After listening to countless students churn out robotic Katakana-like (one of the Japanese writing systems) sounds at elementary school and junior high school over here, the penny has finally dropped that I need to do something more actively to change it.
For instance, ask a Japanese student to read a sentence such as:
'I like English, but it's difficult'
it is more often than not heard as a very monotone:
「アイ ライク ラーンイング イングリッシュ バット イッツ ディフィカルト」
（Ai rai-ku raan-in-gu in-gu-ri-shu ba-tto iｔtsu di-fi-ka-ru-to）
How my heart often feels like 'shinking' but on the other hand I also think 'Is it any wonder they speak like that?'. I believe there is a reason.
Unfortunately in Japan, out of the 3 contact hours of English students have a week in junior high school, little or none of the time is specifically devoted to phonetic or phonological-related activities; it's predominantly vocabulary and grammar all the way from JHS through to university as emphasis is put on passing exams (especially for entrance exams) to get into a good senior high school or university later on.
At university, there are often more classes focused on pronuciation but by then it is much more difficult for students to make sounds which they are not used to as it has been found that the ability to produce new sounds, not found in one's own language, decreases with age for the most part.
While it might all be well and good passing exams for the short term in order to enter a good university, this disregard for having lessons devoted to and practising more accurate pronunciation and rhythm, in my opinion, will lead to a large number of students suffering later for the reason I expressed above.
Don't get me wrong, of course learning vocabulary and grammar is an intergral part of language which must be learnt, but if what is learnt cannot be voiced, especially formulating utterances with ease during role-play or dialogue with coherent pronunciation, they are not going to be understood by the English-speaking world as easily they would hope later in life.
On top of that, Japanese students (especially in JHS) having a more timid character in class does make it harder for them to actually speak out loud in English in class. So, I feel it is important they do not feel intimidated but if I can make the atmosphere and attidude towards language learning more fun for them, the tension they may feel will hopefully start to lift. (This is a whole other topic in itself so will leave it for another time.)
With all this in mind, I thought I would try something quite simple and today I feel like I have broken through with something..
At Edo Elementary School today, where there are only 4 girls in the entire school, I spent the first half of the lesson playing 'Simon Says' and Twister and what not as a warm up game and the rest focusing on an aspect of pronunciation which is often difficult for Japanese speakers of English.
I began by demonstrating several words, which they had to firstly guess and say the English word. I did this by using actions and hints to make it easier and then they had to think what is common to all words.
The similarity was linked to 'a sound' and the words were as follows:
- thank you
- birthday
- thirteen
- bath
- thousand
To show the students this sound I got them to say firstly 'sa' 'shi' 'su' 'se' 'so' (tradtional way to articulate the 's' line in their equivalent of a sound inventory) and contrast that with 'tha' 'thi 'thu' 'the' 'tho' and kept getting them each of them in turn to repeat it until they kind of got the hang of it. Then we practised more words containing /th/; by using a ball begin with one student and say a word they then catch the word and repeat it, they then can choose the next student and throw them the ball. I say the next word and they repeat it and so on. Wherever they happened to mispronounce /th/ as /s/ I helped them as much as I could in order that they were able to articulate the word much more authentically.
(It doesn't matter at all if they do not know the meaning of the words they are saying because the whole object of this exercise is to master a particular sound of the English language!)
Then as a further game, I got them to stand up and come towards the board. I divided the board in half, one side for the sound /th/ and the other /s/ I then went on realing a list of words; some containing /s/ and some /th/. They had to move to the side of the board which corresponded to the word I was saying, which in the end they did very well.
After the lesson, I could not help thinking that these kind of activities are ones that ought to have more time spent on in elementary school as the students are still at an ideal age when their mouths are still young enough to make these sounds easily. And in the end thankfully, even the ones who seem to struggle did made at least some progress after lots of repeating and understanding how to actually make the sound in the mouth properly!!:D (Repeating, practising, reviewing these sounds are essential too if they are going to remember how to pronounce words properly long term; once is never enough, what they learn will merely sit in their short term memory only to forgotten about later)
For Japanese students, my next missions involve looking at the following pron-probs:
- /r/ ら・り・る・れ・ろ ra/ri/ru/re/ro Do not confuse with /l/
- /l/ ら・り・る・れ・ろ ra/ri/ru/re/ro Do not confuse with /r/
- /v/, often mistaken as 'b' or 'bwee'
- /si/ , likewise as /shi/
- words ending in /t/ or /tu/, /to/, often as /tsu/
- 'ir' sound as in 'bird' 'learn' is more than often said a long 'a'.
- Rhythm of English, and lose the montone or robot-like way of speaking
If anyone has any thoughts, tips, advice on this subject, please feel free to comment!!
Hi Mark,
ReplyDeleteGreat blog
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