Pronunciation Success!!
February 23rd, 2007Every once in a while a very young student makes a tremendous leap and I am lucky enough to be there to witness it. Today that happened and it was wonderful!
Some background: Believe it or not, one of the most difficult words to say correctly for Japanese students is ﾒThank you.ﾓ This is such a common expression that most students learn it at home when they are very young, but unfortunately they learn to say ﾒSan-kyuﾓ instead, missing the /th/ sound. This ﾒSan-kyuﾓ (and accordingly the /s/ pronunciation instead of the correct /th/) is cemented into their lexicons, making it one of the most difficult to teach and produce without constant attention.
Back to todayﾕs class: One student, in a first year Kangaroo Kids class, spontaneously pronounced ﾒThank youﾓ correctly. After a year of practice in class, one of the techniques we use to encourage proper pronunciation came to fruition with this one seemingly simple phrase. The student produced it naturally on their own, without prompting or modeling.
Think about how many times at home and outside of class students are exposed to ﾒSan-kyuﾓ versus the time they are able to attend class and hear ﾒThank youﾓ pronounced properly. At least 100 to 1. 1000 to 1 in older students. At least. That is what makes this story so gratifying. The student was able to produce the language correctly, and more importantly, naturally.
