Telenovela Shadowing as a Technique for Teaching Diatopic Varieties in the SFL Classroom

Abstract

Shadowing is a technique widely used in the teaching of English as a foreign language. In Asia, particularly in Japan, it is employed as a strategy to improve pronunciation and other prosodic features that learners may find difficult to reproduce. In Spanish as a Foreign Language (SFL), although learners at different proficiency levels encounter similar difficulties, relatively little research has been conducted on the subject. In this article, the author examines the use of shadowing in SFL through telenovelas, an audiovisual resource commonly used at intermediate and advanced levels. She proposes a sequence specifically adapted to SFL, which can be implemented either in the classroom or as an autonomous learning activity. The aim is to enhance learners’ sociolinguistic competence and raise their awareness of standard dialectal varieties of Spanish.