Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Dongli Qu Jingji Jishu KAifAqu KAifAqu [Dongli District Economic and Technological Development Zone]? Are you interested in teaching English in Tianjin? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language.
Pronunciation Problems in japanProficiency in english is an impossible dream. That is the thought that appears on the minds of many native japanese speakers. To them, the only people with blood ties to Japan who are yet capable of achieving this ?feat? are either: 1) One parent is a native english speaker. 2) Have spent significant time out of Japan in an english-speaking country. To many Westerners these two points seem like any other positive result of international mingling, but instead native japanese people point out that in the case of the first point, the child is no longer a ?pure? japanese, and instead (often derogatorily) referred to as a ?half?. The second point has two sub-points: a) A japanese child raised outside of Japan in an english-speaking country may be bilingual, but upon moving back to Japan has significant hurdles to overcome at school, particularly the often-criticized english education system. b) An adult with enough financial and social independence to spend significant time outside of Japan (instead of looking after the family) is also considered a rarity, perhaps selfish. In short, both sub-points are exceptions in japanese society and a population majority in either one would alter the flow of japanese society in a significant way. The remaining native japanese speakers, however, have no other access to the english language except for what is taught in public schools and in private language schools. As a result a student?s individual access to a native speaker is few and far between, and given the intricacies of the japanese language, L1 interference makes pronouncing english words extremely difficult for native japanese speakers, despite a minimum of 6 years of study starting from the student?s 7th year in school. Fig. 1: The phonetic inventory of japanese consonants. Fig. 2: There are only 5 vowels in the japanese language. The japanese sound system is made up of consonant-vowel clusters (simplified to ?CV? pair). Unlike english where we can arbitrarily combine several consonants and vowels to make a syllable, all CV pairs in japanese are pre-defined. This results in a ?sound-poverty? of only about 100 distinct sounds based on only 5 vowels and one consonant-final sound in the form of /n/. None of them may be ?combined or merged? but read in a strictly timed sequence. The combination of both the timing sequence and CV pair structure causes english words to sound like the following: english word japanese writing japanese using Hepburn Romanization strike (baseball) ????? su-to-ra-i-ku (5 syllables) strike (demonstration) ????? su-to-ra-i-ki (5 syllables) orange ???? o-re-n-ji (4 syllables*) London ???? ro-n-do-n (4 syllables*) english ??????? i-n-gu-ri-s-shu (6 syllables*) McDonald?s ?????? ma-ku-do-na-ru-do (6 syllables, final /s/ dropped) (*Linguists use the term mora, rather than syllable, which implies a vowel nucleus. Each mora is pronounced for approximately the same time value and stress.) Certain sounds, particularly /r/ /l/, /b/ /v/, are not distinguished when transcribed into japanese, and final /r/ sounds are also dropped, lengthening the vowel instead. As well, many vowels in english do not occur in japanese and become merged. english word japanese writing japanese using Hepburn Romanization light ??? ra-i-to right ??? ra-i-to car ?? ka-a party ???? pa-a-ti source ??? so-o-su sauce ??? so-o-su walk ???? u-o-o-ku work ???? u-o-o-ku At this point it would be easy to suggest that native japanese learning the english language should listen to even more english, but that may only be the surface. Studies suggest that japanese infants already begin to settle on the limited phonetic inventory as early as 14 months (see reference at bottom), and do not easily recognize non-japanese sounds. While young minds are flexible and change is still possible in elementary students, adults who have never heard more than the 100 or so sounds in japanese will probably never recognize non-japanese sounds, and if they do, will have insurmountable difficulties in pronouncing them. Unfortunately, formal english education does not begin in Japan until the ages of 12 and 13, a relatively late start in learning english (or other foreign) sounds and pronunciation. Private english tutoring for elementary-level kids is an expensive venture only for affluent families, and even then these phonetically ?enlightened? kids are often ostracized from their less-privileged peers at school. Combined with many companies and politicians using ?Japlish? (japanese-sounding english) as slogans or other sophisticated-sounding phrases, means that the path to speaking english with any level of fluency and proficiency is so obstructed with poor pronunciation that more time is wasted learning to navigate around these obstacles than actually practicing real, proper english. References japanese native phonetic inventory in The Accent Speech Archive. (Accessed March 12, 2012) http://accent.gmu.edu/browse_native.php?function=detail&languageid=33 japanese infants understand sounds based on native language by 14 months. GaijinPot. (Accessed March 12, 2012) http://injapan.gaijinpot.com/work/teaching-in-japan/2010/10/15/japanese-infants-understand-sounds-based-on-native-language-by-14-months/
