日本語学習者の発音と自己モニターとの関係

Abstract

The analysis of the characteristics of the pronunciation and the self-monitoring among Japanese language learners found that the two factors are not necessarily aligned. It was confirmed that the learner's pronunciation had problems with intonation, rhythm, accent, hearing, and touch. Also, the learners were reporting problems with their pronunciation mostly by using expressions such as [It does not come naturally] and [I stop short in the middle]. Among the characteristics of pronunciation, intonation tends to [rise]. In particular intonations are raised in sentences, such as raising the part of post-positions and suffixes, inserting a pose, and raising subordinates. As for tempo, the tempo of the long sound and the final consonant (ん un) tend to get shorter or even disappear altogether. Conversely, there was a tendency of reading one-beat word in two beats. In the case of accent, some of the learners consider their accent as [straight] or [strange], etc. However, none of the learners were aware of different types of accent, and it was only perceived as “strange”. It was also identified that the pronunciation of “voiceless(clear)” sounds degenerates into voiced(muddy) sounds. In particular, most of the sounds of [sa-column] letters were strongly pronounced by many learners. However, the self-monitoring analysis shows that the learners feel it necessary to pronounce [strongly], which confirms that learners’ self-monitoring can be inaccurate. Among the self-monitoring analysis were references to accents and long sounds, and this suggest that learners are conscious of accents and long sounds to some extent, but other than that, the problems with sokuon (double consonant), voiceless sounds, and intonation are hardly mentioned. Although there was no direct reference to intonation, the remarks about [natural], [straight line], and [strange] imply intonation. In this regard, learners are thought to be able to pay attention to the natural flow of a sentence, and when giving instructions, it is necessary to provide guidance on how to read the he(へ)-shaped characters or soft sentences. In other words, the instructor should pay attention to the learner's [awareness of the problem], and provide more accurate guidance about long notes and accents, while also trying to more clearly recognize and guide accurate pronunciation in terms of intonation, tempo, and double consonant.