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A Fascination with Pronunciation 発音の魅力
In May 1988, my husband and I participated in an English workshop offered in Tokyo, led by Dr. Gattegno. During the workshop I could feel that my way of learning English was developing aspects I had never experienced before. I became aware of these new aspects saying, “Oh, I see,” and what I had thought I knew became dramatically changed. During the session, Dr. Gattegno made Hideo pronounce the word ‘live’ repeatedly, but Dr. Gattegno only kept indicating to him that it was wrong, again and again. I knew that to be able to
Junko Shinada do so. I was absorbed in working on it. Suddenly I became aware that the correct ‘l’ had a sound which was not in the sound that I had believed was correct. Before removing the tip of the tongue off of the back side of my upper teeth to make ‘l’ sound with a breath, I noticed that there was another sound. All the students who could pronounce ‘l’ correctly used this sound. Then I tried it in the same way, adding the sound which was somewhat like a dog snarling. Dr. Gattegno said, “Yes.” I don’t remember how long I was grappling with making the ‘l’ sound. For me, this experience was meeting the Gattegno Approach.
“Today I would say without hesitation, ‘Yes, it was easy,’ and move on to seek another challenge.” pronounce ‘l’ I had to put the tip of my tongue on the upper back part of my upper front teeth. I thought Hideo was articulating the sound faithfully in this way; I believed the sound was correct. Therefore, while sitting next to him, I could not understand why it was rejected. Then several others tried to pronounce ‘live’ and Dr. Gattegno accepted some of them. What’s the difference? To my ‘live,’ he said, “No.” I wanted to listen to the correct pronunciation as many times as possible, and to compare it to the wrong ones. My desire was fulfilled easily and I was allowed to
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To make the correct ‘l’ sound you need not only the forms of your lips and the position of your tongue. There are many other factors involved, such as the duration of a specific position of the tongue, and the way of the tongue movement. This process made my view of the pronunciation of a language change completely. After this experience, I became even more interested in teaching pronunciation as a Japanese language teacher. For example, when my students were having problems in pronunciation, I became able to consider many possible reasons for the issue. Moreover, I was convinced that students