pronunciation in Japan: what works for you?

[mrandmrsjohnqsmith]

Looking for as many opinions as possible on this, as well as any literature, studies, or other references. I'm trying to find out what solutions are out there, and how useful they've been.

What do you do when faced with students who have trouble producing the following sounds:

th as in the and writhe ð

th as in three and with θ

v as in van and love

f as in phone and cough

y as in year j

w as in week

s, sh, and z, as in "she sells seashells"

What has worked for you? what has not? What literature should I check out?

Please indicate your students' L1. I'm particularly looking for info on Japanese ESL learners, but all other comments are most welcome.

I'm not looking for info on the l/r problem.

Cheers, everyone!

[mrandmrsjohnqsmith]

Also, anyone know of any studies on the CALL tool?

[Jimbobob]

I work in a Japanese Elementary school, and these are a few of the things I do to help with pronunciation. Because their own mother tongue is so devoid of regularly used sounds in English, I really hit this stuff hard as soon as I get ahold of the children in first grade - lots of just exagerated pronunciation and phoneme practice regularly (my kids love making the fffff sound)

th as in the and writhe ð

th as in three and with θ

I bring in suckers every now and then. Have the students put the sucker against their lips, but not in their mouth. Have them say things (I use "This, that, and the other") - their tongue should touch the sucker on the 'th' sound. If you're in Japan, suckers can be a pain to find in bulk in the inaka. I usually just order a bunch.

v as in van and love

f as in phone and cough

F is the tough one here. I just do a ton of practice and exaggerated pronunciation. Once F is down, V is a piece of cake. It's just a voiced F. Japanese students understand voiced and unvoiced - It's a prominent piece of their language. When you explain going from F to V is like going from 'sa' to 'za', they get the hang of it real fast. If anyone has some good ideas for F, please share.

y as in year j

w as in week

s, sh, and z, as in "she sells seashells"

I don't have any advice for you here, because I've honestly not encountered a problem with these morphemes. They're all in their language. If you mean that they keep adding '-う'(u) onto the end of all of their words, (She sellzu seashellzu), the only advice I have is to keep correcting it from time to time. If you're working in Japan with Japanese teachers, It's especially difficult, because the older EFL speakers have it completely ingrained, so students constantly look towards their Japanese teachers for help, and it basically perpetuates itself. Also make sure you never EVER use katakana to try to explain something or get them to pronounce something. If the bilingual dictionaries they are using have katakana pronunciations of english words, throw them in the trash. IPA or nothing.

Me: みんなさん，　I'm alright. She's alright. I'mU alrightO, she'zu alrightO 言わないで下さい。

Everyone: はあ～い

Japanese Teacher 30 seconds later: I'mU HotO

me: <crying in corner>

[fluffyhamster]

Not sure if this is ultimately that helpful, but thought I should post it:
http://www.asian-efl-journal.com/december_04_KO.php

[mrandmrsjohnqsmith]

Those are excellent practical ideas, Jimbobob.
Fluffyhamster, thanks for the article.

I've encountered problems with [y], /j/.
My boss, a Japanese schoolteacher in her 60s, couldn't produce the [y] in "year." She kept saying "ear." Furthermore, she couldn't hear the difference between "year" and "ear" when I demonstrated them for her. Things got really interesting when we brought in a couple of our jr. high school students to see if they could tell the difference. I enunciated "year" and "ear."
"Same," they exclaimed.
After some explanation and lots of exaggeration, one of the two students was able to correctly decipher one from the other 50-80% of the time. The other student, and my boss, remained at a loss. Humbling experience for Yours Truly.
I find these problems particularly intriguing because of the presence of "ya" "yu" "yo," and "wa" in the Japanese language. (How'd you get those Japanese characters on there, Jimbobob?)
I've also encountered a few people who pronounced "week" like "uiikku." I suppose that's not as problematic as "Happy New Ear!"

I've never seen any proposed solutions to improving the pronunciation of glides (/j/, /w/), and no research that made mention of the problem. People spend so much time on /l/ and /r/ that the other obstacles seem to get overlooked.

Any more ideas or thoughts? Keep 'em coming!