accent

summary of replies re: teaching Japanese accent and intonation (from senseionline@yahoogroups)

Irina Shport, Jan 20, 2007

1. textbooks and teaching materials that introduce accent/intonation

- Jorden, E. H. & M. Noda (1987). Japanese, the spoken language. New Haven: Yale University Press. As David Ashworth sensei pointed out, in all three volumes of this textbook the accent is marked throughout. Jorden & Noda use different symbols to mark high, rising and falling tones, as well as some intonational contours. Noriko Iwasaki sensei pointed out that the "authors recommend that students should rely on the audio, and should only look at the Romanized scripts when they cannot hear the sounds well from audio materials and never read it."

- Tanaka, Shinichi & Haruo Kubozono (1999). Nihongo no hatsuon kyoshitsu: riron to renshu = Introduction to Japanese pronunciation: theory and practice. Tokyo: Kuroshio Publisher. This book was pointed out by Maki Shimotani sensei. First two chapters of this book are "Japanese vowels and consonants" and "Special moras and rhythm". Exercises for this chapters might be helpful for teachers who like Fumiko Tachibana sensei try to teach moraic structure and rhythm in their classrooms, focusing on long vowels, long consonants and moraic nasals. Chapters 3-4 are about the pitch accent and intonation, with helpful example and exercises. A CD accompanies this textbook.

- Susumu Nagara (1990). Japanese for everyone. Tokyo: Gakken. Marian Sheeran sensei mentioned this textbook.

- Kawano, Toshiyuki (2004). Ichinichi 10-pun no hatsuon renshu. Tokyo: Kuroshio Publisher. Yumiko Kawanishi sensei brought to my attention this resource. It is virtually impossible to get this book through the interlibrary loan because its edition is very limited. But you can access its materials online at <http://home.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/hiroshim/pg.html>

- Also, Maki Shimotani sensei referred me to this resource: Gengogaku to Nihongo kyooiku (I & II). Tokyo: Kuroshio Shuppan. This seems to be an insightful collection of articles on Japanese language teaching from linguistics prospective. The first volume was published in 1999 (PL519 .G46), and the second volume was published in 2001 (PL519 .G46).

2. Do you teach accent / intonation in your classroom?

Of course, there is a big variation in teacher's attitude regarding this question. Many of us, though, seem to teach accent when we come across minimal pairs of homonyms that are different only in their accentual pattern, e.g., 「うどん一杯」（「いっぱい」＝HLL）と「うどんいっぱい」（「いっぱい」＝LHH). There is a point of view that prosody should not be marked in textbooks, because you can't mark enough details in the text, so that students' reproductions of prosodic contours sound natural. If you are interested in the argument, you can read it in

Hasegawa, Y. (1995). Against Marking Accent Locations in Japanese Textbooks. Japanese-Language Education Around the Globe, 5, 95-103. Downloaded from <http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~hasegawa/Accent/accent.html>.

Another opinion is that we can teach prosody once students have mastered phonology of Japanese. However, we know that students might have difficulties producing long vowels, for example, in their second year of Japanese. For how long then teaching accent and intonation may be "put on hold"? It might work for a Japanese classroom that adopts a communicative approach, because even if the accent / intonation is wrong, it is still clear from the context what students mean. This opinion is stated in

Han, M. (1963). The Problem of Pitch in the Teaching of Japanese. The Journal-Newsletter of the Association of Teachers of Japanese, 1:1, 5-9.

It seems that the decision on whether to teach Japanese prosody in the classroom or not would depend on the teaching approach / method you use and, consequently, course goals. For example, if the ultimate goal is to sound native-like, then students benefit from teaching prosody even at the beginning levels. However, if the goal is to communicate with native speakers / be able to function in Japan, then Japanese prosody does not have to be explicitly introduced.