Inny Jan Wrote:(And I'm not quite sure why you ignored my point that there are circumstances when shadowing, even if you are not in favour of this technique, is better then doing nothing at all.)Anything is potentially better than nothing and that obviously also applies to shadowing; that's not much of an endorsement.
But is it efficient? I've yet to hear a convincing account that it is. It is most certainly not the cure for accent problems that so many people purport it to be. The world is full of people who lived in a second country their entire lives, who can hear in their heads exactly how the 2nd language should sound and yet maintain horrible accents their entire lives. The real problem is how to change your habits (and wanting to, but that's another issue). Even when you get people to make a specific sound that they couldn't make before, they quickly go back to saying it exactly the way they said it before. That's why self-talk allows you to tweak your pronunciation in a way that shadowing can't, and that's why a partner that can give you a hint that you need to correct yourself is a great way to start changing your bad habits and improve your accent.