O n f e r e n c e

Importance of teaching English Pronunciation to Japanese learners 
Acquiring English pronunciation and intonation skills remains one of the biggest 
challenges for Japanese learners of English (Kitao & Kitao, 1995; Pennington, 2005). 
Researchers suggest that the problem is aggravated by the differences between English 
and Japanese phonetic systems (speech sounds, word-accent patterns, rhythm and 
intonation) (Stephens, 2011; Wells, 2006), and by the process of English language 
assimilation into Japanese, resulting in “katakana” pronunciation of English words 
(e.g.,koohii, kooto, biiru, doru, etc.). Without corrective phonetic courses, Japanese 
students make the same pronunciation mistakes even after many years of EFL instruction 
by native speakers of English. 
Stressing the importance of teaching pronunciation for mastering a foreign language, 
Vernon (2011) argues that communication in L2 would be impossible if people cannot 
understand what they are saying. Walter’s (2009) research shows that written words are 
decoded visually but stored phonologically. Therefore, teaching L2 phoneme recognition 
should help L2 learners comprehend L2 oral and written texts better. Not only phoneme 
recognition, but also prosodic (intonation and rhythm) recognition appears to facilitate 
reading comprehension skills (Gilbert, 2009; Stephens, 2011). Teaching pronunciation 
might also result in collateral improvement in listening discrimination (Shimamune & 
Smith, 1995). 
Experimental teaching 
Twenty 3
rd
-year students (of mixed English language proficiency levels) majoring in 
English participated in the study in February 2012. They took a 5-day (14 academic 
hours) ntensive English Pronunciation course. The textbook 
Ship or Sheep? 
(with four 
audio CDs) by Ann Baker (2006) was used for the study, as well as accompanying online 
practice exercises.