Because of lack of sleep, I have started with this introduction. My brain is not working properly at the moment, so please bear with me. No teddying, please.
So, yesterday I had the usual tutoring session with my student, and we went over the IPA phonetic chart. As I showed it to her, she told me that all Japanese student encounter this chart while in school, and they learn the different characters that represent the sounds.
In Japanese, R and L are pronounced exactly the same. There is no difference between them. So, once in a while, my student will come across a word which she does not know how she should pronounce. For example, once, she was talking to a friend (a close girlfriend of her's, thankfully) and she said the word "election". But remember, to the Japanese person, l and r sound the same. So it sounded more like "erection", which I do not need to explain further. But, don't worry, there were plenty of laughs.
We worked heavily on this difference, as well as the words bought, but, bat and bet. To the native English speaker, these are easy to differentiate. To the learner, it can be a nightmare, since there are slight differences to be detected. I used plenty of humor to make the studying bearable.
We did a little of reading comprehension as well. This time we read a story about a man who bought a winning lottery ticket. We did the usual question and answer, but a little more open to interpretation. It was fun.
No comments:
Post a Comment