Part 3 Understanding Theory and Issues in the Field

3.2 Reflection on a Research Paper.

Phonetic Differences between Japanese and English Vowel Systems
The paper was written in the fall of 2012 for AL 6110 English Phonology/Teaching of
Pronunciation for my first semester at HPU. The course taught us how to perceive and describe
linguistic sounds and helped us understand that difficulties in pronouncing English sounds.
Moreover, we also learned some suggestions how we can teach English pronunciation in our
classroom in the future. Writing the research paper for this class was a good opportunity for me
to compare and research the differences between Japanese and English sound systems. Although
there were many phonetic differences between Japanese and English, I chose to concentrate on
the vowel sounds because many Japanese people felt difficulties to learn English vowels.
This paper begins with a description of the vowel system and two important phonological
processes in Japanesethe number of vowels and tense/lax distinctions. Then it shows the
comparison between Japanese and English vowels and explains problems that Japanese learners
always encounter in learning English. It concludes with some solutions and activities that I can
use in my future ESL/EFL classes to help students understand how to pronounce English vowels
easily.
The reason I want to showcase this paper in my portfolio is that it helped me learn to
analyze the phonetic differences between Japanese and English specifically. I was able to
understand the common phonetic problems that most Japanese students encounter when they
begin speaking English. For example, it is difficult to pronounce the vowel sounds which do not
exist in Japanese vowel system such as / / (bat), // (father), and // (under). Furthermore, I
was able to suggest several solutions and show some examples how to teach and develop the

activities when students have the pronunciation problems. For examples, they can practice and
distinguish vowel sounds using tongue twister such as Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled
peppers
There are also have some weakness points which can improve in the future in this paper.
Before writing this paper, I did not realize that my knowledge of Japanese phonology was
limited even though I was a native speaker of the language. I should have consulted more
scholarly resources rather than relying on my native speaker intuition. Now that I have revised
the paper for this portfolio, I realize that I still have much to learn even about my native
language. Choosing appropriate solutions for ESL students is really important. However, at first,
I chose to focus on phonics practices in teaching children which is not much related to my target
phonological features. I also mixed up phonics with phonetics. Phonics is one of the teaching
methods of the sounds conveyed by letters/spelling and groups of letters and the goal of phonics
is to enable beginning readers to understand the spelling of words that they already know.
Other weaknesses of this paper was the APA formatting. It was my first semester as a
graduate student when I wrote this paper so I had to revise my paper formats which I thought it
was correct. One day, in the future, I would like to revise the paper to arrange better format and
put more phonological analysis.
Through writing and revising this paper, I have become more prepared to assist learners
with the differences of phonological rules between Japanese and English. Even though I still
have more to learn on the subject, I believe that I have more knowledge and be able to support
Japanese learners of English in my future language classes. Additionally, I will be able to teach
Japanese for the people who speaks English because I know both Japanese and English phonetic
and phonological abilities.