Hi, Marcus!

You wrote:
>Does anyone out there agree that pronunciation "is often left to the
wayside of our teaching" >(Ciancio, 2002)? And, if so, why does that
happen? And how should pronunciation be taught?

>Any ideas on this?

I am not an ESL teacher. I'm a student of Japanese, trying to learn it in
America. So to have a chance to use Japanese, I often "exchange
conversation" with Japanese people (generally, the wives of transfer
workers) living here. Therefore, my experience is limited both by lack of
professional study and by lack of breadth.

However, I have observed that, without exception, Japanese people run into
problems with misunderstandings due to poor English pronunciation. Even I
sometimes can't understand words they say, and I listen pretty carefully.
In casual encounters, or worse, when they are trying to get something done,
the mispronunciations cause all kinds of embarrassment. Occasionally
communication breaks down altogether in real-life situations.

To some degree, I think this is inevitable. Japanese is just easier to
pronounce (fewer phonemes, fewer ways to combine phonemes) than English.

But I'm becoming convinced that some of the problem comes from teaching
methods in Japan, particularly the common "shorthand" practice of writing
English words in Japanese syllables. You really cannot represent English
well in Japanese syllables, but for some reason, they don't teach either
English phonics or IPA in most Japanese schools (at least according to the
ladies I talk to.)

For instance, English syllables with 'a' tend to be memorized using
Japanese 'a/ka/sa...' syllables, so that the Japanese ladies I meet
pronounce most a's as in father. They don't recognize English "short a", so
English speakers cannot tell if they are saying "bags" or "box". And they
don't always recognize English "long a", so a Japanese friend used the word
"mahnia" and I had no idea she meant "maynia". (These are actual questions
brought to me, the first one more than once. And that is just one set of
confusions--there are lots of others.)

The interesting thing is that when I correct this problem, they often say
it after me and then don't generalize at all... Partly, their pronunciation
is an ingrained habit. And partly, they have no conceptual framework to
hang my correction on.

Right now I am trading hours with my Japanese teacher: she teaches me
Japanese and in return, I teach her English pronunciations and
phonics--that is, how to guess the pronunciation of words she reads. Her
English is quite good, but mispronounced/misunderstood words still plague
her. I'll be curious to see if learning phonics will help her. If I can
figure out what works for her, I will try to use it with my conversation
partners, who are not so confident of their English as my teacher is.

This is definitely a work in progress. If anyone already knows how to help
Japanese adults with the formidable problems they face in pronouncing
English, please let me know! My conversation partners help me a great deal,
and I am always looking for ways to help them back.

Shira

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