Recipe: Random practice
“I want students to drill a bank of sentences.”
In Random mode the sentences of your video come up in shuffled order, each once per round. It works best when every sentence means something on its own.
Can the sentence stand alone?
Imagine the sentence appearing with nothing before it. If the student can still tell what it means, it is good random material.
Good for Random
- Where are you going?
- I’d like a cup of coffee.
- Could you help me?
- 지금 몇 시예요?
Depends on context
- Yes.
- That one.
- Because of that.
- And then.
Keep dialogue in its own group
A dialogue is full of lines that only make sense after the line before. That is fine for Shadowing in order, and poor for Random. A lesson can divide its sentences into groups, and students choose which group to practise. Put the stand-alone sentence bank in one group and the dialogue in another, so students can shuffle the first and play the second in order.
Recipe: the 100-sentence practice video
A format that suits Random, Recall and Shadowing equally well.
10–20 s
Intro
Say what the video is and how to use it. Keep it out of the lesson’s sentences.
100
Sentences
Each with its own permanent ID, from the first to the hundredth.
3–5 s
Average spoken length
With a natural small gap after each sentence.
8–12 min
Estimated total
Roughly, depending on the sentences. No silence for the student is needed.
The shape of the video
Timeline
Optional: make each block of twenty a group (a unit or a topic), so students can practise one block at a time.
In the lesson
100 stable sentence IDs
Numbered once and never renumbered. Leave gaps in the numbering if you may add sentences later.
Groups, if you want them
Units or topics that students can select as their practice scope.
What students can do with it
- Random orderEvery sentence once per round, then a new shuffle.
- Target scopeThe whole lesson, one group, or only favorites.
- Skip masteredThe bank shrinks to what the student still has to learn.
- Random with RecallShuffled prompts, answered by your video.
Test it the way students will use it
Load your lesson in Shadowing Player on the published video and run these before you share it.
Three speeds
Play a few sentences at 0.75×, 1.0× and 1.25×. A boundary that is fine at one speed can clip at another.
Three repeats in a row
Repeat one sentence three times. Listen for a clipped ending and for the first sound of the next sentence.
Distant random jumps
Turn Random on and step through ten sentences. Each one should start cleanly after a jump from far away.
Twenty recall items
If the lesson is for Recall, do twenty in a row. Check that each prompt and its answer mean the same thing.
Every quiz branch
Choose every answer of every question once. A branch nobody clicked is a branch that may be broken.