What if intelligibility of Japanese learners would improve focusing on suprasegmental part of English rather than segmental part of English?? 英語のスモールパートであるL音やR音はを言い間違えても文脈で分かってもらえるが、赤ちゃんも言語習得以前に感じ取るビッグパートである英語の波(Intonation Contour)は間違えると 伝わらない。(Celce-Murcia, Brinton, & Goodwin, 2010). さあどちらに重点を置いて指導(学習)するか？？

1. TEMPLE UNIVERSITY JAPAN
STUDIES IN APPLIED
LINGUISTICS
TEACHING THE SOUND SYSTEM
OF ENGLISH
Number 84, August 2013

2. 14
The Effect of Segmental and Suprasegmental Instruction on Reading Aloud
Norikazu Kozen
Do Japanese Need to Acquire Suprasegmental Rather Than Segmental Skills?
If the intelligibility of Japanese learners were improved by focusing on four suprasegmental features,
rhythm, linking, reductions, and reduced function words, rather than focusing on segmental features
(e.g., /l/ & /r/), it might lead to the development of more fluent readers of English. Improving the
English literacy and listening skills of Japanese is a requirement if they are to survive in the global
society and is arguably more important than developing speaking skills, which the government and
public crave. The government and local boards of education want Japanese students to speak, even
though opportunities for speaking English in Japan are quite limited.
Private English schools are vying to dominate the English-teaching industry. Some commercials
announce slogans, such as Speak English with a strategy or Communication competence is the key to
English, but for most Japanese working for a trading company or international IT company, literacy
and listening skills in English are the primary requirements. Although company employees sometimes
receive telephone calls and have conversations, they do not always need a high level of communicative
competence. The future of the company is not supposed to be trusted to employees who speak English
well; important communication should be handled by professional translators or bilingual employees.
Reading literacy is the top priority for high school students. In order to achieve their goal of
passing an entrance examination at a prestigious university, they must read the passages at a minimum
of 120-150 wpm (Kadota, 2010). However, the average reading rate of high school students in Japan is
75 wpm (Kanaya, 2009). Many strategies exist to improve learners’ reading ability. My belief is that
once Japanese learners acquire the suprasegmental features of English (i.e., rhythm, reduction, reduced
words, or linking), they will become faster and more fluent readers of English. In reality, however, one
reason why they read slowly is that they read in a mora-based way (i.e., using the Japanese rhythmic
system). This greatly increases the time needed to finish reading a sentence. It is essential that second
language learners realize that English is a stress-timed language and that as a result, function words are
read quickly and somewhat unclearly because of the degree to which they are reduced. They must also
acquire linking techniques by connecting consonants and vowels, consonants and consonants, vowels
and vowels, and palatalization.
Literature Review
My current concern is what intelligibility means in terms of language acquisition. There is no
universally accepted definition of intelligibility, nor any field-wide consensus on the best way to
measure it (Isaacs, 2008). My compromise is that unless the listener is distracted or irritated, the
speaker’s intelligibility is acceptable even if they still have a non-native accent, that is, accent addition.
Pursuing a high level of intelligibility does not mean acquiring the pronunciation of an inner circle-
speaker. Intelligibility is co-constructed and should be viewed as a negotiated process between not only
speakers but also listeners.
It is also a top priority for Japanese learners to be aware that Japanese sound always ends with
vowel, that is, external epenthesis. “The first step is to raise learner consciousness about their
inappropriate use of the strategy and explain where epenthesis occurs naturally in native-speakers
utterances.” (Celce-Murcia, Brinton, & Goodwin, 2010).
Knowing the rhythm of English leads to rapid reading: “Just as in music, English moves in
regular, rhythmic beats from stress to stress –no matter how many unstressed syllables fall in between”
(Celce-Murcia, Brinton, & Goodwin, 2010). The length of an utterance depends not on the number of
syllables but rather on the number of stressed words. This means that if reading 100 Japanese words
takes three minutes, reading 100 English words should take considerably less time because unstressed
function words in English are reduced and therefore pronounced very rapidly. The Cats Chase Rats
(Mice) rhythm drill works well because no matter how many syllables are added, learners must say the
extended sentence in an almost equivalent time as the original one.
Wells (2006) noted that intonation is generally neglected by both teachers and learners.
Although some learners acquire intonation through implicit means many do not. However, a problem is

3. 15
that while it is widely recognized that learners have difficulty with vowels and consonants and thus,
many native speakers of English make allowances for segmental errors, it is less well recognized that
intonation errors also occur. Initially, I believed that prominence and intonation are for intermediate
and advanced learners; however, I now believe that intonation should be taught to beginners as well.
Infants do not understand what their parents are saying but seem to perceive the emotion conveyed by
suprasegmental features. Intonation conveys emotion, which is the key factor for good communication.
My point is that knowing the differences between pronunciation and intonation is important in terms of
understanding a speaker’s intention. This leads to the following question: Will learners who have
acquired the rhythm of English be fluent and rapid readers?
Method
Participants
The three female participants in this project were two full-time Japanese college undergraduates and
one Thai graduate student, ranging in age from 19 to 25 years (M = 22). Speaker A is a beginner who
has been studying English for seven years. Speakers B and C are intermediate proficiency learners who
have been studying English since elementary school. Two native speakers of English who were
graduate students in their 30’s participated in the project as raters. One is an American who teaches
English at a company and has been living in Japan for six years. The other is Canadian who teaches
English at a high school and has been living in Japan for five years.
Instrumentation
Tests from a TOEIC textbook were used to elicit the speech data. The test has been adopted not only
throughout Japan but also around the world as the global standard for assessing English communication
skills. The section adopted for this study is shown below:
Are you interested in living and working in a foreign country? If you are, there is a special visa for you-the
Working Holiday visa. This type of visa is offered under agreements between certain countries to
encourage travel and cultural exchange between their citizens. Australia, for example, has made
agreements with several countries around the world, including the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada,
Japan and the Republic of Korea. In Australia, the visa allows young people between 18 and 30 spend up
to one year there, working part-time to cover their costs. Any kind of temporary work is allowed, but
working for more than six months with any one employer is not permitted. You should note that the United
States doesn’t offer this kind of visa program.
The target passage’s Flesch-Kincaid grade level was 13 and the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease score
was 37. The lexical composition is shown in Table 1.
Table 1. Lexical Composition of the TOEIC Passage
Families Types Tokens Types + tokens Percent
K1 (1-1,000) 64 70 111 96.72%
Function words — — 57 44.53%
Content words — — 54 42.19%
K2 (1,001-2,000) 3 3 3 2.34%
AWL words 2 2 2 1.56%
Off-list words — 7 12 9.38%
Total 69 82 128 100.00%

4. 16
Rating Criteria
As shown in Table 2, a 5-point Likert scale was used. The points on the scale were 3, 2, 1, 0, and -1.
Table 2. Rating Criteria
Procedures
Session 1
The students listened to the target passage and answered three comprehension questions. After
clarifying the parts they missed or did not understand, the students read the passage without any
pronunciation instruction. I then recorded the students reading the target passage aloud. I read aloud the
target passage so that they could understand which pronunciation features to notice.
Segmental Feature-Focus Approach
The students did phoneme correspondence practice in the form of phonics drills to avoid reading the
alphabet. The students did minimal pair practice using the Multi-Consonant and Vowel Review Chart
so that they would be aware of the difference between /t/ and /th/ and improve their pronunciation of
words such as living, working, and including in the target passage.
Suprasegmental Feature-Focus Approach
I explained there were reduced function words in English that are read quickly. The participants
practiced using Appendix 8 of Teaching Pronunciation. The students then read the target passage aloud
focusing on reduced function words.
Segmental Feature-Focus Approach
The participants segmented and blended words such as Germany, Canada, Japan, and Australia. They
focused on ger and blended it with dan and pronounced danger They then blended ger with many and
produced Germany. The students focused on ja, blended it with nin and produced ninja. They then
blended ja with pan and produced Japan. The participants focused on trail and blended it with er and
produced trailer. They then blended trail with Aus and ia and produced Australia. The participants
focused on can and said the famous phrase Yes, we can! paying attention to the stressed vowel /æ/.
They then blended can with a and da and produced Canada. The main purpose of this procedure was
for the participants to avoid using epenthesis.
Suprasegmental Feature-Focus Approach
The participants did rhythm practice using word and phrases such as MOther, DO it, PAY them
comparing word and sentence stress so that they could realize the physical similarities in stress patterns
that exist in both words and simple sentences.
Session 2
Segmental Feature-Focus Approach
The participants reviewed vowel and consonants using both controlled and guided activities. They
reviewed vowel and consonant sounds using the Multi-Consonant and Vowel Review Chart. They then
listened to audio material recorded by a native speaker of English and worked on vowel discrimination
(mainly, /æ/ versus /ɛ/). The participants then did consonant discrimination (/n/ versus /ŋ/) in pairs.
They checked the segmental features of the target passage and then were recorded reading the target
passage aloud.
Consonants Native-like Good Acceptable Poor Unrecognizable
Reduced function words Native-like Good Acceptable Poor Unrecognizable
Linking Native-like Good Acceptable Poor Unrecognizable
Intonation Excellent Good Acceptable Poor Extremely poor
Sentence level prominence Excellent Good Acceptable Poor Extremely poor
Word level prominence Excellent Good Acceptable Poor Extremely poor
Rhythm, length of utterance Excellent Good Acceptable Poor Extremely poor
Intelligibility of each word Excellent Good Acceptable Poor Extremely poor
Intelligibility of the sentence Excellent Good Acceptable Poor Extremely poor

5. 17
Suprasegmental Feature-Focus Approach
The participants practiced the Cats Chase Rats (Mice) rhythm drill so that they could be aware that the
time needed to say each sentence is roughly equivalent even though the number of syllables increases.
They then did pair work focusing on the rhythm of English. One participant listened to the other
reading the target passage aloud. The partner checked the length, prominence, and intonation of each
utterance and marked errors on a checksheet. They then switched roles and repeated the process. I then
recorded them reading the target passage aloud again.
Session 3
Segmental Feature-Focus Approach
The participants did a vowel and consonant review using both controlled and guided activities. This
was followed by a vowel discrimination (/ɑ/ versus /ʌ/) pairwork task. They then listened to audio
material recorded by a native speaker of English and played a vowel discrimination (/æ /versus /ɛ /)
bingo game.
Suprasegmental Feature-Focus Approach
The participants did a pair work task focusing on English rhythm. They did the same activity as in
Session 2. The students did CV, VV, CC linking and palatalization practice so that they could avoid
pronouncing each individual word so clearly and blend words within a thought group smoothly. I then
recorded the participants reading the target passage aloud. They next did rhythm practice comparing
word and sentence stress. They did this with a beat created by an electric metronome or clapping hands.
They practiced the Cats Chase Rats (Mice) rhythm drill with a beat created by the electric metronome
or clapping hands. The participants then practiced reading the target passage aloud with a beat created
by the electric metronome or clapping hands. The aim was to investigate how their intelligibility would
improve by focusing on rhythm. I recorded them reading the target passage aloud with the beat.
The participants practiced rapid reading. I showed them I could read the target passage aloud
with one breath. They tried reading it with a minimal intake of breath and as quickly as possible. They
then read the target passage simultaneously with the CD. I then recorded them reading the target
passage aloud using their maximum reading rate. The objective was to investigate the possibility of
improving both intelligibility and reading speed.
Rating Sessions
The rating session took 40 minutes. To minimize potential order effects, randomized recordings (WMA
files), including 15 sets of the same sentence, were prepared. The raters listened to a given speaker’s
performance on around 60-second tasks. During the performance they could comment on the target
passage on the rating paper and assigned a score using the 5-point Likert scale.
Results and Discussion
Scoring was done using the following scale: Very good = 3, Good = 2, Acceptable = 1, Poor = 0,
Extremely poor = -1. The pretest ratings are displayed in Table 2.
Table 2. Pre-Recording Ratings
Speaker Rating
Word-level
intelligibility
Sentence-level
intelligibility
A 7.0 1.5 1.0
B 11.5 1.5 1.5
C 4.0 1.0 1.0
Table 3 shows that there was no difference between word- and sentence-level intelligibility. Speaker A
performed the best, followed by speaker C and B. Segmental phonemes were difficult for the
participants to produce accurately.

6. 18
Table 3. Segmental Focus
Speaker Rating
Word-level
intelligibility
Sentence-level
intelligibility
A 9.5 1.5 1.5
B 6.5 1.0 1.0
C 8.0 1.0 1.0
Speaker B performed best on the suprasegmental focus shown in Table 4. There was no significant
difference between word- and sentence-level intelligibility.
Table 4. Suprasegmental Focus After Practicing Intonation, Prominence, and Length
Speaker Rating
Word-level
intelligibility
Sentence-level
intelligibility
A 10.5 1.5 1.5
B 15.5 2.0 2.0
C 5.0 0.5 0.0
The results displayed in Table 5 mirror those shown in Table 4, possibly because the focus was the
same.
Table 5. Suprasegmental Focus After Practicing Rhythm and Linking
Speaker Rating
Word-level
intelligibility
Sentence-level
intelligibility
A 14.0 1.5 2.0
B 16.0 1.5 2.0
C 5.5 0.5 1.0
Table 6 shows that speaker A performed the best. This result suggests that suprasegmental feature-focus
instruction was effective for the Japanese learners in this study.
Table 6. Suprasegmental Focus Extra (Rapid Reading)
Speaker Rating
Word-level
intelligibility
Sentence-level
intelligibility
A 13.0 2.0 2.0
B 7.0 1.0 1.0
C -2.0 -1.0 -1.0
Lastly, Table 7 illustrates the difficulty of the rhythm task. One possible reason why this happened is
that both speakers and raters were unfamiliar or inexperienced with reading or listening to a formal
passage with a steady beat. I believe reading with a beat could be an effective task for beginning
Japanese learners of English who do not understand the differences between the stress-timed and the
mora-timed languages.
Table 7. Suprasegmental Focus Extra (Keep up with Rhythm)
Speaker Rating
Word-level
intelligibility
Sentence-level
intelligibility
A 3.5 1.0 0.0
B 3.5 1.0 0.5
C -1.0 -0.5 -0.5
The participants’ self-evaluation (see Table 8) indicated that they appreciated and enjoyed the
rhythmic focus drills using the electric metronome or tapping and clapping. Creating a fun and relaxed
classroom environment where every learner wants to come back again to join the class is the
foundation of successful education.

7. 19
Table 8. Speaker’s Self-Evaluation
1. Vowel Focus practice was useful or worked for reading aloud better.
Speaker A = 100%; Speaker B = 70%; Speaker C = 60%.
2. Consonant Focus practice was useful or worked for reading aloud better.
Speaker A = 60%; Speaker B = 100%; Speaker C = 70%.
3. Linking Focus practice was useful or worked for reading aloud.
Speaker A = 90%; Speaker B = 80%; Speaker C = 80%.
4. Rhythm Focus practice (Cats chase rats drill) was useful or worked for reading aloud better.
Speaker A = 90%; Speaker B = 80%; Speaker C = 100%.
5. Rhythm Focus practice (Word and sentence stress drill) was useful or worked for reading aloud better.
Speaker A = 90%; Speaker B = 50%; Speaker C = 90%.
6. Which do you think was worked best for reading aloud better?
Speaker A stated that 3, Linking Focus, is the best, followed by 5, 1, 4, and 2.
Speaker B stated that 5, Bridging drill, is the best, followed by 3, 1, 2, and 4
Speaker C stated that 4, Cats chase drill, is the best, followed by 5, 3, 2, and 1
Conclusion
Focusing on suprasegmental features—intonation, rhythm, length of utterance—improved
intelligibility or fluency more effectively than focusing on segmental features, such as /v/ and /b/.
Segmenting words and then blending the syllables also worked effectively. Whichever features teachers
focus on, it is essential that they guide learners into the rhythm of the English world.
References
Celce-Murcia, M., Brinton, D. M., & Goodwin, J. M. (2010). Teaching pronunciation. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Gilbert, J. B. (2005). Clear speech. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Matsuoka, N. (2007). More power for the TOEIC® test. Tokyo: Kinseido.
Naruke, M. (2011). 90% of Japanese are not in need of English. Tokyo: Shodensha.
Ogawa, N. (1998). You can master pronunciation in two weeks! Tokyo: Hearing Marathon Editorial
Department.
Wells, J. C. (2006). English intonation: An introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.