Eoin Jordan works as a short-term overseas language program coordinator and
translator at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University. His research interests
include English pronunciation, L1 transfer in language learning, and
vocabulary acquisition and assessment.
Despite the massive popularity of spoken 'English conversation' classes
in Japan, clear guidelines regarding which form of English pronunciation
students should aim to use productively seem to be rather thin on the
ground. While the Japanese government promotes increased exposure to native
speakers of English in the classroom as a measure to increase general spoken
English ability, research suggests that the vast majority of learners will
be unable to master such 'native' pronunciation for their own productive
use.
This presentation reports on a study conducted in response to this
perceived mismatch of pronunciation goals and learners' ability to fulfill
them. By means of an online questionnaire the presenter sets out to measure the attitudes of a group of Japanese university students towards two native forms of
English pronunciation and one form of Japanese English pronunciation, all
taken from interviews with Hollywood movie stars. The results indicate that
while students appeared to recognize the benefits of Japanese English
pronunciation in terms of achievability and comprehensibility, they found it
significantly less attractive than both of the native speaker models. The
implications for the classroom are that some students have unrealistic targets for their own English pronunciation, and that if left unchecked this may have a strong demotivational effect. Finally some possible approaches to remedy this situation will be discussed.
