Learn the method that helped a famous professor break the Guinness World Record and master 50 languages
“Speech shadowing” is a famous method developed by the famous professor and polyglot Alexander Argüelles. It consists of repeating by ear everything we hear, exactly as children do.
At Taalhammer, we have further improved it, using modern language-learning algorithms to make the process even more effective.
To get started, we’re giving you a six-month special deal to see for yourself what advantage you gain by using Taalhammer compared to other apps. Take advantage of this one-time offer and forget about monotonous grammar and impractical words.
This may surprise you, but despite the fact that many learners begin to understand faster than they speak, it is the ability to understand a language that is actually the most difficult.
At first, for example, you don’t recognize where a word begins and ends. Everything sounds like an incomprehensible stream of sounds.
Argüelles’ method on steroids
Repetition according to Professor Argüelles’ method, i.e. listening to a text and repeating it sentence by sentence, has many supporters and at first glance looks decidedly interesting.
However, our practice shows that in reality, this approach can prove difficult for many people to implement.
This has to do primarily with finding the right training texts for this method.
In addition, repetition over a long period of time is tiring, especially if the topic does not fully interest us and the text is long and requires a lot of concentration. It is then easy to lose motivation to continue using such a technique.
That’s why at Taalhammer we decided to simplify the shadowing method and designed a digital version of it.
How does shadowing of words and sentences work?
In our application, you first hear a phrase in the source language (i.e. your native language: in this case, probably English), and then you have time to translate it into the target language (e.g. Dutch).
Example: if you are learning Dutch, you first hear a phrase in English. This is followed by a few seconds of pause for you to translate and say the sentence in Dutch, then after another few seconds you are given the correct answer (in Dutch) for checking the correctness of your statement.
The last step is to repeat aloud “behind the app” the correct version of the sentence (or word), in this case in Dutch. The sequence is thus as follows: source (native) language – pause – target language – pause – next item.
Surprising benefits of learning on the go
One of the pillars of the model proposed by Argüelles is learning on the move to further stimulate the brain and learn even more effectively.
That’s why we at Taalhammer have developed a listening mode where, with a single press of Play, your hands are free and you can engage in any activity during this time, be it a brisk walk or cooking.
The app’s advanced algorithm makes it easy to train listening and speaking, and it adjusts the order of the exercises to fix the most difficult parts, including the correct accent.
Shadowing is just one of Taalhammer’s state-of-the-art language-learning modules that makes learning simple and intuitive. Not only have we based our methods on scientific research, but we’ve tested them on ourselves, investing thousands of hours in learning various languages, including ones as “exotic” as Malaysian or as niche as Dutch.
I myself, the author of this text, speak six languages fluently, and I mastered each of them using the methods on which Taalhammer is based.
Join the revolution in language learning and try Taalhammer in a limited 6-month offer, i.e. 6 months of using the full functionality of the app for only €39!
