The effect of shadowing: exploring the speed variety of model audio and sound recognition ability in the Japanese as a foreign language context

Shadowing has increasingly been recognized as an effective practice for developing listening skills in second language learning. The common claim is that the act of simultaneous listening and speaking activates subvocalization in the working memory, which helps improve bottom-up processing (Kadota, 2007). This helps improve morpheme perception that contributes to sound recognition skills leading to listening comprehension (Hamada, 2016). However, there is very little research focusing on the influence of speed variation in shadowing model audio. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of shadowing in relation to gradual speed progression of the model audio and sound recognition ability. Participants in this study were 29 university students who were enrolled in the language courses, Advanced Spoken Japanese (experimental group) and Advanced Japanese (control group) at an Australian university. Shadowing practice was conducted for eight weeks during a 13-week semester. The pre- and post-tests used parts of standardized Japanese proficiency tests for listening comprehension (24 questions) and a dictation test (10 items) for sound recognition ability. The results indicated that the experimental group improved in both listening comprehension and dictation at slow and fast speed, whereas the control group showed improvement only in slow speed dictation.