Hey everyone. Welcome to the InFluency Podcast. Today we have an #AskHadar episode where I answer your questions.

Welcome to another #AskHadar episode, and today we have a question from Chiara from Italy:

“Hi Hadar, I’m Chiara. I’m from Italy. And I was thinking about a question for you. I was wondering if in your opinion, doing just shadowing technique to speak English is enough to improve fluency in speaking English? Thank you so much.”

All right, Chiara, this is such a good question. Thank you so much for asking it, cuz I think a lot of people need to hear it. In one word, my answer is no. And now, in a few more words. Fluency means being able to express your thoughts and deliver them in a clear way. Fluency is all about communicating your ideas and your feelings, and of course your thoughts.

When it comes to shadowing, you are just copying someone else’s thoughts. So shadowing can definitely help you with your intonation, with pronunciation, with vocabulary, with grammar, it can help you with a lot of different things related to English. But here’s what it cannot help you with. It will not help you produce the language, which is what you need to become fluent. It will not help you with managing your fears and building up confidence speaking to other people. That only happens when you speak with other people and when you produce the language.

So while shadowing is great, it should only be in addition to the real practice, which is: producing the language, speaking on your own, with other people, to other people, making videos, recording yourself. All of that is needed for you to feel confident expressing yourself in English, as you feel confident expressing yourself in Italian.

I would combine a bunch of things: learning the theory and implementing it, doing a lot of shadowing exercises, but also doing a lot of speaking. If you’re not there yet, I highly recommend that you join the InFluency community where you can participate in video discussions and in our speaking club where you have weekly conversations with our incredible hosts and community, and it’s absolutely free. So I hope to see you there. And thank you so much for your great question.