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Showing posts from January, 2011

Teaching English /r/ and /l/ to Asian EFL learners: a lexical approach (Part II)

This is the second part of a series on teaching English /l/ and /r/. The piece published below incorporates the first installment and then discusses possible sequences for teaching English /l/ and /r/. Teaching English /r/ and /l/ to Asian EFL learners: a lexical approach (Part I-II)   Charles Jannuzi University of Fukui, Japan Introduction English /r/, /l/ and contrasts between these two categories of sounds are often cited as pronunciation and listening perception problems for a variety of EFL learners, most from E. Asia. The language backgrounds most often associated with these problems are Japanese, Korean, Chinese and some languages of SE Asia (e.g. Thai but also Cantonese Chinese). Other language speakers have also expressed an interest in improving their pronunciation of English /r/ and /l/, including Russian and German EFL learners. Perhaps the most well-known group to have a problem with the two categories of sounds is Japanese EFL learners. This could be because...