I can speak to the power of shadowing for improving spoken language ability. If you check out techniques discussed on the How To Learn Any Language forum [1] where many of the foremost polyglots and hyperpolyglots hangout, you&#x27;ll see that Shadowing and L-R are basically accepted as fundamental techniques.<p>It takes real determination to correctly shadow though, like patio11 said you need to reproduce the sample _exactly_. This can cause you to spend an hour trying to perfect &lt;5min of speech. But it&#x27;s extremely rewarding.
For example, when I was learning Mandarin I chose a 20 episode (1hr each) tv show as my shadowing material. It took close to half a year of working on it almost every night to finish. But afterwards I had &quot;somehow&quot; developed a deep sense of what words&#x2F;phrases&#x2F;idioms&#x2F;etc _felt right_ to say when speaking and how to say them in that oh-so-close-to-native like way. The topic has been extensively discussed on the learn any language forums. But suffice to say, if you want to improve your spoken ability, doing a lot of shadowing would help.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;how-to-learn-any-language.com&#x2F;forum" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;how-to-learn-any-language.com&#x2F;forum</a>