Changing Speech

Improving pronunciation is a concern for many learners of English as a second or foreign language.Yet this can prove diffi cult, requiring intensive work on the part of both the teacher and learner, often yielding inconclusive results.This article details the results of research based on the design, delivery and evaluation of a program for teaching pronunciation to a single learner of English.The roles of identity and investment in the learning process will also be discussed. Learner BackgroundThe research centered on a single student whom I was teaching privately.The learner was a 50-year Japanese male residing in Japan.His language level was upper-intermediate.In addition to private lessons, he also attended a well-known language school, and had done so for 5 years.He had access to spoken English though Internet radio news and other online programs, English classes and a conversation lounge at his language school and a private teacher. Learner StyleThe learner by his own admission disliked repetition, was easily bored and distracted, was always looking for something new, and preferred process to results.He was able to identify which areas of his English ( grammatically ( grammatically ( ) grammatically ) grammatically needed improving and actively tried to improve those areas.However, he Changing Speech --230 --230 -loved talking and found that self-monitoring detracted from his enjoyment of conversational exchanges in English.Thus, he often abandoned accuracy for communication and fl uency. Social ContextInitially, the learner's primary motivation for entering an English conversation school was to improve his reading and writing abilities in order to communicate effectively by email with people from all over the world on music, one of his favorite topics.As his English improved, so did his relationship with the Internet, which became a source of written communication with people through his web page.As a result of his enrolment in a conversation school, he found that he enjoyed speaking English, and was spending up to three hours a day, fi ve days a week there, talking with both teachers and students on a range of topics.This is quite a high exposure to English for a student in a non-target language environment.However, as it was his only exposure to spoken English, apart from Internet radio and movies, the range of registers and contexts he was exposed to were limited to conversation with fellow students and teachers.Areas of Diffi culty for Japanese Learners of English Japanese learners of English experience diffi culty with a number of features of spoken English, both segmental and suprasegmental.Signifi cant problems occur with /t/ and /d/; //and / /; /l/ and /r; / h/ and /f/; /b/ and /v/.Additionally, Japanese uses a syllable structure of 'vowel and consonant', or 'vowel'.This results in learners inserting vowels into consonant clusters, e.g.teburu ( table ) and adding a vowel to a fi nal consonant, e.g.salada ( salad ) salad ) salad ( Thompson 1987, pp.214 ( Thompson 1987, pp.214 ( -215 ) .Stress, rhythm and intonation all prove problematic for Japanese