Repensar el Shadowing para la Pronunciación Inteligible en la Educación Docente EFL Latinoamericana: Revisión Crítica y Marco Conceptual

Shadowing—the near-simultaneous oral reproduction of heard speech—has become a widely discussed pronunciation technique in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) instruction, yet two imbalances limit how it is understood. First, the evidence base concentrates on Asian classrooms and general learners, leaving Spanish-speaking teacher-education contexts under-theorised. Second, much research privileges accuracy and native-likeness over intelligibility, despite intelligibility becoming the central goal in contemporary pronunciation pedagogy. This critical narrative review proposes an integrative framework connecting shadowing's four cognitive mechanisms—phonological loop engagement, bottom-up processing, automatisation, and deliberate practice—to pedagogical design principles and to intelligibility-oriented outcomes. The paper reconceptualises shadowing not as a monolithic drill but as a family of four technique variants (standard, prosody-focused, content-selective, and technology-mediated), each with distinct attentional demands and pedagogical goals. Drawing on recent systematic reviews and the authors' own research, the article argues that effectiveness depends not on shadowing itself but on how exposure, attention, and repetition are structured around high-payoff features—a principle especially relevant for Spanish-speaking learners whose L1 transfer patterns (vowel reduction, cluster simplification, weak stress) predictably impact English intelligibility. The paper develops a detailed L1 transfer-to-variant mapping protocol and provides technique-selection guidelines for pre-service teachers with specific pronunciation vulnerabilities. The review identifies critical gaps and concludes by setting a concrete research agenda for translating this framework into practice in teacher education.