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| ■ Phonetics and Japanese language education: the Australian connection | |||||||||
| My area of specialization is phonetics, a sub-field of linguistics. Phonetics plays a very important role in communication. People use different pronunciation or intonation to express subtly different meanings. It could be said that phonetics is the controlling factor in face-to-face communication. | |||||||||
| Within the field of linguistics, structural linguistics, which focuses on the structural aspect of language, has been the mainstream area of study for a long time. However, recently, language research interest has expanded to include a greater focus on communication. Within that trend, attention to phonetics has been increasing. In Japan, as interest in communication education and language education has increased, there have been ever higher expectations of phonetics. This presents a number of challenging research themes. | |||||||||
| Although my current research area is the relationship between phonetics and Japanese language education, I did not originally intend to proceed in that direction. After graduating from high school, I entered the Linguistics program at Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra. I wanted to study in a place with abundant nature and a relaxed social environment. As well, I had been vaguely interested in languages since high school, so I wanted to go to Australia, which is a multiethnic, multilingual nation. | |||||||||
| The Department of Linguistics at ANU offers a broad, rich spectrum of activities such as research on Aboriginal language. During the time of the government's policy of assimilation the Aboriginal people were forced to use English, to the point where their mother tongue was in danger of disappearing. When I saw my college seniors heading jubilantly to the field, crossing deserts and forests with backpacks on their backs to collect language data for analysis, I began to want to do something to contribute to society, to create something to pass on to the world. | |||||||||
| I learned the foundations of linguistics, phonetics and phonology in undergraduate school. My graduation thesis advisor was an English person from Cambridge, a specialist in Chinese tone analysis. I completed my thesis on Chinese tone sandhi under his guidance. It is well known that there are four tones in spoken Mandarin, but there are more tones in the dialects of the southern region (called “Wu” dialects) such as Shanghai dialect (Shanghainese), which makes language learning difficult. I worked to analyze those “Wu” tones. | |||||||||
| Just before I entered graduate school, there was a Japanese language education boom in Australia. At that time the Japanese economy had become a world power, and Japan received substantially more overseas recognition. The number of students wanting to study Japanese language increased markedly, and there was a demand for capable teachers of Japanese. Thanks to my being in the right place at the right time, I was offered a teaching position at my own university. I accepted, thinking it would be a good chance to make a social contribution. | |||||||||
| The Japanese language study boom was large indeed: in fact there were sometimes 150 students in a class, a very unusual class size for language. Classes were often held in big halls or auditories. Before I went to Australia to study, I took a short-term course on Japanese language teaching; I thought it might be useful sometime in the future, but I never expected to have a chance to actually teach in such large classes. This was the beginning of my involvement in Japanese language education. | |||||||||
| While I was completing graduate school, I decided to stay on in Canberra as a full-time Japanese language teacher. I was there for 10 years. Although Canberra is the capital of Australia, it is quite rural, with kangaroos jumping around the back yard. Shops close at 5:00 p.m. and there is not much to do for entertainment, which makes it a good environment for foreign students like myself. Home parties were social events where I met a variety of people. Those were wonderful days. | |||||||||
| After I came back to Japan, I started intensive research to establish a
connection between Japanese language education and phonetics. Since phonetic
communication research is a new field, there is not much previous work,
compared to research in fields such as grammar, so any new research is
in effect pioneering work. Consequently, I have been always opening new
frontiers in this field. |
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| ■Systematic survey to
re-verify the plausible hypotheses of language learning |
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| In 2001 Waseda University opened its graduate School of Japanese Applied Linguistics. I had been involved in the establishment of the school since its preparatory committee began work in 2000. The school took shape around the principle of the simultaneous pursuit of theory and practice. The graduate school is in close liaison with the Center for Japanese Language, which serves the Japanese language needs of foreign students who come to study at Waseda. (The Graduate School of Japanese Applied Linguistics’ web site is at: http://www.waseda.jp/gsjal/english.html) |
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| I am in charge of lectures on subjects including phonetics, phonology, and acoustic phonetics at the Graduate School and teach pronunciation courses at the Center for Japanese Language. Our Center is unique in that it has a substantial set of independent pronunciation classes at beginner, intermediate and advanced levels. | |||||||||
| Currently I am analyzing the pronunciation acquisition process of foreigners who are studying Japanese. In language learning there is a hypothesis called the ‘critical period hypothesis,’ which states that once a learner exceeds a certain age, he/she cannot acquire native speaker level skill in a second language. For example, with regard to phonetics, if one begins to study before approximately age six, one can acquire native speaker level pronunciation, whereas if one begins to study after age twelve, one may not be able to avoid some degree of foreign accent. Many people believe this intuitively but it has yet to be proven. I questioned this hypothesis, and I have been doing research in an attempt to check its validity. | |||||||||
| My research results indicate that it is possible to acquire native speaker level pronunciation even after the critical period. For instance, there is one person who started to study Japanese language at the age of 18, came to Japan for the first time at age 22 and achieved native speaker level pronunciation. In the course of my research I found several people who had achieved similar results. | |||||||||
| When I interviewed these subjects, I found that each of them had devised their own way of studying. In particular, those who acquired high levels of Japanese pronunciation had certain study methods in common: for example, utilizing resources such as TV, radio and movies as much as possible. They instantly repeated the lines spoken by actors and actresses as in dramas, immersing themselves in the characters. Repeating words immediately after hearing them is called ‘shadowing.’ The practice of shadowing is common among successful language learners. As well, some learners constantly mimic the way Japanese people speak. They practiced by repeating words from natural conversations and natural scenarios, mirroring the mouth movements, even though they did not always know the meaning of the words. All of these successful learners make great efforts to master Japanese. | |||||||||
| For effective language practice it is beneficial to take the context and intent of communication and the relationship between speakers into consideration. Teachers often have the mistaken idea that they should teach simple vocabulary and sentence patterns suitable to the students’ level of Japanese. It seems that the key to success in second language acquisition is an open attitude to learning lively conversation. I am thinking of a means of systematizing such learner ingenuity for application in language education and of utilizing it in actual classroom situations. Such a system would also useful for Japanese students learning foreign languages. | |||||||||
| In the field of language education, there are a number of established theories, including the critical period hypothesis mentioned earlier. For example, there are plausible claims such as that a person with good pronunciation will also be a good singer, and that females are better at language related skills. It is very important to carefully examine such seemingly common sense notions and determine their validity through systematic research. | |||||||||
| I conducted a two-year grant-in-aid scientific research project funded by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) to verify the critical period hypothesis, and am now writing my research report. I would like to pursue this project work with additional three-year grant-in aid scientific research project starting this year to systematize higher-level language acquisition strategies in the interest of developing practical applications. | |||||||||
 Web site of Waseda University's Center for English Language, |
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| ■ Smooth communication through the use of different intonation in different situations | |||||||||
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| It is obviously very difficult for Japanese language learners to distinguish double consonants and long vowels called ‘special morae.’ For example, subtle shifts in mora and accent can result in the following variations: kiite kudasai (please listen); X wo kite kudasai (please put X on); kite kudasai (please come); X wo kitte kudasai (please cut X); or kitte kudasai (please give me a postage stamp). However, when foreigners attempt to distinguish these words in their pronunciation for such purposes, their utterances of these subtle variations often tend to sound all the same. | |||||||||
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I record voice data from many students for comparison and analysis. It
is interesting to note that students who seem
to lack confidence but are aware that something is wrong with their utterance
when they monitor their own pronunciation make faster
progress than students who feel confident when they are speaking a second
language with their own mother tongue accents. It used to be thought that
students who can speak smoothly tend to make better progress, but my survey
results suggest that this is not always the case. In my examination of materials for Japanese language education, I noticed a number of occurrences of ‘sou desu ka,' which has several meanings including ‘OK, I got it’; ‘Is that so?’" and ‘Is it OK with you?’ depending on context. The phrase is used in sample conversations. In the textbook, however, no indication is given at all of how to pronounce these variants (voice pitch, strength, duration and pausing). |
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| In order to master smooth communication, it is important to pronounce such
simple phrases properly depending on the situation. Prompted by awareness
of this issue, I published a book, Japanese Pronunciation Lessons for Communication, in 2004. The first book, which combines phonetics
and communication, offers a number of role-play lessons suitable for a
variety of situations. |
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| ■ Communication issues in Japanese Society | |||||||||
| I am considering future research on the theme, ‘acquisition of pronunciation and identity.’ For example, when foreigners such as Koreans, Chinese and Japanese descendants, who look similar to the Japanese, speak Japanese with their mother tongue accent, the Japanese people find it quite odd, but in the case of foreigners who do not look Japanese at all, such as Europeans and Americans, the Japanese seem not to care much about first language interference in their Japanese pronunciation. I am interested in Japanese people’s consciousness about the pronunciation of Japanese language learners, and its impact on learners’ acquisition of pronunciation. | |||||||||
 Left: Japanese Pronunciation Lessons for Communication Right: Japanese Pronunciation Lessons (in Korean) |
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| The Graduate School of Japanese Applied Linguistics celebrated its fifth
anniversary in 2005 and the first doctoral students have completed the
course. We professors of the Graduate School have been working together
to publish a new academic book on Japanese language learning. I am the
editor, and the title will be History and Vision of Japanese Language Education at Waseda University, a collection of views and histories from each specialized
field. The Graduate School of Japanese Applied Linguistics carries out research on Japanese language learning by non-native speakers of Japanese and provides related education. However, recently there has been an increasing demand for communication instruction for Japanese people, from children to adults. The number of children with communication weaknesses, such as speaking unilaterally and failing to establish two-way communication, is also increasing. The new curriculum guidelines implemented by the government in 2002 address in detail issues related to phonetics, such as checking whether or not the other party can understand one's spoken utterance, or speaking clearly with attention to the shape of the mouth. Communication cannot happen when one speaks unilaterally
(in an isolated manner). What sort of speed, pausing, or style of speech should
one adopt in order to communicate well with other party? I would like to pass
on the outcome of my research to the community so as to meet this social need. |
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Last revised: Nov 14, 2006 For inquiry：Research Promotion Division: koho-rps@list.waseda.jp |
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