Taka's reflections on the 29th January meeting:

I presented my study continuing from my MA research, titled as ‘Establishing what Japan English pronunciation is and its implications’. When I was doing my master's degree in London, I worked on Phonetics and the Phonology of English spoken by native Japanese speakers for my dissertation. It was an intelligibility research which looked into how ‘intelligible’ (comprehensible or understandable to put it in a very rough way) the speeches or the speakers were when judged by listeners from different language backgrounds. In my presentation, I introduced one of the experiments I did - the real-time accent judgement experiment.

Since intelligibility is a very subjective judgement made by hearers, it is necessary to ask them to point out what pronunciation features they think would cause communication breakdown, in order to state what Japan English pronunciation is. In the experiment, the listeners pointed out notable features while they were listening to the speeches, and gave comments as to why they thought they were characteristic. Measuring the intelligibility of Japan English could bring benefits to ELT in Japan in that, by letting students realise that their pronunciation is intelligible enough, we can get rid of their fear in making mistakes and raise their motivation in speaking. The most important feature, in fact, shown in the results, is rhythm, particularly caused by weak vowels remaining strong.

Irum, another presenter, talked about the current situation around the English language and education in general in Pakistan. The contrast between Pakistan and Japan was astonishing in many ways - the number of languages spoken in Pakistan, the number of students in a school, and the policy where teachers are not allowed to do any listening nor speaking activity in English classes! She also explained about the influence of British English, which can be seen in Pakistan English and the way  people have developed their own variety. Although British English seemed to remain as a standard in Pakistan, the lexicons and expressions are not always the same. Pakistan does not claim itself to be an ‘English-as-a-second-language’ country, but the status of the language appears to be high given that all instruction at university is made utterly in English; no Urdu or other local languages are permitted.

I enjoyed the friendly atmosphere of the audience and interaction with them during the presentation and the break. Thanks to all those who kindly let us in to the community and, of course, Anthony, the president, who suggested this wonderful opportunity for us, I successfully finished my first academic presentation. I bet Irum feels the same!

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