Getting started with Shadowing Player

Getting started

Shadowing Player is a Chrome extension for practising a YouTube video one sentence at a time. You can start without signing up. Your subtitles, settings and learning record are kept in this browser.

1. Install the extension. The Chrome Web Store listing is being prepared. When it is live, the "Add to Chrome" button on this site will open it.
2. Open a video on YouTube. The Shadowing Player panel appears at the top right of a regular video page. If you close it, a small Shadowing Player button stays in its place and opens it again.
3. Choose the sentences to practise. Load your own subtitle file, or choose a Teacher Lesson published for that video. See "Where lessons come from" below.
4. Pick a way to practise. Normal, Shadowing, Recall or Quiz.
5. Choose a scope, if you like. When a lesson is divided into parts, you can practise only the part you need today.
6. Press Play and practise sentence by sentence.
7. Mark sentences. ☆ for one to come back to, ✓ for one you know well enough.
8. Look at your practice history. How much you have practised is shown under the scope.

Steps 3 and 6 are enough to practise. The rest is there when you want it. What you set once (speed, subtitles, voices) is on the settings page.

It does not work on Shorts, on players embedded in other sites, or on YouTube Music.

Where lessons come from

Practice needs the sentences of the video and their times. There are two ways to get them, and neither needs an account.

Your own subtitle file

• Press Load subtitle in the panel, or drop a file on the panel. When a subtitle is already loaded, use Change in the header.
• The formats are SRT, VTT and JSON (a subtitle or a Shadowing Player lesson file), up to 5 MB.
• When each sentence has an English line and a Korean line, both languages are shown. A file with one language can still be used for playback, repeat and shadowing.
• A loaded subtitle is saved in this browser for that video. Open the same video again and it loads by itself.
• The file is read inside your browser. It is not uploaded anywhere.

Shadowing Player does not fetch YouTube's captions, and it does not download video or audio.

Teacher Lessons

A Teacher Lesson is a lesson a teacher has published for their own YouTube video. There is no file to pass around: open the video and it is there.

• It is optional, and off at first. Turn it on in the Teacher Lessons row of the panel or on the settings page.
• When it is on, the lessons published for the video are listed. A lesson is used only when you press Use lesson. Nothing switches by itself.
• A copy of the lesson you chose is kept in this browser, so it is there at once the next time you open the video.
• Use my own file instead takes you back to your own file at any time.

"Teacher Lesson" means that someone published it as a teacher. Shadowing Player has not checked who that teacher is or whether the video is theirs.

Which one opens

When you open a video, this is the order:

1. A file you load during this visit.
2. The Teacher Lesson you chose for this video before, if there is one.
3. The subtitle you saved for this video, if there is one.

Loading a file yourself (in the panel or on the settings page) makes that file the choice for that video. To use the Teacher Lesson again, press Use lesson in the list.

Teacher Lessons and your privacy

• While it is off, no Teacher Lessons are looked up. Nothing is sent to the Shadowing Player service.
• While it is on, opening a YouTube video sends the ID of that video to api.shadowingplayer.com to ask whether lessons are published for it. Choosing a lesson, or receiving an update to it, sends the ID of that lesson.
• Your browsing history, other tabs, your subtitle files, your learning record and your settings are not sent.

When a teacher updates a lesson

When a new version of the Teacher Lesson you are using is published, Shadowing Player fetches and applies it by itself, as long as Teacher Lessons is on.

• The saved copy opens first, and is replaced when the new version is found.
• If a sentence is playing, the change waits until that sentence has finished.
• Your favorites, mastered marks and learning record stay as they are.
• If the new version cannot be fetched, the one you have keeps working. An Update button stays so you can try again.
• A file you loaded yourself is never replaced. With Teacher Lessons off there is no check and no update.

The details are in the privacy notice.

The panel

The panel is the control surface next to the video. From top to bottom:

The panel is not shown in fullscreen. The subtitle and the quiz are drawn inside the video player.

Ways to practise

Normal

Watch as usual, but sentence by sentence.

• Previous and Next move between sentences, and pressing a sentence in the list goes straight to it.
• Repeat: Off / 1 / 2 / 3 / 5 / ∞. Off is ordinary playback. A number plays one sentence that many times and stops. ∞ repeats until you stop it.

Shadowing

Listen and say it back. One sentence plays, the video pauses to give you time to speak, and then it goes on.

• Repeat is the number of listen-and-speak rounds. With 2 it is listen, speak, listen, speak.
• How long you get to speak (Speaking time) and whether it stops or goes on afterwards (After sentence) are set on the settings page.

Recall

Say it before you hear it. The sentence is given in the language you know, you say it in the language you are learning, and then the video says the answer.

• With Learning target set to English, the prompt is Korean and the answer is the English spoken in the video. With Korean it is the other way round.
• The prompt is shown, and with Prompt voice on it is also read aloud by your browser's voice.
• When the Countdown (off, 3 or 5 seconds) ends, the video plays the answer sentence.
• It is available only for subtitles in which every sentence has both English and Korean.

Quiz

The video stops, and a question with its choices appears over the video. Choose one and you are told whether it was right; depending on the lesson, the video then jumps to the part that explains the answer you chose.

• It is available only for a lesson that contains questions. An ordinary subtitle file has no quiz.
• The score of the run is kept in the tab only, and is gone after a refresh.

Order

Open Content to choose the Order. Linear follows the video. Random shuffles the sentences of the scope you chose (without the mastered ones, when Skip mastered is on); no sentence comes back until each of them has come up once, and then they are shuffled again. Random applies in Shadowing and Recall, and in Normal when Repeat is on. It needs at least two sentences, and a quiz always follows the lesson's own order.

What is practised is explained under Scope and practice history below.

Videos that say each sentence in two languages

Some videos say each sentence in Korean first and then in English (or the other way round). When the lesson has the times of both parts, two more rows appear in the panel. They are available in Normal and in Shadowing.

Play: which part of a sentence is played.

• KO → EN: both languages, in the order the video says them.
• English / Korean: one of them only.

For a video that says the English first, the first option reads EN → KO.

Pause between: when both languages are played, a moment to think in between.

• None: straight on.
• 1s / 3s: the video pauses that long after the first language.
• Count 3: when the first language ends the video pauses, and 3, 2, 1 appear over the video before the second language plays. The text of the second language is hidden during the count. With Sounds on, a beep goes with each number.

This is not the Quiz mode. There is no question and no choices: it only gives you a moment to think before you hear the answer.

A speed for each language: First-language speed on the settings page lets the first part play at a speed of its own. For example, the language you know faster and the language you are learning at normal speed.

The settings page

Choices you make once are on a settings page of their own. There are three ways to open it:

• The ⚙ button in the panel's header
• The Settings ↗ row of the panel
• Chrome's extensions menu: Shadowing Player → Options

A change is saved at once, and open Shadowing Player video tabs in this browser update immediately. The settings are kept in this browser only. They are not synced to other devices.

Playback

Subtitles

The preview beside them shows the languages, size and position you chose. With the video open in another window you can watch the subtitle move as you adjust it.

Practice defaults

Voice and sounds

The voice that reads the prompt is one your browser and operating system provide.

• With Automatic, Shadowing Player picks a voice that fits the language from those available on this computer.
• The voices on offer differ from one computer and browser to another. A voice you saw on one computer may not exist on another. Installing more voices in your operating system can add to the list.
• A voice marked Online in the list is not produced on your device. With an online voice, the sentences to be read may be sent to that voice service. Automatic uses a fitting voice on the device first when there is one.
• If a voice you chose is later removed, the automatic voice reads instead and you are told so.
• Preview voice reads a sample line in that language with the voice shown, at your voice speed.

Voice guidance is a recording that comes with the extension when the interface is in English, and your browser's voice when it is in Korean.

Teacher Lessons

Turns Teacher Lessons on or off. It is the same setting as the Teacher Lessons row of the panel.

Saved subtitles

One place for the subtitles saved in this browser.

Add a subtitle for a video: save a subtitle for a video without opening it.

1. Enter the YouTube address or the video ID. A lesson file that names its video fills it in by itself.
2. Drop an SRT, VTT or JSON file, or use Choose file (up to 5 MB).
3. Press Save for this video. Nothing is saved until you do.

If a subtitle is already saved for that video, you have to press again to replace it. The saved subtitle is used when that video is opened; a tab that already has it open needs a refresh.

The list: saved subtitles, newest first, with the title (or the file name), the number of sentences, the video ID and the date.

• Open video: opens that video in a new tab.
• Delete: needs a second press. The favorites and learning record of that video are not deleted.
• Delete all saved subtitles: removes the saved subtitles of every video. Your settings stay.
• The storage in use is shown at the top right.

Scope and practice history

Target scope: practise only the part you need

A long lesson does not have to be repeated from start to end. Open the Content row of the panel and choose the Target scope.

• All: every sentence of the lesson.
• Favorites: only the sentences you marked with ☆. Offered once you have at least one favorite.
• The lesson's own parts: if the author grouped the sentences, the groups are listed by name. In a lesson grouped by tense (present simple, past simple), by person (I, YOU, IT) and by kind of sentence (affirmative, negative, question), you could choose "IT" and practise its 90 sentences instead of all 630.

Groups differ from lesson to lesson. An ordinary subtitle file (SRT, VTT), or a lesson without groups, has only All and Favorites.

How the scope applies to each way of practising:

A sentence outside the scope can still be practised by pressing it in the Transcript.

Favorites and Mastered

• ☆ Favorite: a mark you put on sentences to come back to. With the scope set to Favorites, only those are practised.
• ✓ Mastered: a mark you put on a sentence you feel you know well enough. Shadowing Player does not grade your pronunciation or your answers to decide it. You can take the mark off again at any time.
• With Skip mastered on, sentences marked ✓ are left out of practice. When every sentence of the scope is mastered, the panel says so and offers to include them again.

Practice history

Under the scope, the Content section shows the record of the scope you chose.

These numbers are a record of what you did. The quiz line counts multiple-choice questions you answered and how many were right. None of them is a pronunciation score or an AI assessment, and the microphone is not used.

Resetting

• Reset progress in this scope: removes favorites, mastered marks and practice counts for the sentences of the scope in use only.
• Reset all progress for this video: removes them for the whole lesson of this video.

Both need a second press. What is removed cannot be brought back. Your saved subtitles and your settings stay.

Where it is kept

• The record is saved in this browser, per video, and separately for your own file and for each Teacher Lesson.
• Removing the extension removes it.
• It is not synced to another computer or browser.

Are you a teacher?

To publish a lesson for your own YouTube video, see For teachers. Teacher Studio, where lessons are published, needs a sign-in. Learning does not.

Questions

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