PTLC 2005 R. O. Pennington Jr.- Raising Student Consciousness: 1
Raising Student Consciousness of Pronunciation
Differences of English
/r/, /l/ and /w/ and the Alveolar flaps in Japanese.
Dr. Randall O. Pennington Jr.
Associate Professor
Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan
Abstract
In the Japanese ESL/EFL classroom, a great deal of time is spent (and wasted) on
pronunciation- specifically, the English sounds / r /, / l / and / w /. While focus on
pronunciation itself is clearly not a waste of classroom time, recent research has shown
that focus on production only has little long-term effect on many students
pronunciation proficiency. Further, it is this authors opinion that time spent focusing on
troublesome English sounds can be considered wasted is simply because most
Japanese students of English have no real concept of their own pronunciation (and
mispronunciation) of the alveolar flaps in Japanese; thereby making comparison of
these sounds to English / r /, / l / and / w / virtually impossible.
In this presentation/report, I attempt to illustrate these points from the perspective of
both a language learner (I, being a student of Japanese) and as a language teacher of
Japanese students. My perspectives come from personal in-class experiences gained
over the course of the last twenty years. Empirical observations concerning native
Japanese speakers Japanese pronunciation and English pronunciation difficulties are
explored in relation to published linguistic research and contrasted with my own original
research findings. While the scope of this article is rather limited in length, the
presentation of my findings during the conference includes detailed instructions of my
teaching method in raising the consciousness of the pronunciation of both Japanese
and English in Japanese students. I offer an excellent, original exercise based on
minimal pairs contrasted to Japanese to help the Japanese student raise their
consciousness of their pronunciation.
Introduction
The beginning of this research started as a result of my experience learning Japanese
as an undergraduate in the USA. During that time I took elementary Japanese and
studied under a Japanese native from Nagoya, Ms.Takeko Minami. Ms. Minami was a
vibrant and energetic veteran teacher and quite a stickler for pronunciation. As a result,
a great deal of class time was spent on pronunciation drill. It was during these lengthy
pronunciation drills that I began to be confused by Ms. Minami’s seemingly random
approval and disapproval of student pronunciation on the alveolar flap sounds in
Japanese (Romanized as) “ra”, “ri”, “ru”, “re”, “ro”.
I have extremely keen ears (partially due to many years of musical training and
performance) and pronunciation has always been my strong suit when learning
languages. My ears perceived the students alveolar flaps as sometimes being
pronounced as / r /, sometimes / l / and sometimes / d /. I was quite vexed because no
matter what I did, I couldn’t seem to get the teacher’s approval regularly when I was
PTLC 2005 R. O. Pennington Jr.- Raising Student Consciousness: 2
called on to pronounce these alveolar flaps. The student preceding me would clearly
use a / l / pronunciation, be given approval and then I would be called to produce the
same sound and I would indeed produce the same / l / pronunciation and be told it was
wrong. Also it should be noted that our instructor’s normally very lucid descriptions were
somewhat less than enlightening when she was queried on how to produce the sounds
correctly.
I approached several students and they perceived the same apparent random nature of
the approval by the teacher. Soon the whole class was talking about this issue and as a
group and we decided to try an experiment. In the following class we students all
intentionally used / l / pronunciation when drilled on alveolar flaps. Once again, our
teacher approved of some and disapproved of others.
I came to the conclusion that the lack of clear explanation of the production of these
sounds and the inconsistent approval of a variety of different pronunciations was due to
some inability on Mrs. Minami’s behalf to perceive the differences or that, in fact, her
own pronunciation was not consistent on these particular syllables. This conclusion
seemed quite logical as tradition dictates that perception precedes production however,
to note here that Sheldon and Strange (1982) found evidence that in the case of English
/ l / and / r / that speech production can precede speech perception.
Not an isolated case
Soon after graduation I arrived in Japan to work as an English conversation teacher.
Very soon after my arrival I began to immediately realize that my experience with my
former Japanese teacher at university was far from an isolated case.
While I monitored Japanese conversation and continued on with my private study of
Japanese, I quickly began to perceive that the alveolar flaps were routinely (and
completely unknowingly) mispronounced by native speakers of Japanese. That is, the
native Japanese speakers I monitored did not flip their tongues across the alveolar
ridge. The most commonly heard mispronunciations resulted in / l / (which is a sound
that does not naturally exist in Japanese) and / d /. On rare occasions I could discern a
weak / r /.
The phenomenon of some correct / r / (and / l /) production by Japanese learners
Was discovered by Goto (1971) and later rediscovered by Sheldon and Strange (1982).
In essence, Goto found that Japanese learners could produce / r / and / l / more
accurately than they could perceive those sounds in their own speech or in others
speech.
Musical evidence
Japanese pop music is decidedly western. While the occasional English word or phrase
will appear in the lyrics, it is mostly sung in Japanese. I quickly noticed that Japanese
singers were not using Japanese pronunciation when singing the alveolar flaps “ra”, “ri”,
“ru”, “re”, “ro”. The use of / l / was most obvious to this researcher.
So, doubting that such widespread mispronunciation of Japnese could go unnoticed by
Japanese native speakers, I immediately started playing Japanese music CD’s with
these apparent alveolar flap mispronunciations to my students who were most proficient
in English pronunciation. Without telling them my purpose, I asked them to pay
attention lyrics with words containing one of the alveolar flaps.
PTLC 2005 R. O. Pennington Jr.- Raising Student Consciousness: 3
One such example was the then popular song “Kawa No Nagare No You Ni” by
Japanese singing legend, Misora Hibari. In the haunting chorus of this song she
repeatedly croons, “kawa-no-na-ga- / ley / - no-you-ni” (translated: Like a flowing
river…). I played this song to 50 students, seventeen of which were “high level”
speakers and not one single person perceived any pronunciation mistake in Miss
Hibari’s “na-ga / ley /”.
Clueless about their own tongue movement
Further classroom investigation proved that the students had absolutely no idea that
they were sometimes producing English / l / and English / d / rather than the alveolar
flaps. This naturally led to greater confusion when the students were trying to master
English / l / or / r / pronunciation. Since it became painfully clear that the majority of the
Japanese students studied had at least 2 errant alveolar flap pronunciations on average,
then it also led to the logical conclusion that if the student cannot be aware of their own
mispronunciation in Japanese, that it no doubt leads to an even greater likelihood that
the student will never be able to master the English / r / or / l / simply because the
student has no solid pronunciation in Japanese to compare it to.
An American teaches Japanese people Japanese pronunciation
I decided that before any instruction of English / r / or / l / could occur, the students
needed to be made aware of the widely divergent pronunciation problems that existed in
the alveolar flaps amongst Japanese speakers.
Using sammys of the alveolar flap drawn on the blackboard and small hand held mirrors
for the students, I intensively drilled the students in the correct pronunciation of the
alveolar flaps, much in the same way my previous Japanese teacher had.
Following that I introduced the sammy for English / l / and showed them the differences
in tongue position. Then I introduced a minimal pair exercise in which the students were
asked to use Japanese pronunciation for the alveolar flap and then use English for the /
l /.
After a few minutes of constant pronunciation practice, feedback from me and intense
scrutiny of both the students tongue movements and the sammys for the two types of
pronunciation, I expand the comparison to encompass / r / and / w /. Minimal pairs are
used again. Finally the exercise ends in a comparison of alveolar flaps, / l /, / r / and / w
/.
Concisely put, subsequent testing revealed a significant increase in the ability to
distinguish the different English sound from the Japanese alveolar flaps.
Conclusion
While space doesn’t permit detailed elaboration here, I can summarize my findings, by
saying that due to the widespread mispronunciation of the alveolar flaps in Japanese,
Japanese learners of English must be made aware of their own possibly errant
pronunciation of the alveolar flaps before they attempt to study English pronunciation.
The effective use of mirrors and sammys has proven effective in my classroom to
facilitate better pronunciation in some cases, and generally higher awareness of the
pronunciation differences that exist amongst Japanese natives. This, in turn, serves as a
springboard for the comparison of the troublesome English / l / and / r /.
PTLC 2005 R. O. Pennington Jr.- Raising Student Consciousness: 4
My method of comparing / drilling and thereby enabling the student to raise his/her
consciousness level of pronunciation has resulted in better listening comprehension for
the students studied and has also been reported to have unlocked the secret to better
English pronunciation (according to many student reports) for my students.
Bibliography
Sheldon, A. and Strange, W. (1982) The acquisition of /r/ and /l/ by Japanese learners of
English: Evidence that speech production can precede speech perception. Applied
Psycholinguistics (3) Oxford University Press.