening scores for high school level.

As to the university-level questions (the 12-item Eiken listening test), no major

improvement was observed in either group. The mean score increased by 0.28 from 3.40
to 3.68 in the low-proficiency group (d = 0.59) and by 0.11 from 5.72 to 5.83 in the

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Hamada 13

intermediate group (d = 0.13) (Table 5 and Figure 3). A mixed-design of two-way

ANOVA did not show any statistically significant differences for time [F (1, 41) =
0.28, p >.05, ηp2 = .01], proficiency [F(1,41) = 24.12, p>.05, ηp2 = .37], or interaction
[F (1, 41) = 0.05, p >.05, ηp2 = .00]. The results therefore did not reveal any improvement
in the university-level questions for either group (Table 6). However, considering that the
low-proficiency learners showed a medium effect size with some individuals improving,
there still remains a possibility for low-proficiency learners to improve even with univer-
sity-level questions.

12

10
Post-test score

0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Pre-test score

Figure 3. Learners’ listening scores for university level questions.

In summary, both groups improved in terms of phoneme perception. Only the low-
proficiency group improved their scores in the high-school-level questions, while both
groups showed little improvement for the university-level questions.

V Discussion
This study examined whether shadowing training improves learners’ phoneme percep-
tion skills and listening comprehension skills, and whether its effectiveness is limited to
low-proficiency learners. Overall, the results show that the shadowing training was
effective for improving phoneme perception skills regardless of listening proficiency
level. However, for basic listening comprehension skills, it was only effective for low-
proficiency learners. For advanced listening skills, it was not effective in either group.
The first finding of this study is that both groups improved their phoneme perception
skills. This result supports the theoretical assumption that shadowing enhances learners’
speech perception (Kadota, 2007, 2012). Intensive shadowing training is considered to
allow learners to fill the gap between the phonologically coded version of words and
their actual pronunciation, especially in cases of weakened function words (Nakayama &
Suzuki, 2012). In short, shadowing training generally assures the improvement of learn-
ers’ phoneme perception skills.

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14 Language Teaching Research 

The second finding is that the listening improvement for high-school-level questions
was limited to the low-proficiency group. In other words, the widely accepted notion that
shadowing improves learner’s listening skills appears to be partly assured. For Japanese
learners, aurally recognizing even known words proves difficult due to their inadequate
listening skills; word recognition thus plays a crucial role in listening (Nakayama &
Suzuki, 2012). Based on the theory of the cohort model (Marslen-Wilson & Welsh,
1978), whereby learners need to identify the initial phoneme of each word, an improve-
ment in phoneme perception through shadowing training helps low-proficiency learners
recognize more words than before training. As the high-school-level questions consist of
fairly easy vocabulary and expressions, phoneme perception improvement was simply
reflected in the score increase in this section. On the other hand, the scores for the high-
school-level questions in the intermediate group were originally high, and the score
remained high. In consideration of these two facts, these results suggest that the interme-
diate group already had sufficient skills to answer high-school-level questions, while
shadowing training helped the low-proficiency group to approach the initial level of the
intermediate group. This interpretation generally corresponds to that of Tamai (2005)
and Kato (2009), mentioned above, who claimed that low-proficiency learners improved
their listening comprehension skills more than advanced students who already had a rela-
tively high level of listening comprehension.
Notwithstanding the interpretation above, there still exists a certain additional per-
spective that attributes the participants’ listening improvement to other English exposure
the participants had received. The other non-shadowing activities the participants expe-
rienced in the class (e.g. a reading activity to comprehend the target passage) may have
affected the results. In addition, the basic English skills that the participants had received
during at least six years of English education before entering the university may have
played an important role. The cohort model, mentioned above, works because they
already have lists of words in their mind. Shadowing helps learners listen to words that
they know and can read but cannot comprehend (Nakayama, 2011). If learners did not
know the words in the first place, shadowing would not be effective. Shadowing does
help learners improve their listening skills, but other training and exposure that learners
have experienced are also possibly contributing to their listening skill improvement,
along with shadowing training.
In addition, a minimal improvement for university-level questions was observed in
the two groups, even though the phoneme perception of both improved. As an exception,
those with quite low scores in the pre-test did improve to some extent; this is probably
because the enhanced phoneme perception helped them to respond to a few more ques-
tions. In brief, these results indicate that learners need more listening skills in addition to
the phoneme perception skills developed in the shadowing training.
In summary, the results of this study emphasize that shadowing improves learners’
phoneme perception regardless of their listening proficiency level; after training, low-
proficiency learners approached the initial level of the intermediate group in terms of
phoneme perception and listening comprehension. This explains why the improvement
of basic listening comprehension skills appears only in the low-proficiency learners. The
intermediate-proficiency learners already possess sufficient skills to answer the basic
questions before training, while the low-proficiency learners gained these skills through

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Hamada 15

training. However, this skill alone, enhanced by improved phoneme perception, was not
enough to respond to the university-level questions. In short, those without basic listen-
ing skills benefited the most from shadowing.
In terms of the listening process, the above argument provides a new insight into the
limited effectiveness of shadowing training for listening comprehension skills. As Shiki
et al. (2010) found, shadowing target sentences or passages around five times is suffi-
cient in terms of effectiveness, as shadowing is cognitively heavy, and learners’ percep-
tion of it is rather simple (Hamada, 2011b). Increasing the amount of shadowing practice
in one lesson or training period is thus questionable. When listeners’ bottom-up pro-
cesses do not properly function, they need to rely more on top-down processes (Rost,
2011). Consequently, the bottom-up processes remain immature. Therefore, low-profi-
ciency learners should gain a certain level of phoneme perception skills, and then work
toward improving their top-down skills to acquire higher listening comprehension skills
so that they can increase their scores in more advanced tests. Because both processes
work interactively for listening comprehension, once the learners’ bottom-up process is
improved (i.e. phoneme perception is strengthened or automatized through an intensive
training), the learners should then focus on top-down processes for holistic listening.

VI Study limitations
Despite the findings, three issues limit the interpretation of the results in this case study.
First, although the purpose of the study was to compare the effectiveness of shadowing
training on low- and intermediate-level learners, the findings would be more convincing
if compared with data from a control group. Although previous studies have already
confirmed the effectiveness of shadowing on listening skills, concluding that the
improvement found in this study is directly attributable to the shadowing training may
not be possible at this stage. The possibility still remains that other non-shadowing activ-
ities the learners had experienced in the class and in their experience prior to entering the
university may have affected the results; hence, a replication of this type of research is
necessary to make a stronger conclusion. Second, the participants were divided into two
groups using the pre-test based on the Eiken test because limited time was available to
assess them through a strictly designed curriculum. By the same token, this study did not
include an advanced group. To obtain more reliable data, including participants from
larger and more varied samples using another official criterion-referenced English profi-
ciency test, would be ideal. In this scenario, a more appropriate categorization of learners
(i.e. basic, intermediate, and advanced) would be possible. Lastly, there remain potential
practice effects of the test–retest method. Although this method was considered to pos-
sess more advantages than weaknesses, the data would be more convincing if an addi-
tional measurement that would not reflect a practice effect were to be used.

VII Conclusions
Shadowing is effective for improving phoneme perception regardless of listening profi-
ciency level. However, since phoneme perception among low-proficiency learners is low,
short-term shadowing training helps them to quickly approach the level of intermediate

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16 Language Teaching Research 

learners. In other words, regardless of the initial level, shadowing is considered to improve
learners’ phoneme perception and basic listening skills up to a certain level. One pedagogi-
cal implication of this study is that shadowing should be used to enhance foreign language
learners’ phoneme perception, especially those whose target language does not have simi-
lar phonological rules. Once their bottom-up listening process improves to a certain level,
learners should work on the top-down process as well. Although this study compared shad-
owing effectiveness by group, individual differences among learners should be acknowl-
edged as a few learners in both groups showed a different pattern of improvement. As data
on shadowing are still limited, I hope that this study will trigger further research.

Acknowledgements
I would like to show my greatest gratitude to the reviewers and the editors.

Declaration of conflicting interest

The author declares that there is no conflict of interest.

Funding
This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI grant number 24720247.

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Author biography
Yo Hamada is an assistant professor at Akita University, Japan. He holds a master’s degree in
TESOL from Temple University, USA, and a doctoral degree in education from Hiroshima
University, Japan. His principle research is incorporating theories into classroom teaching prac-
tice. His research area covers listening with a focus on shadowing, and demotivation.

Appendix
Transcriptions of the sample questions of the Eiken listening tests.

A sample question of Eiken pre-1st grade (Eiken, 2013c)

(Not written)
(Female) Brookfield Conference Center.
(Male) Hello. I’m interested in reserving a conference room for August 25th.
(Feale) Certainly, How large is your group?
(Male) Thirty people. Can you also do catering?
(Female) 
Yes. However, I’m afraid none of our small rooms are available on that date. We
have two larger rooms, but they’re more expensive.
(Male) Well, I have a limited budget. How much would one of those be?
(Female) $350 per hour, not including food.
(Male) I see. I think I’ll try somewhere else.

Question: What is the man’s problem with the conference center?

(Written)

1. It has double-booked his room.

2. The rooms are too small for his group.
3. It does not do catering for small groups.
4. The available rooms cost too much.

A sample question of Eiken pre-2nd grade (Eiken, 2013b)

(Not written)
(Female) Hello?
(Male)  Hi, Tracy. I think I left my notebook in your kitchen today when I came over to
study.

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Hamada 19

(Female) You did. I was just about to call you. Should I bring it to your house later?
(Male) You don’t have to do that. Could you just bring it to class tomorrow?
(Female) No problem. See you then.

Question: What does the boy ask the girl to do?

(Written)

1. Call him back in a few minutes.

2. Bring his notebook to school.
3. Come over to his house to study.
4. Tell him about their homework.

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