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Reducing Accent In English -What Will Native Japanese Speakers Benefit From Most?, Asako Higurashi

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This paper examines some of the characteristic phonetic differences between Japanese and English and points out major difficulties in pronunciation for Japanese learners of English.

English education in Japan focused on mainly reading and writing English for a long time, and little attention has been given to pronunciation teaching and to the development of effective strategies to address the problem (Saito, 2007). Therefore, Japanese learners of English tend to have difficulty in learning English pronunciation. In addition to that, English classes cannot always have native speakers of English as teachers and Japanese English teachers often lack self-confidence in English pronunciation …