English Pronunciation Exercises for Japanese Students

Rating:
Summary: an indispensible resource
Review: There are lots of pronunciation workbooks a would-be English teacher might take to Japan. For those who aren't entirely clear on the Japanese sound system and its differences from English, or don't want to have to repeatedly think about WHICH sounds to target in teaching, this book is definitely the most important reference you could bring. It contains minimal pair contrasts for all the problem sounds, from l/r to si/shi to v/b to vowels. It also contains lots of tongue twisters, ample information on stress, intonation, and reduction, and plenty of mouth diagrams and descriptions of how particular sounds are made. What it DOESN'T have are suggestions for how to USE this material, so unless you have experience or training as an ESL/EFL teacher, I'd supplement it with a good "ideas book" like CLEAR SPEECH, so you'll have some hints at how you might USE the information provided here. Pronunciation is a definite problem area in Japanese schools, where English is mostly a written-and-understood phenomenon, as opposed to a spoken-and-heard one; you probably won't see this text on the shelf in the school you're teaching at, and while it is available at some bookstores in Japan, you don't want to be paying import prices for it. It's worth getting while you can...