HOW SHADOWING TRANSFORMS FOREIGN LANGUAGE FLUENCY: A REVIEW OF COGNITIVE MECHANISMS, EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE, AND PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS

Abstrak

Oral fluency remains a major challenge for many foreign language learners despite years of formal instruction. Among fluency-oriented techniques, shadowing has attracted increasing attention due to its ability to integrate listening, pronunciation, and speech production. This review examines the theoretical foundations of shadowing and synthesizes findings from second language acquisition, cognitive psychology, and applied linguistics. The article discusses how shadowing improves pronunciation, listening comprehension, speech automaticity, vocabulary retention, and learner confidence through continuous auditory processing and immediate speech production. It also highlights the cognitive mechanisms that support these improvements and outlines practical implications for language teaching. The review concludes that regular and structured shadowing practice can significantly enhance communicative competence. Rather than serving only as a pronunciation exercise, shadowing should be considered a comprehensive pedagogical technique for developing foreign language fluency