New Approach to Teaching Japanese Pronunciation in the Digital Era - Challenges and Practices

Pronunciation has been a black hole in the L2 Japanese classroom on account of a lack of class time, teacher\u2019s confidence, and consciousness of the need to teach pronunciation, among other reasons. The absence of pronunciation instruction is reported to result in fossilized pronunciation errors, communication problems, and learner frustration. With an intention of making a contribution to improve such circumstances, this paper aims at three goals. First, it discusses the importance, necessity, and e ectiveness of teaching prosodic aspects of Japanese pronunciation from an early stage in acquisition. Second, it shows that Japanese prosody is challenging because of its typological rareness, regardless of the L1 backgrounds of learners. Third and finally, it introduces a new approach to teaching L2 pronunciation with the goal of developing L2 comprehensibility by focusing on essential prosodic features, which is followed by discussions on key issues concerning how to implement the new approach both inside and outside the classroom in the digital era

Phonetic Grounding and Phonology: Vowel Backness Harmony and Vowel Height Harmony

248 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2007.I further conclude that the difference between VBH and VHH indicates that phonological approaches that model vowel harmony as spreading or agreement of features are inadequate. Within those models, there is no prediction that VBH and VHH should be fundamentally different. Typological patterns of harmony are influenced by phonetic processes of speech. It is not necessary to assume phonological patterns are shaped by innate features or innate constraints. It is possible that features and constraints exert influence in the shaping of phonological patterns, but such influence is redundant. Occam's Razor suggests there is no need to rely on features and constraints when it comes to explaining patterns that are explicable through reference to phonetics.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD

Phonetic Grounding and Phonology: Vowel Backness Harmony and Vowel Height Harmony

248 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2007.I further conclude that the difference between VBH and VHH indicates that phonological approaches that model vowel harmony as spreading or agreement of features are inadequate. Within those models, there is no prediction that VBH and VHH should be fundamentally different. Typological patterns of harmony are influenced by phonetic processes of speech. It is not necessary to assume phonological patterns are shaped by innate features or innate constraints. It is possible that features and constraints exert influence in the shaping of phonological patterns, but such influence is redundant. Occam's Razor suggests there is no need to rely on features and constraints when it comes to explaining patterns that are explicable through reference to phonetics.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD

Learning to hear by learning to speak: the effect of articulatory training on Arab learners\u27 English phonemic discrimination

In this paper we explore English pronunciation teaching within an English as an International Language (EIL) framework, arguing that teaching learners how to produce English phonemes can lead to an improvement in their aural ability. English as an Additional Language (EAL) learners often have difficulty discriminating between and producing specific sounds of the target language; Arabic speakers, for example, typically have difficulty distinguishing between /p/ and /b/ in words such as pin and bin. The research described here indicates that explicit articulatory training in the production of two problematic sounds, /p/ and /b/, improves learners’ ability to perceptually discriminate between the two. Following articulatory training, participants were better at correctly identifying which member of a minimal pair they heard (pack or back, for example), whereas simply providing focused aural exposure to those sounds, as advocated in the non-form focused intuitive-imitative approach, did not lead to similar improvement. This suggests that for sounds that are perceptually difficult for learners, complementing exposure as advocated by the intuitive-imitative approach with articulatory training may produce the best results in terms of segmental discrimination and ultimately target language production. We also point to evidence that accuracy in segmental production is especially relevant in the EIL context

Articulatory training enhances ability to perceptually discriminate problematic second language sounds

Learners of a second language often have difficulty perceptually discriminating and producing certain sounds of the target language. For example, Arabic speakers learning English often have difficulty distinguishing between the vowel sounds in ‘cat’ and ‘cut’. The research described in this paper reveals that explicit articulatory training in the production of those particular problematic sounds can improve the ability of learners to perceptually discriminate between them. Simply providing focused aural exposure does not lead to similar improvement. This suggests that for a perceptually difficult subset of second language sounds, explicit instruction in production of the sounds benefits learners and has a place in the pronunciation curriculum. In addition to the implications for teaching pronunciation, the results here make an important contribution towards understanding the complex relationship between perception and production in second language phonological acquisition. These results show that training in production directly leads to improvement in perception