Author: Manabu Aoki
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English language
Languages : en
Pages : 110

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Book Description

Author: Mineo Suenobu
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English language
Languages : en
Pages : 48

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Book Description

Author: Tomoko Nakagawa
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English language
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English language
Languages : en
Pages : 112

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Book Description
As the result of historical events and the adaptive nature of the language itself, English is generally accepted today as the world's international language. While various countries have adapted the English language to serve their own specific needs, the question of whether or not the changes made to English in these countries, for example phonological, will still enable the language to be intelligible in the international arena. If English is to be the de facto world language, then international intelligibility should be an important goal. For this research, 211 Japanese university students were asked to assess the intelligibility and comprehensibility of the English spoken by educated speakers from Japan, Taiwan, India and the United States. These countries were chosen based on Kachru's Inner, Outer, and Expanding Circles of English. The Inner Circle includes the traditional "native" English speaking countries such as the United States and Great Britain. The Outer Circle includes countries such as India or Malaysia where English is used for intranational purposes. The Expanding Circle refers to those countries such as Japan or Egypt where English use is widespread yet serves few intranational purposes. In addition for this research, intelligibility is defined specifically as word/utterance recognition, and comprehensibility as word/utterance meaning. Results showed that these Japanese university students assessed the Japanese speaker to be the most intelligible, the Taiwanese and American speaker were found to be statistically the same, and the Indian speaker was judged to be the least intelligible. For the comprehensibility element, the Japanese speaker was assessed as the most comprehensible followed by the Taiwanese, Indian and American speakers. If international intelligibility is looked at in terms of a range of what accents will be deemed acceptable for multinational communication, then Japanese university students appear to only understand part of this range. If Japanese EFL students wish to communicate more widely within the English speaking world, then steps are needed to expand the range of internationally intelligible accents that will be understood. Activities such as pronunciation practice will help Japanese EFL students comprehend the intonation patterns found among Inner Circle speakers which includes American English speakers.

Author: Valerie L. Durham
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English language
Languages : en
Pages : 118

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Book Description

Author: Naosuke Amano
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English language
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description

Author: Mineo Suenobu
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English language
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description

Author: Sutesaburo Kohmoto
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English language
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description

Author: Noël Houck
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110809877
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
Language acquisition is a human endeavor par excellence. As children, all human beings learn to understand and speak at least one language: their mother tongue. It is a process that seems to take place without any obvious effort. Second language learning, particularly among adults, causes more difficulty. The purpose of this series is to compile a collection of high-quality monographs on language acquisition. The series serves the needs of everyone who wants to know more about the problem of language acquisition in general and/or about language acquisition in specific contexts.

Author: Stephanie Ann Houghton
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317286502
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
Despite unsubstantiated claims of best practice, the division of language-teaching professionals on the basis of their categorization as ‘native-speakers’ or ‘non-native speakers’ continues to cascade throughout the academic literature. It has become normative, under the rhetorical guise of acting to correct prejudice and/or discrimination, to see native-speakerism as having a single beneficiary – the ‘native-speaker’ – and a single victim – the ‘non-native’ speaker. However, this unidirectional perspective fails to deal with the more veiled systems through which those labeled as native-speakers and non-native speakers are both cast as casualties of this questionable bifurcation. This volume documents such complexities and aims to fill the void currently observable within mainstream academic literature in the teaching of both English, and Japanese, foreign language education. By identifying how the construct of Japanese native-speaker mirrors that of the ‘native-speaker’ of English, the volume presents a revealing insight into language teaching in Japan. Further, taking a problem-solving approach, this volume explores possible grounds on which language teachers could be employed if native-speakerism is rejected according to experts in the fields of intercultural communicative competence, English as a Lingua Franca and World Englishes, all of which aim to replace the ‘native-speaker’ model with something new.