Teaching Pronunciation to Japanese learners

[ita13]

I once taught Indonesian to a Japanese student. He's a very fast learner. But he was struggling with pronunciation. does anyone have the same experience? any suggestion??
anyone ever teach English in any Asian countries?

 

[kimfuji]

I taught ESL to Japanese for many years. I lived in Japan for 6 years. A book I found "very" useful in teaching pronunciation is called PD's It is full of drills using minimal pair exercises. It has chapters for each language group. There is a chapter on native speakers of Japanese. They give you specific exercises to use with Japanese speakers of English to help them with their pronunciation.
Good luck!
Kim

 

[5jj]

A book I found "very" useful in teaching pronunciation is called PD's

Could you be more specific about the name of this book, please? Do you have the name of the author? Thanks.

 

[Alex Case]

Most pronunciation books, e.g. Headway Pronunciation, have a list of particular problems for particular nationalities listed somewhere or the other. Learner English by Michael Swan and someone else also has guides to language problems for different language speakers.

Here are Japanese ones off the top of my head
l/r
b/v
ti and chi
shi and si
ji and zi
O and or (foe and four)
ar and ir (far and fur)
th and s (thin and sin)
th (in mother) and z
final n and m
consonant clusters like spr
adding extra syllables