Practice English by shadowing YouTube videos

What is English shadowing?

English shadowing means listening to a native speaker and repeating at the same time, about half a second behind. You copy the rhythm, stress, and intonation, not just the vocabulary. The technique comes from interpreter training. Alexander Arguelles later popularised it for self-learners, and Shuhei Kadota’s research group in Japan has studied it with EFL students. You are not translating in your head. You are training the mouth movements of English speech.

Silent study builds understanding, but it never forces your mouth to keep up with real speech. Most learners pick material that is far too hard, then freeze. Shadowing is hard at first and sounds stupid out loud. That discomfort is the point.

Ten minutes of shadowing practice daily beats an hour on Sunday. It is not close.

How it works here

1. Pick or paste a YouTube video. Any video you actually like. It is not a course.
2. Play it with word-by-word subtitles. The current spoken word is highlighted, and each word has a small pronunciation line and a translation.
3. Repeat each sentence aloud. Slow the video to 0.75x or 0.5x if you need it. Loop the hard sentences.
4. Save words you want to keep. They become flashcards with spaced repetition.

This is a free shadowing app that runs in the phone browser, nothing to install. It supports Ukrainian, Spanish, Russian, and more. If you want more background, read what shadowing is, how to practice, or browse all the guides. Then learn English with subtitles on a video you chose yourself.

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