Children learnthe music of alanguage first.
Cadenza is a voice-first language programme for schools where learning happens by doing. In five-minute missions, students watch a real scene, echo the melody of native speech, then hold a real conversation.
Flashcards teach children words. Speaking takes timing, stress and melody, and none of it fits on a card.
Five minutes. Four steps. One real conversation.
How a mission works
Each mission is a situation a child could really find themselves in: buying bread at a bakery, asking the way at the zoo, ordering at a café on a school trip.
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1Watch
A 5–10 second scene from real life, with natural sound. The meaning appears for two seconds, then fades, so the picture carries the story instead of a translation.
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2Echo
The student speaks along with a native voice, a quarter of a second behind. They follow the rise and fall of the sentence the way you hum along to a song, and a live pitch line shows when they are in time.
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3Talk
A short conversation with a friendly character who answers in one or two sentences and quietly models the right words. If the student pauses for four seconds, a gentle choice appears to keep things moving.
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4Unlock
The mission joins a map of things the student can now do, like ordering at a bakery. Nearby situations open up next. No points and no streaks: real abilities families can see.
Built on seventy years of speech research
The Echo step uses prosodic shadowing: speaking along with a native voice, focused on melody rather than meaning. It began in 1950s speech laboratories, became a staple of interpreter training, and is now studied in language classrooms. Try it below.
What happens in the brain
Melody before words
Researchers teach shadowing in three steps, from easiest to hardest. Cadenza's Echo step sits in the middle, and the Watch step before it makes sure students already understand most of what they hear.
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Mumble
Copy the sound and rhythm only.
- The Echo step2
Melody
Copy pitch, stress and rhythm, without worrying about every word.
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Words and meaning
Copy every word while following what it means.
The 250–500 ms window
Shadowing studies going back to the 1950s put the limit of speech reaction near a quarter of a second. Past half a second, learners fall back on memory.
Source: Speech shadowingA direct line from ear to mouth
Speaking while listening uses the brain's dorsal stream, which maps sounds onto mouth movements. Brain scans of shadowing show hearing and speech areas working together.
Hickok & Poeppel 2007; NeuroImage, 2009Measured listening gains
In a study of 43 university English learners, nine shadowing lessons improved how well they heard individual sounds, at both levels tested.
Hamada, Language Teaching Research, 2016Sixty seconds, then stop
Shadowing is intense, and learners report tiring in long sessions. So each Echo lasts one minute, looping a short clip rather than pushing through a long one.
Asian-Pacific Journal of Second and Foreign Language Education, 2018
How it helps your students
Your students already learn by making, building and presenting. Cadenza brings the same approach to languages: real situations, their own interests, and abilities they can show.
They speak from the first day
Students learn by doing, so they start by speaking. There are no word lists to get through before the first real conversation.
Mistakes stay part of the conversation
No red marks, buzzers or failed-attempt counters. If a student pauses, Cadenza offers a gentle choice and the conversation keeps moving, the way a patient teacher would.
Missions built around what they love
On day one, each student tells Cadenza three things they enjoy. Missions grow from there: the football match, the bakery, the trip to the zoo.
They hear the language as it's really spoken
Shadowing trains the ear on natural, native-speed speech, with its linked words and dropped sounds, rather than slow textbook audio.
Mastery they can show
Each finished mission adds a real ability to the student's map: "I can buy bread at a bakery." Families see what their child can do, not a score.
For schools that measuresuccess in whatchildren can do.
Bring Cadenza to your school
Tell us a little about your school and we will arrange a walkthrough with the Prosoda Labs team.
[email protected]