Shawn Ford
SLS 460
Final Paper
Spring 2001
Contrastive Analysis of English
& Japanese
and Tutorial Report Final
INTRODUCTION
Within the field of linguistics a number of studies exist that compare the differences
between the English and Japanese languages. Not only are the lexical, orthographic,
and syntactic systems very different, but the phonological systems of the two
languages also stand in stark contrast to one another. In the following paper,
I will give a brief contrastive analysis of selected features of the phonological
systems of English and Japanese followed by a report on my tutoring project.
Due to the nature of this project, I will limit my contrastive analysis to only
a few of the phonological aspects of the languages in comparison. Therefore,
I will briefly consider certain articulatory settings before devoting most attention
to the phonemic inventories of the languages. Afterwards, I will try to predict
difficulties that native speakers of Japanese might have learning English as
a second language based on my comparison of English and Japanese phonology.
Finally, I will give a report on my tutoring project from this semester using
my contrastive analysis as a guide.
ARTICULATORY SETTINGS
English and Japanese have very different articulatory settings; therefore, it
may be difficult to gain high levels of proficiency in the pronunciation of
one of the languages with the previously developed articulatory setting of the
other language. These differences may account for the challenges that speakers
of either language may have when learning the sound systems of the other language.
One of the major articulatory differences between English and Japanese is regarding
the lips. Hattori (1951), cited in Vance (1987) says that in Japanese the
lips play almost no active role in pronunciation; they are neither rounded nor
spread, but neutral (p. 7). Lip rounding in Japanese is much weaker than
in English. This contrast in articulation results in some of the phonemic differences
between the two languages.
Perhaps the most problematic articulatory difference between English and Japanese
may be found in tongue placement. Vance (1987) cites Honikman (1964) regarding
tongue positioning in English to explain part of the difference. According to
Honikman, The tongue is tethered laterally to the roof of the mouth by
allowing the sides to rest along the inner surfaces of the upper lateral gums
and teeth (p. 7) and the tip of the tongue is free to move. As a result,
alveolar consonants are more frequent than any others in English. On the other
hand, in Japanese pronunciation the average position of the tongue is quite
far back in the mouth, with the body of the tongue shaped to the roof of the
mouth, dorsum somewhat raised, and tip behind the lower front teeth. As a result,
velar consonants are more frequent than the other consonants in Japanese, and
they occur more often than in English.
CONSONANT INVENTORIES
When examining the consonant phoneme inventories of English and Japanese, it
appears that the two languages are very similar. Upon closer inspection, the
similarity lies in the fact that nearly every Japanese phoneme is also found
in English. In fact, the only phoneme that clearly is not found in English is
the bilabial fricative //. In contrast, several
English phonemes are non-existent in Japanese. These phonemes are mainly within
the fricative domain.
The following two tables are provided to aid comparison of English and Japanese
phonemes. Table 1 lists English consonant phonemes and Table 2 lists Japanese
consonant phonemes. Both tables use the most current International Phonetic
Association alphabet to represent phonemes and are modeled after a phonetic
table provided by Fromkin and Rodman in An Introduction to Language, sixth edition
(p. 233). The phonemic inventory of Japanese is taken from Vance (1987).
Table 1: English Consonant Phonemes
Table 2: Japanese Consonant Phonemes
Before beginning my comparison of English and Japanese phonemes, it should be
pointed out that within the literature of Japanese phonology, there appears
to be considerable discrepancies regarding the phonemes of the language. Several
of these discrepancies may be explained simply as differences in symbols used
for transcription. I overcome this problem by strictly following the IPA standard
alphabet throughout this paper.
The greatest challenge comes from the fact that researchers seem to have different
opinions about what constitutes a phoneme in Japanese. According to Vance (1987),
there are two extremes of thought concerning the Japanese phonetic system: the
conservative variety and the innovating variety. The conservative variety,
supported by Vance, relies mainly on the minimal pair rule of linguistics for
determining phonemes. The innovating variety, advocated by several Japanese
linguists as well as other western linguists, appears to consider numerous allophones
to be phonemes. This view seems to be based partly on minimal pairs, partly
on dialectal differences, and partly on commonly used loan words with non-Japanese
sounds. Examples of some of these sounds considered phonemes in the innovating
approach are /ç/, /µ
/, and /z/ (Vance). In our consideration of Japanese
phonemes, we will follow the conservative variety as described by Vance in an
attempt to avoid possible confusion between phonemes and allophones and to limit
our analysis and discussion.
STOPS
There are six distinctive stops in Japanese: the bilabials /p,b/;
the velars /k,g/; and the alveolars /t,d/. However,
the production of /t,d/ in Japanese is quite different
from their English counterparts. The tongue is very flat and convex to the roof
of the mouth in the Japanese /t,d/, and the blade
of the tongue touches the alveolar ridge; whereas in English, only the tip of
the tongue is curled up to and touches the alveolar ridge, slightly concave
to the roof of the mouth. Due to the differences in articulation of these stops,
there is much less tongue tension in the Japanese sounds.
NASALS
English and Japanese both contain three nasals: /m/,
/n/, and /h/. /m/
and /h/ are articulated in the same places in both
languages and have basically the same sound qualities. However, the /n/
in Japanese is produced with the tip of the tongue against the back of the front
teeth, whereas the English /n/ is alveolar. Although
the place of articulation is slightly different, the resulting phoneme is not
noticeably different.
FRICATIVES
As mentioned previously, the major difference between the English and Japanese
consonant phoneme inventories lies in the disparity of fricatives found in the
languages. English has nine phonemes, while Japanese has only five. This fact
proves to be a major source of problems for Japanese learners of English.
In Japanese, the voiceless, bilabial fricative- //
is the first sound in fune boat. //
is somewhat like a cross between the English phonemes /f/
and /h/. This sound occurs only before /u/.
This is not likely to cause any problems for Japanese speakers learning English,
or English speakers learning Japanese, as using /f/
or /h/ in its place is not likely to create much
confusion. However, it should be noted that confusion occasionally may arise
when Japanese mispronounce English words like who as foo
and hula as fura when they make the improper sound substitution.
The alveolar fricatives /s,z/ in Japanese are basically
the same as their English counterparts, except in the passageway that the air
travels when producing these phonemes. In Japanese, the air escapes through
a narrow central pathway from the back of the oral cavity to the front between
the tongue and the roof of the mouth. On the other hand, in English the tongue
is flatter so air escapes through a wider and flatter passageway.
The Japanese voiceless palatal fricative /Ç/
is similar to the English phoneme /ß/, but
the Japanese version is produced slightly more towards the back of the mouth.
Its voiced counterpart, /z/, is not used by all
speakers of Japanese; therefore, it is not considered a true phoneme. The glottal
fricative /h/ in Japanese is almost identical to
its English counterpart in its place of articulation and sound quality.
The major differences in fricatives of the two phonemic systems in question
are that Japanese lacks the English voiced labio-dental fricative /v/,
the voiceless interdental fricative /q/ and its voiced
counterpart /d/, and the voiced alveolar /zj/.
According to Vance(1998), none of these phonemes appear in the Japanese language
in native words, in borrowed words or as allophones of other phonemes. This
is very interesting since all of these phonemes are fricatives.
AFFRICATES
Another group of Japanese consonants that are produced further back in the oral
cavity than in English are the palatal affricates /c,Ô/,
which are related to English /tß,dzj/. While
they do have slightly different places of articulation and sound quality, the
differences are so minor that they are barely noticeable.
LIQUIDS
The English language contains two approximants: the lateral /l/
and the retroflex /®/. English relies on the
contrast of these two phonemes to distinguish between many minimal pairs in
the language. On the other hand, Japanese does not have two distinct approximants.
Instead, Japanese has only one, the alveolar flap /
/, that occasionally has [l] and [r]
allophones in certain dialects on certain occasions. This phonemic distinction
tends to be a problem for many Japanese speakers who are learning English.
GLIDES
The three glides of English and Japanese, bilabial and velar /w/
and palatal /j/, are considered almost identical.
They are made in the same places and have basically the same sounds except for
ever so slight differences as allophones with other phoneme combinations.
VOWEL INVENTORIES
Table 3 and Table 4 that follow are provided to ease comparison of the vowel
phoneme inventories of English and Japanese. The vowel charts represent the
oral cavity and give phonemes in the approximate place of articulation. The
charts are adapted after those found in Ladefoged (2001).
Table 3: English Vowel Phonemes Table
4: Japanese Vowel Phonemes
Japanese has five short vowels: /a/, /i/,
/u/, /e/, and /o/.
Although these vowels are somewhat similar to those in English, there are a
few differences. First, the Japanese low vowel /a/
is similar to the English /a/, but dialectical variances
may cause the Japanese /a/ to sound like the English and French /å/.
Second, the Japanese high front vowel /i/ is produced
with very little spreading of the lips. Unlike English, /I/
does not exist in Japanese. Third, the Japanese high-back vowel /u/
can be described as unrounded. In English this vowel is considered rounded.
Fourth, the Japanese mid-front vowel /e/ is close
to the English phoneme /´/. Finally, the Japanese
mid-back vowel /o/ is similar to the English /ø/,
the vowel in saw. According to Kawakami (1977) as cited in Vance
(1987), this vowel is the only one in Japanese that involves active lip
rounding (p.10).
Another interesting contrast between English and Japanese vowels is that the
perceptual effects of the vowels in the neighboring syllables are minimal in
Japanese. This means that unlike English, Japanese vowels do not seem to have
positional allophones, except for /u/. Each of the
five short vowels in Japanese have long counterparts, but they are not likely
to cause any major problems for learners of English. However, what may create
some difficulty for Japanese learners of English is the distinction between
tense and lax vowels (/iy/ vs. /I/;
/ey/ vs. /´/;
/uw/ vs. /¨/), because
such distinctions do not exist in Japanese. Japanese ESL learners may produce
sounds in between the tense and lax versions of the English vowel sounds.
There are also a number of allophones that exist in Japanese that are not found
in English. Such allophones, or phoneme-clusters, are likely to cause some degree
of difficulty for English speakers of Japanese. These include: [pj]
from the phoneme cluster /p·y/, a voiceless
palatalized bilabial stop; [ts] and [tß]
from /Ç·y/, a voiceless
palatalized alveolar affricate; [kj] from /k·y/,
a voiceless palatalized velar stop; [bj] from /b·y/,
a voiced palatalized bilabial stop; [gj] from /g·y/,
a voiced palatalized velar stop; [nj], a voiced
palatalized velar nasal; [ßj] from /s·y/,
a voiceless alveolar fricative; [zj] or [dzj]
from /×·y/, a voiced alveolar affricate;
[mj] from /m·y/,
a voiced palatalized bilabial nasal; [nj] from /n·y/,
a voiced palatalized alveolar nasal; [rj] from /r·y/,
a voiced palatalized alveolar flap; and [çj]
from the phoneme /h·y/, a voiceless palatalized
fricative. Another interesting contrast between English and Japanese is that
the corresponding phonemes of the allophones, as well as their phonetic descriptions
and occurrences, are quite different and sometimes even non-existent in Japanese.
PREDICTED LEARNING DIFFICULTIES
The assumptions I will present concerning the difficulties that a Japanese learner
of English may encounter with English vowel phonemes, are based on the idea
that learners tend to transfer their native language sound systems to their
second language environments. Where there are similarities in consonants, vowels,
clusters, or CV sequences, learners may not be as challenged as where there
are dissimilarities. For Japanese learners of English, I will predict that they
may replace English consonant or vowel sounds with the most similar Japanese
phonemes, allophones, or other sounds.
Japanese speakers seem to find /ßi/ very easy
to pronounce (as in sherry), but /si/
very difficult. In fact, loan words from English, such as shizun (season)
begin with /ßi/ instead of /si/ because of
the difficulty in producing [si]. When /s/
occurs before the high front vowels /I/ or /iy/
(as in sip or sea), Japanese speakers may pronounce
those words beginning with the sound as /ß/.
The reason for this is that the Japanese phoneme /s/
has the allophone [ß] in every instance before
/i/. Perhaps practicing the distinctions between
/s/ and /ß/ before
the two high front vowels using minimal pairs may help.
Another common problem among Japanese speakers
is the /v/ sound in English. This phoneme does not
exist in Japanese, so Japanese speakers may tend to substitute the phoneme /b/
for the unfamiliar /v/. Japanese ESL speakers who
make this substitution may want to practice distinguishing the bilabial /b/
and the labiodental /v/.
Japanese contains only one liquid // which
lies somewhere between the English /l/ and /r/.
Therefore, Japanese speakers of English may use the Japanese liquid for both
the /l/ and /r/ sounds
in English. This means that the words right and light
spoken by a native Japanese speaker, may sound like the same word. Moreover,
in the word-final position, Japanese speakers may delete /l/
and /r/ completely.
Japanese speakers have difficulty comprehending and pronouncing English consonant
phonemes that are nonexistent in the Japanese sound system. The two English
interdental fricatives /q,d/
are not found in Japanese and are often produced by Japanese ESL learners as
the alveolars /t,d/. While it may prove to be very
difficult for Japanese speakers to produce the interdental fricatives, it is
probable that a misinterpretation is unlikely to cause problems since many dialects
of English have /t,d/ as allophones of the two phonemes in question.
Regarding vowel phonemes, the English vowel sounds /æ/ and /\/
do not have counterparts in Japanese, and we predict that Japanese speakers
of English are likely to replace these with similar vowels in Japanese. The
vowel /æ/ may sound like the Japanese /e/,
/a/, or /aj/ depending
on the environment in which it occurs. Likewise, the English /\/,
when stressed, phonetically approaches the position of the Japanese /a/,
and when unstressed, the position of the Japanese /a/
or /o/. Therefore, /\/
may be replaced with either one.
The English /I/, as in hit, and /L/,
as in hut, tend to be replaced with voiceless, or partially devoiced,
/i/ and /u/ by the Japanese
speaker when these vowels occur between voiceless consonants (Kohmoto, 1969).
This is due to devocalization of high vowels in Japanese. For example, substitute
may be pronounced as /sLbst(i)tyu:t/
and university may be pronounced as /junivLs(I)ti/,
where (I) represents the complete or partial devocalized
vowel.
Consonant clusters occur much more frequently in English than in Japanese. The
general CVCV pattern in Japanese is often transferred to the consonant cluster
patterns in English, such that Japanese speakers may either insert vowels to
break-up consonant clusters or add vowels after word-final consonants. Additional
vowels such as /I/, /o/
and /u/ are likely to be inserted after consonants
that occur in the final position. These vowel insertions may or may not be partially
devoiced. Some examples of vowel insertion may include: /map:p(u)/ for map;
/ka:d(o)/ for card; and /tßatß(i)/
for church, in which case the /i/ may
be devoiced. Table 6 shows possible vowels that may be inserted after final
consonants in English words by Japanese learners.
Table 6: Possible Vowel Additions to Consonants in Final Position
I will also predict that Japanese speakers may tend to over-pronounce double
consonant sounds, namely stops, when they occur after short vowels in the medial
positions of English words. For example, a Japanese speaker of English may pronounce
sudden as /saddIn/, kitten
as /kittIn/, and ribbon as /ribbon/.
In Romanized Japanese, double consonants are usually spelled with double letters,
such as kippu ticket or yatto finally.
In English, double letters usually do not imply double sounds within words.
Japanese learners of English may need to be made aware of the fact that double
consonants usually do not result in a doubling of the sound in English.
The English voiced retroflex /®/ is nonexistent
in Japanese, as the Japanese liquid is the voiced alveolar flap //.
Both the place and manner of articulation differs. The tip of the tongue touches
the alveolar ridge in the Japanese production of //,
so its sound may be mistaken for the English /l/
or /d/. Furthermore, Japanese speakers may hear
and pronounce the English syllabic /r/ as /a/
or /o/, since the English /®/
is a sound somewhere between the Japanese /a/ and
/o/. In other words, the English word four
is likely to be pronounced /fo/ by Japanese.
Tutoring Report
SUBJECT
The subject for my tutoring report is an 18-year-old Japanese male. He has lived
in Honolulu, Hawaii, for the past two years. This period is the first time in
his life that he has lived outside of Japan. I have known him and have tutored
him since the second month of his arrival to Hawaii. When we first met, I would
classify him as a beginning speaker of English, although he studied English
in middle school and high school, as is the case with most children going through
the educational system in Japan. At this point in time, after several years
of language schooling and tutoring, I would place him at the low-intermediate
level in terms of production, but at the intermediate level in terms of pronunciation.
That is to say, his pronunciation is better than his production would suggest.
In my opinion, my subject is not very motivated to improve his pronunciation
or his English skills in general. Although he has improved quite a bit over
the last few years that I have known him, his ability seems to me to be less
than what it should be given the time spent and the exposure with the language.
A possible explanation for this could be that most of his friends are either
local Japanese or Japanese in Hawaii studying English; therefore, most of his
time is spent speaking Japanese instead of practicing English. I offer this
information just as reference for later discussion of his overall progress.
TUTORING SESSIONS
The sessions for my tutoring project were carried out twice per week for one
hour each session. My subject and I always met on the same days, at the same
times, and at the same place: Tuesdays and Thursdays, from 1:30 p.m. to 2:30
p.m., at the University of Hawaii Campus Center. This tutoring project encompasses
eight sessions totaling eight hours, from April 3, 2001, until April 26, 2001.
At the outset of the tutoring sessions, I set the following three goals:
1) Evaluate my subjects problem areas regarding phonology;
2) Work on very limited and specific problem phonemes; and
3) Practice at least one suprasegmental feature that is a
problem for him.
At the beginning of this tutoring project I began by using minimal pair lists
that I made up myself before our tutoring session to diagnose problem areas
in my subjects pronunciation. I chose words that I predicted would be
problems based on my contrastive analysis. For example, I gave my subject the
following words to help with my analysis: seat/ sheet, sit/ shit, this/ sin,
though/ dough, hood/ wood. I decided to use minimal pairs to begin with because
it is a procedure I was familiar with, and it seems to be fairly popular.
Also, I diagnosed my subjects positional pronunciation of certain consonants
using the word list Positional Occurrence of NAE Consonants found
on page 373 of Teaching pronunciation: a reference for teachers of English to
speakers of other languages (Celce-Murcia et. al, 1996). I found this to be
helpful, and it forewarned me of problem areas before using the more comprehensive
word list given by the instructor later in the semester.
Next I used the Diagnostic Passage and Accent Checklist from Celce-Murcia
et.al (1996) to check for suprasegmentals. I chose this after a classmate suggested
it in class. While I liked the idea of diagnosing suprasegmentals through reading,
I felt that this passage contained too many difficult words and that pronunciation
errors could be blamed on reading ability. Afterwards, instead of reading, I
gave my subject a topic to talk about, and I looked for problems in his natural
speech. I think this proved to be more realistic and useful for both of us.
In addition to the reading passage to diagnose problems, I engaged in free-talk
time in order to examine suprasegmentals in my subjects spontaneous speech.
Since I have known my subject for several years, I also know some of his interests.
I tried to begin each free-talk period with a topic that if interest to him,
such as surfing and music, and ask him open-ended questions to solicit casual
conversation. I felt that this was important to do because an analysis of a
learners speech only through reading has limited benefits. Reading a passage
may allow for a large amount of uninterrupted speech, but it is somewhat unnatural.
Also, errors found in pronunciation this way may be the result of reading problems
and not of phonological problems.
The last thing I used in my tutoring sessions was the word list of initial consonants
and final consonant clusters that the instructor handed out in class. This list
proved to be very useful for both of us. Not only was I able to find some of
his phoneme problems in a more orderly fashion, but the exercises proved interesting
and useful for my subject as well, if only for visually creating awareness of
his pronunciation problems.
Although my subject gave me his consent to record the tutoring sessions, I recorded
only two: the first session, and the seventh session. Through a combination
of factors the other sessions were not recorded.
OBSERVATIONS
Before beginning my formal evaluations of my subjects pronunciation, I
first told him that I was going assess his production of English, and I described
how our following tutoring sessions would progress. Then I asked him to tell
me what he believed to be his major pronunciation problems: what did he think
were his problems, and what did he think other people felt about his pronunciation?
He first told me that he felt his biggest problem was that he sounded too
Japanese. I believed that he was referring to others perceptions
of his pronunciation. When I asked him to be more specific, he said that most
Japanese have a problem with /I/ and /®/,
/q/ and /d/, and too
many sounds together, meaning consonant clusters. He made no mention of
other consonants, any vowels, or any suprasegmental feature.
According to what my subject had just told me, I confirmed his problems with
the consonants that he mentioned by giving him a list of minimal pairs using
/t/ and /q/, /d/
and /d/, and /l/ and
/®/ that I had prepared beforehand. Then I had
him read minimal pairs to assess his /si/ and /ßi/,
and /b/ and /v/ distinctions.
All of these minimal pairs distinctions were predicted to be problems for Japanese
speakers of English. I asked him to read the words as naturally as possible
for him.
After doing further minimal pair exercises, my subject was surprised to find
out that he obviously had problems with these sounds as well. In every instance
possible, I gave him a few minimal pairs with the consonants in question in
initial and in final positions. In almost every instance, /t/
became /q/, /d/ became
/d/, /si/ became/ßi/,
/l/ became /®/ and
/b/ became /v/.
Although not an original goal of my tutoring sessions, I also noticed immediately
that he had very clear difficulties with certain vowels. My subject showed a
definite tendency to replace an English vowel non-existent in Japanese with
a Japanese vowel of close articulation. In most instances, my tutor replaced
/æ/, /ø/, and /L/
with /a/, /´/ with /e/,
and /I/ with /i/. This
is also somewhat the predicted problems from the contrastive analysis.
The major suprasegmental feature noticed from the outset of the tutoring sessions
was an absence of contracting to make reduced forms of some very common English
words. My subject usually and very clearly articulated every final /h/
sound instead of reducing it to /n/ as is common
in American English. I believe that this articulation resulted in his tendency
to make a distinction between words that are commonly reduced in American English.
These are usually words ending in ing followed by to
such as going to, have to, and want to.
To help my subject practice improving his problems with certain consonant phonemes,
I gave him minimal pair drills at each tutoring session. Afterwards, I had him
listen and repeat after me. With regards to vowel phonemes, I did not use minimal
pairs because I felt that reading words with the vowels in question would not
be very helpful to him and may cause more problems due to the unpredictable
nature of vowels in the English orthographic system. Therefore, I had my subject
listen to my voice, watch my mouth, and repeat after me. This seemed to work
initially, but I doubt his improvement without continued practice. To help improve
his linking to form contractions, I gave him a list of common words that are
reduced. We practiced both the original words and the target form. Then I would
tell him to think about those words during our free-talk time. When I used those
words in my own speech, I tried to add slight emphasis to highlight the form
to him. Again, this seemed to work at first, but without continued practice
I am concerned about his improvement.
RESULTS/ CONCLUSION
Throughout the brief duration of this tutoring project, it was difficult to
hear any obvious improvements in my subjects pronunciation. It is possible
that one-month is too short of a time span to find a clear improvement in a
persons phonology. However, by comparing my notes from the initial assessments
in the areas that I looked at with a final assessment made during our last tutoring
session, it seemed that he made slight improvement in his linking to form contractions
(gonna, hafta, wanna) and in some correct target forms (initial /se,si/, /wo/,
/l/-/®/ distinction)
which resulted from a perceived increase in false-starts and repetitions. These
examples seemed very random.
Perhaps his slight improvement in linking was due to the fact that we focused
on this suprasegmental feature the most. Although he still said examples like
going to and want to, I detected an increase in his
natural use of the reduced forms gonna and wanna. Hopefully
his awareness will help him further achieve the target-like speech for these
forms.
With regards to some of his improvements at the phonemic level, I perceived
that he made more false-starts and repetitions of his own speech at the end
of our tutoring sessions which resulted in correct forms being used some of
the time. I say perceived because I did not really have a measure of this from
the beginning; during initial assessments I did not think to look for false-starts
and repetitions. However, it is possible that an increase in these strategies
was the result of his increased awareness of producing the correct form. For
example, when talking about going to travel in the mainland, he first said something
about, She-ah, then stopped and began again by producing, Seattle
which he repeated again immediately. He did not always use these two strategies
together, but this was the most notable example. Even with his false-starts,
sometimes he still make mistakes.
In retrospect, I have found this entire project to be very worthwhile for myself
and probably for my tutoring subject as well. As a tutor and future teacher
of ESL, I believe that it is important to know the value of contrastive analysis
and how it can be applied practically. This is especially true since my project
has focused on a native Japanese speaker learning English; in the future I expect
my teaching career to also focus on this language group. Though this project
I have learned very useful information regarding possible phonological errors
of Japanese speakers of English and have applied this information in the real
world.
According to my subject, learning about the problem areas of his pronunciation
has made him more aware when he speaks and when he listens to others. He told
me that now when talking with a friend, teacher, or other native English speaker,
he can hear his voice in his head more because he pays attention
to how he and others are speaking. Instead of just trying to listen to the words
as a whole and then trying to decipher their meaning, he now also tries to listen
to the phonological features of the words that he hears. He believes that this
is helping him pronounce his own words better.
My subject seemed to like individual pronunciation tutoring very much. Our previous
tutoring sessions were limited to conversation and working on his language-school
homework. At that time I did not have the knowledge of phonology to constructively
help him with his pronunciation. He told me that he liked the pronunciation
tutoring because he did not receive pronunciation teaching either in his Japanese
schooling or at his language school.
In reality, it is difficult to think of any shortcomings of individual tutoring
as a way to improve pronunciation. This kind of tutoring seems to be very useful
to both tutor and tutee, my subject seemed to appreciate and enjoy pronunciation
exercises, and individual tutoring as opposed to classroom teaching allows for
a greater concentration of time and attention on specific problem areas. My
experience with individual pronunciation tutoring has been very positive; however,
I would think that the major weaknesses in this approach would be if a tutor
lacks the knowledge and skills to tutor in this manner and/ or if the student
had no motivation to improve. Thankfully, a determined tutor can learn the skills,
but student motivation is a subject best left for psycholinguists to consider.
In conclusion, a contrastive analysis of two languages can be very useful for
tutoring certain phonological aspects of the target language that may be found
to be problem areas for both speakers and listeners. A contrastive analysis
may be of valuable assistance to both the tutor and to the tutee by creating
awareness of possible problem areas. This awareness can allow for specific and
intensive assistance to improve pronunciation. Although progress may take quite
some time and a great deal of effort, I feel that creating awareness of the
problem is the necessary first step towards phonological improvement.
Bibliography
Allott, Robin. Japanese and the motor theory of language. Available online
at: members.aol.com/rmallott2/Japanese.htm#phon
Fromkin, Victoria and Robert Rodman. 1998. An introduction to language.
Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace College Publishers.
Han, Mieko Shimizu. 1962. Japanese phonology: an analysis based upon sound
spectrograms. Tokyo: Kenkyusha Press.
Kitao, Kenji. "Contrastive analysis between English diphthongs [ai], [au],
and [øi], and similar vowel combinations in Japanese". In K. Kitao
and S.K. Kitao, English teaching: theory research, and practice,124-135.
Kitao, Kenji. 1995. "Difficulty in English pronunciation for Japanese people".
In K. Kitao and S.K. Kitao, English teaching: theory, research, and practice,137-151.
Kohmoto, S. 1969. New English phonology. Tokyo: Nan'un-do.
Ladefoged, Peter. 2001. A course in phonetics. Orlando, FL: Harcourt
College Publishers.
Vance, Timothy J. 1987. An introduction to Japanese phonology. Albany,
NY: State University of New York Press.
contents (c) 2001 Shawn Ford/ Webb-Ed
Press
sford@hawaii.edu