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RELC 53rd International Conference

RELC 53rd International Conference

Teaching English prosody to Japanese learners: "Three principles" approach to prosody instruction

Kazuhito Yamato

March 13, 2018
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  1. Teaching English prosody to Japanese
    learners: "Three principles" approach
    to prosody instruction
    Kazuhito Yamato (Kobe University)
    Takamichi Isoda (Ritsumeikan University)
    RELC 53rd International Conference
    13/03/2018
    ɹ10:30ʙ11:00

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  2. Acknowledgment
    •  This study is supported by JSPS
    KAKENHI Grant Number 17K047778
    •  This slide (pdf) is available at:
    https://speakerdeck.com/otamyuzak

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  3. Introduction

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  4. 1. Introduction
    1.1 Needs for prosody teaching
    •  Japanese EFL learners have problems on prosodic
    features:
    –  sentence stress
    –  intonation
    –  nucleus placement
    (Nanjo, 2010; Saito & Ueda, 2011; Saito, 2017; Matsusaka, 1986)

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  5. 1. Introduction
    1.1 Needs for prosody teaching
    •  In Japanese context…
    –  surveys reveal that reading aloud and
    pronunciation teaching are the major teaching
    practices
    –  Ts: less confident and not enough training
    (Shibata et al., 2008;)

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  6. 1. Introduction
    1.1 Needs for prosody teaching
    •  In Japanese context…
    – teaching items: more on segmentals than
    suprasegmentals
    – Isolated items: stress, rhythm, intonation
    based on phonetic descriptions

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  7. 1. Introduction
    1.2 Current situation
    •  Research on Pronunciation Instruction (Derwing & Munro, 2015; Lee, Jang
    & Plonsky, 2014)
    •  Teaching methods & practical ideas/tasks for teaching
    pronunciation/prosody
    –  Prosody pyramid (Gilbert, 2014)
    –  Pronunciation myth (Grant, 2014)
    –  textbooks, materials (Grant, 2016; Marks & Bowen, 2014; Jones,
    2016)

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  8. 1. Introduction
    1.2 Current situation
    •  Approaches to pronunciation instruction (Grant et al., 2014)
    Traditional Approaches Current Approaches
    learner goals Perfect, naive-like pronunciation Comfortable intelligibility
    Speech features
    All segmentals (consonant and
    vowel sounds)
    Selected segmental and
    suprasegmentals (stress, rhythm,
    and intonation) based on need and
    context
    Practice formats Decontextualized drills
    controlled aural-oral drills as well
    as semi-communicative practice
    formats
    Language background
    of teachers
    Native-speaking teachers
    Native-speaking and proficient
    non-native speaking teachers
    Speaking models Native-speaker models
    Variety of models and standards
    depending on the listener, context,
    and purpose
    Curriculum choices
    Stand-alone courses isolated from
    the rest of the curriculum
    Stand-alone courses or integrated
    into other content or skill areas,
    often listening and speaking

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  9. 1. Introduction
    •  Issues to be addressed on prosody instruction to
    Japanese EFL learners
    –  Teachers: hard to teach, not sure on what to teach
    –  Learners: complex descriptions, too much to
    remember
    •  Any way to resolve these?
    –  Needs to integrate prosodic elements and to present
    these elements in a simplified description

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  10. 1. Introduction
    What do we need?
    – Concise rules of prosody
    – Elements shown in an organized fashion
    Our solution: Three principles approach
    – Minimum essentials of prosody
    – As a guide for teachers for developing activities
    utilizing a textbook in hand
    – As a checklist for students

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  11. 1. Introduction
    Three principles:
    1.  Strike a beat when there is a vowel.
    2.  When there are more than one beat,
    differentiate strong and weak beats.
    3.  When there are more than one strong
    beat, make one of them more salient than
    the others.

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  12. 2 “Three principles” approach

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  13. Principle 1

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  14. ストライク strike
    su to ra i ku /straIk/
    マクドナルド
    McDonald’s

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  15. Principle 1
    Strike a beat when there is
    a vowel.

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  16. Principle 2

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  17. When there are more than one
    beat…
    ○ ○ ○ ●
    ○ ●
    banana  banana
    バナナ  /bənɑːnə/

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  18. 1
    8
       Cats eat   fish.
    The cats eat  the fish.
    The cats are eating the fish.
    The cats will have eaten the fish.
    Stressed (red): Content words
    Unstressed (black): Function words
    Stresses beats are repeated with regular
    intervals.

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  19. Principle 2
    When there are more than
    one beat, differentiate
    strong and weak beats.

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  20. Principle 3

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  21. 2 1
    ○●
    ○ ● ●
       
    university  

    ○ ●
    ○ ●

    I went to school by bus.
    Primary stress (nucleus) tends to be placed
    on the last stressed (content) word.
    Primary stress has a
    greater pitch
    change.

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  22. A: Where did you go by bus?

    ○ ●
    ○ ●

    B: I went to school by bus.
    A: See you at ten to two.
    ○ ○ ●

    B: Ten after two.
    Nucleus placed elsewhere reflects a
    speaker’s special intention.

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  23. Principle 3
    When there are more than
    one strong beat, make one
    of them more salient than
    the others.

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  24. Utilizing the principles

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  25. What do we need to do?
    – Develop activities for teaching prosody
    – Integrate prosody instruction into classes
        ↓
    – Develop activities based on a textbook in hand
    Is it possible to teach prosody with a reading
    textbook? Yes!

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