Shadowing Course
Train your pronunciation, rhythm and connected speech by shadowing 40 short Australian passages.
Taught by Peter Smissen
or
- 2 hr 23 min of content
- 40 lessons
- Certificate of completion
- Full lifetime access
$297.00
Course Content
40 sections · 40 lessons
What you'll be able to do
- Speak with Australian rhythm and intonation instead of word-by-word delivery
- Link words together the way native speakers do, rather than pronouncing each one separately
- Hear the sounds that change or disappear in fast speech — and produce them yourself
- Build pronunciation as muscle memory through repetition, not rules
- Read English aloud fluently without stumbling over unfamiliar phrasing
- Follow Australian news writing and non-fiction at natural speed
Who is this for?
Any learner who can already read English comfortably and wants to sound more natural. Shadowing works at every level — you just need somewhere you can speak out loud, and a willingness to feel a bit silly for the first few minutes.
About this course
Welcome to the Shadowing Course.
The goal here is to improve your Australian English pronunciation — connected speech, intonation, rhythm, and every other part of English as it's actually spoken by native speakers.
How it works
We use the speech shadowing technique: you "shadow" me by reading the text aloud immediately after I do. You copy not just the words but the melody, the stress and the way sounds run into each other. You're not translating and you're not thinking about grammar — you're training your mouth and your ear at the same time.
- Listen to a short passage read at natural speed.
- Shadow it — say it out loud right after me, matching the rhythm rather than the spelling.
- Repeat until it comes out automatically instead of effortfully.
What you'll shadow
- 10 news stories — short current-affairs passages: a dingo attack, the Queensland floods, microplastics, a koala break-in, the hottest January on record, and more.
- 30 book passages — extracts from Australian non-fiction, including Girt, The Fatal Shore, In a Sunburned Country, The Story of Australian English, True History of the Kelly Gang, Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia and Eureka.
Every passage is short on purpose. Ten focused minutes of shadowing does more for your accent than an hour of passive listening.
How to use the course
Do one passage a day rather than five in one sitting — shadowing is a physical skill, and little and often wins. Come back to passages you've already done: the second and third pass are where the improvement actually shows up.
So let's get started taking your spoken English to the next level.
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