Raising Consciousness of Pronunciation Differences of English /r/, /l/, and /w/ And The Alveolar Flaps In Japanese

In the Japanese ESL/EFL classroom, a great deal of time is spent (and often wasted) on pronunciation- specifically, the English sounds /r/, /l/, and /w/. While focus on pronunciation itself is clearly not a waste of classroom time, recent research has shown that focus on production only has little long term effect on many student's pronunciation proficiency. Further, it is this author's opinion that time spent focusing on production of troublesome English sounds can be considered wasted is simply because most Japanese students of English have no real concept of their own pronunciation (and mispronunciation) of the alveolar flaps in Japanese; thereby making comparison of these sounds to English /r/, /l/ and /w/ impossible. In this report I attempt to illustrate these points from the perspective of both a language learner and a language teacher. My perspectives come from personal in-class experiences gained over the course of the last seventeen years. Empirical observations are explored in relation to published linguistic research and contrasted with my own original research findings. This report also includes detailed instructions of my method of raising the student's consciousness of the pronunciation of both Japanese and English.departmental bulletin pape