Keep your language.
Keep speaking.
Shadow is a speaking-first language practice app built around shadowing: listening to native speech and repeating it immediately to train fluency, pronunciation, rhythm, vocabulary, and grammar in context.
Built especially for people who already learned a language and do not want to lose it — including advanced learners, former immersion students, heritage speakers, and returned missionaries.
See Shadow in 25 seconds
A quick concept demo of the planned experience.
What is shadowing?
Instead of translating isolated sentences or tapping through multiple choice, you hear natural speech from a native speaker and repeat it right behind them. Shadow focuses your practice on actually producing the language — not just recognizing it.
How Shadow would work
The core session is intentionally simple: listen, shadow, get feedback, then review what gave you trouble.
Listen
Hear a short, natural phrase recorded by a native speaker.
Shadow
Repeat it immediately, matching the speaker's timing, pronunciation, and rhythm.
Get feedback
Shadow identifies words, grammar, and pronunciation that need another pass.
Review
Missed material becomes flashcards and returns later through spaced review reminders.
What makes it different?
✓Speaking is the lesson
Shadowing is the primary learning activity, not an extra feature buried behind vocabulary drills.
✓Native voices, not robot lessons
Lesson recordings are planned to come from native speakers. AI is used to analyze your response and personalize review.
✓Designed for maintenance
Useful when you already know a language but need a consistent way to keep speaking it.
✓Multiple languages
The concept is planned around 10+ languages rather than being limited to one language pair.
Who is Shadow for?
Advanced learners
People who understand plenty but need more speaking repetition and automaticity.
Language maintainers
People who once spoke comfortably and want to stop their ability from fading.
Returned missionaries
Former missionaries who want a practical way to keep using the language they learned.
Promising research support
A 2025 systematic review from University of Oxford researchers included 44 studies on shadowing and second-language pronunciation.
The review also notes limitations in parts of the evidence base, including heavy use of controlled speaking tasks. Source: Whitworth & Rose (2025), A Systematic Review of Research on the use of Shadowing for Second Language Pronunciation Teaching.