What Constitutes "Good Pronunciation" from L2 Japanese Learners' and Native Speakers' Perspectives? A Perception Study

Native speakers of a language can tell whether a speaker is native or non-native just by hearing one word or phrase in the language. It is expected that L2 learners will develop the ability to detect ‘good pronunciation’ as they establish the prototy

Durational characteristics of English vowels produced by Japanese and Thai second language (L2) learners

This empirical study investigated durational characteristics of English vowels /i/ as in 'heat' and /I/ as in 'hit' produced by two groups of second language (L2) learners who differ in their first language (L1) backgrounds, i.e. Japanese and Thai. In these languages, vowel length is phonemic. Experiment 1 compared the /i/-/I/ contrast produced in monosyllabic words ending with /p t k/ by Australian English (OZ1, n=6) and Thai speakers (T, n=22). Experiment 2 compared the same vowel contrast in monosyllabic words ending with /t/ and /d/ by another group of Australian English speakers (OZ2, n=12) and Japanese speakers (J, n=24). While both non-native groups showed a greater durational differentiation of the /i/-/I/ contrast than the OZ groups to which they were compared, J and OZ2 differed to a greater extent when the /i/-/I/ contrast occurred before /t/ than before /d/. This finding highlights the importance of taking language-specific phonetic factors such as allophonic variation into consideration in L2 speech acquisition research.13 page(s

Perception of vowel length contrasts in Arabic and Japanese : a comparison of discrimination and identification results

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An Acoustic comparison of vowel length contrasts in Arabic, Japanese and Thai : durational and spectral data

In our earlier perception study, we observed that familiarity with first language (L1) phonemic length contrasts in Japanese does not transfer optimally into an unknown language, Arabic. We hypothesized that this finding is related to cross-language differences in how vowel length contrasts are phonetically realized. The present study compares acoustic characteristics (i.e., vowel duration, first two formant frequencies (F1, F2)) of the /a/ and /a / vowels that are phonemic in three typologically unrelated languages, i.e., Arabic, Japanese and Thai. We sought to understand the extent to which vowel length contrasts are similar or dissimilar in these languages. Acoustic measurements showed short and long categories were clearly differentiated in duration in all three languages. The effect of length was much more limited for F1 and F2. The finding that the short-to-long ratio did not substantially differ across languages suggests that listeners attend to more than just acoustic vowel duration in making perceptual judgments on short vs. long vowels in a discrimination task.12 page(s

Pattern of Perceptual Assimilation of Japanese Vowels to Australian English Vowels: Comparison of Learners and Non-Learners of Japanese

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Japanese-accented English vowels: a perception study

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Preliminary report on the Kanji and Katakana (K2) gym : out-of-class character/vocabulary learning activities for Japanese language learners

This paper reports on the informal, out-of-class activities of the K2 (Kanji and Katakana) gym that was conducted twice (once each in 2009 and 2010) over a five-week period in the Department of International Studies, Macquarie University. The primary objectives of this project were (1) to provide Japanese language learners at different levels of proficiency with opportunities to practise character and vocabulary learning skills and (2) to explore the efficiency of informal study on the learning of Kanji/Katakana and vocabulary in Japanese. A total of 17 and 9 students participated in the K2 gym in 2009 and 2010, respectively. In the gym, the participants practised Kanji/Katakana using worksheets, repetition sheets and sample sentence/translation sheets under the supervision of native Japanese-speaking postgraduate students. At the end of the fifth week, both participants and postgraduate student assistants provided feedback on the K2 gym activities. The feedback was predominantly positive. The project was significant not only for the Japanese language students who received individual feedback from native speakers in a non-threatening learning environment but also for the postgraduate assistants who gained experience supervising the gym in their interaction with the participants and made some very practical suggestions. Possibilities for future activities are provided.17 page(s