英語スピーキング・発音 中級

Note the layout and language of this book is almost identical to the first edition, so if your student is using the first edition there is no reason to change. 

How to teach this book to Japanese speakers of English 

You can use this TFCS pronunciation webpage as a guide. Send it to the student if you feel they would benefit from it.

When teaching this book to Japanese people, you will find the first 20 lessons are very hit-and-miss. A lot of the vowel sounds taught in these lessons already exist in Japanese, so just use the "target sounds" boxes to check if the student can make the specific sounds. If they can, then move on to the next lesson. You may breeze through quite a few lessons before you find a challenging one, that's ok. 

Try the target boxes of every lesson, but do to very quickly for lessons that are probably OK. 

Here's a quick guide to which lessons are usually useful or difficult for Japanese people learning English: 

    •    Unit 8 - the English F is much stronger than the Japanese one.
    •    Unit 10 - sounds that are deep in the mouth/close to the throat (worse, heart, fuel)
    •    Unit 13 - the strong R is a problem point for a lot of students. 
    •    Unit 14 - the unstressed R can be more challenging than the stronger R. 
    •    Unit 15C - this can be tough like unit 10, but some people have no trouble. 
    •    Unit 17 - the TH sound isn't in Japanese. 
    •    Unit 18 - there are a few new sounds for some people. 
    •    Unit 19 - similar to 10 and 15C, some sounds are tough (shirt, fur) 

Also, pay special attention to hard word endings, words that end in consonants ("but" rather than "butu", "beer" rather than "beeru"). Japanese doesn't isolate consonants or end words with them.

At the end, section E4, it would probably be these lessons on sound pairs: 

2, 6, 9, 17, 24,  25, 27, 29, 32, 33, 36, 43, 46, 48, 49, 50. 

Native speakers of other languages

There is further information on p.143 about which parts of the book to teach to native speakers of other languages.

The "In Use" series

Books in the "In Use" series all follow the same structure. They are divided into units grouped by topic. Each unit consists of a page of explanation and a page of exercises. They are designed for self study, but can be used in a classroom setting too. They are very easy to teach from. The explanation covers everything you need and the exercises are simple with answers provided.

1. Work through the explanations together with your student, making sure that they understand and answering any questions they may have;
2. Do the exercises togther;
3. Set homework each class based on the material covered.

Teaching strategies

When you teach pronunciation, make sure you do some or all of the following:

• Get your student to try to sound out the words themselves;
• Do a lot of listen and repeat exercises—feedback is key to improving pronunciaiton;
• Train the student's ear. Help them hear their own speech and critically evaluate their accuracy for themselves;
• Repeat a lot (there should be a lot of back and forth in pronunciation classes: you say it, they repeat, you say it, they repeat);
• Remember to talk a bit about spelling, reading and reading strategies (read the word as a whole; don't sound it out letter by letter);
• Come up with tongue twisters that focus on the target sounds, but work on clarity and accuracy, not speed.

Note: You'll find answers to the exercises in a separate attached file (and at the end of the book).