日本の方のためのアクセントリダクションレッスン
英語の発音、アクセントを良くしたい日本の方のための５つのアドバイス
Accent Reduction for Japanese Speakers
5 English pronunciation tips for Japanese speakers who want to improve their English accent:
1) L & R
- L is made with the tip of the tongue touching the top of the mouth (just behind the teeth). The sides of the tongue are down.
- R is made with the tip of the tongue curling back in the mouth. We don’t touch the top of our mouths when pronouncing a R sound in English.
- Compare: low – row, led – red
2) Word Stress
- Japanese tends to place equal stress on syllables. This means that longer words can be unclear.
- Make the stressed syllables bigger!
- unfortunately, conversation, apparently, understandably
3) Vowels
- Japanese has 5 vowels, whereas English has around 20.
- Compare the difference between: good/food, seat/sit, cat/cart
4) TH
- This sound is made by putting the tip of the tongue by the back of the upper front teeth.
- Keep the tip of the tongue relaxed.
- Compare:
- T – tin – thin
- D – den – then
- S – sin – thin
- Z – zen – then
5) Words ending in a consonant
- When a word ends in a consonant, do not add a vowel sound.
- Book not Booku
- Red not Redo
- Hat not Hato
I recently met a Japanese student who was visiting the UK for the first time. He had never lived in an English-speaking country before, yet his technical mastery of English was excellent. However, two things were letting him down. One was, of course, his pronunciation. It took a great deal of concentration to be able to understand his speech – even though his vocabulary was wide and his grammar good. The second problem was his written English. He had written a very scholarly article in his field (engineering) – but his wrong use of certain idiomatic expressions made an otherwise impressive text sound comical at times.
I think resources such as yours could help with the first problem, while the use of a proofreading firm could help with the latter. Improvement in both those areas could massively improve the career prospects of Japanese and other speakers of English as a second language.