Rrrrrr!

Today I was giving conversation 'tests.' These are more to satisfy my students' need to be studying for something rather than to satisfy me. It also keeps the universities happy if I show I have tested students. I make the tests worth 15% of their grade, and grade them all high because basically, they've all learned to communicate a little in English, and that was what I was aiming for.

The students get very nervous about this test and tend to overdo things a bit. One student today, having apparently swallowed whole the notion that r is the most difficult sound for Japanese learners of English (it isn't, really), decided to rhoticize his entire output. He put an r into every single word whether it was originally there or not. His partner had a hard time understanding the strangulated sounds that emerged, but I have to admit it was fascinating. He has learned the American r perfectly. He does a better r than I do.

He added two to wow.

"Wrorw!" he said, in an amazed tone, in response to something his partner said.

He had apparently also heard that foreigners use gestures more than Japanese people do, so there was a lot of hand-flapping added for good measure. But he couldn't quite bring himself to flap any higher than the elbow, and the effect, while appealingly earnest, was also rather disturbingly camp.

I scored him high, of course. It is not his fault that the Japanese English education system has never quite come to grips with the blindingly obvious fact that the first place to start when you are learning a new language is with the sound system. That he is making this much effort on his own is a credit to him. I find it hard to teach much pronunciation in the time I have and with the syllabus I am supposed to be following. Good for him, I say. He is willing to make foreign noises, and that's a huge step in the right direction. And once you got used to the odd sounds he was making, and the hand-flapping, his communicative skills were actually pretty good.

He was happy with his grade, and told me so, twisting his hands eloquently.

"Ire'm verrry harrrpy," he said. "Ire warrs verry nerrvourrs."

"But I can tell you've studied hard," I replied. "You deserve a good grade."

He looked pleased. "Yerrs, Ir sturrdierd verrry harrrd," he said. "Ir thirnk Ir've irmprroverd."

I've decided to add a little more pronunciation practice to next semester's classes.


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