perfect pronunciation in Japanese

I just found this video on YouTube of a Chinese-speaker introducing herself in Japanese. She says she started learning Japanese in Jr. High and she has lived in Japan for over 12 years.

Hyunwoo Sun

I have a new interview on YouTube. This time, I would like you to meet Hyunwoo Sun. He is a Korean polyglot who excels at learning many languages. The skill which he has achieved in English just awes me. That is how I want to speak Japanese, Chinese or any language I persue. So I interviewed him to find out what he does, because I could not find that information on Hyunwoo's YouTube channel, in all the videos he has. Maybe he talks about it in Korean. I don't know because I don't know Korean at all.

Since he came to Japan on business for 2 weeks, I grabbed the opportunity to interview him. I threatened to kidnap him if he didn't tell me his secrets for language learning. So he agreed to meet me in a public place where I could not use any special tactics to extract information from him. So with the camera rolling, I set up on the streets of Shinjuku and asked him some grueling questions. And then I edited out all of my questions so the video cannot be used against me to press charges.

Of course, the truth is, I'm a tame fellow and there just wasn't room for my babbling in a YouTube video because of the length restrictions. And Hyunwoo is a great guy too whom you can learn Korean from if you are nice to him.

Really, I got a great interview from Hyunwoo Sun and I want to share it with all of you. He is one of the followers of my blog and that is how I first heard his name. So if you have questions and post comments here, he will read them and probably even reply.

from the outside in

There are some documents worth reading over at ALG World. Among them, I highly recommend Dr. J. Marvin Brown's book, From the Outside In. By reading this book, you will understand the background and proof of Automatic Language Growth. You see, a lot of people who are aware of ALG do not realize that this is a proven method. To everybody, including myself, who have just heard about AUA Thai in the last two years, it seems that this is a new approach, but in reality, AUA has been teaching Thai this way for over 20 years now! So it's not just theory. It has been tested, verified, and implemented. When they say that speaking is not necessary and will hurt your ability to acquire the language, they know what they are talking about!

Here are the things you must not do while acquiring a new language as stated in the book:

1. Don't Speak!
2. Don't Ask!
3. Don't Look Up Words!
4. Don't Take Notes!
5. Don't Think!

All of this means, don't analyze the language. We all do this naturally as adults to some degree, and if you look at the worst language learners, you will see this over analyzing. I have worked with ESL students as a teacher or conversation partner, so I have run into these people who analyze and think about the language more than anyone else, and let me tell you, they drive me nuts! They will start thinking about the language and trying to figure out how to construct a sentence and totally ignore their teacher. It's like, hey I'm going to tell you how to say it. Would you just stop thinking and start listening! But, of course, it's the system's fault. Everybody is expected to speak and everybody expects the quiet person is not getting anywhere.

A little background on Dr. Brown will show you that he had been there and done that. He had been through the FSI drilling and "practicing until it becomes automatic" type of learning. In fact, he learned Chinese through the Navy in the 1940's and was the guinea pig for the Army Method in the 50's. He is the one who proved that their methods "worked." And in 1980, he again set out to prove that practice makes perfect:

I was excited as I walked into the Japanese class that fall quarter of 1980. I had never been less than number one in a language class—and that was without trying. This time I was going to knock myself out. Getting an “A” wouldn’t be enough. Being the best in the class wouldn’t be enough. I was going to be the best the world had ever seen. You wouldn’t believe the extremes I went to.

I practiced until I could deliver it with perfect pronunciation and without a single hesitation. Then I practiced up to double speed without a hesitation.

I did this sort of thing with daily drills and quarterly speeches for three years. It didn’t work. And I could see that it never would. Not a single sentence was ever triggered by a thought. And this had been one of my requirements for success. I had set out to prove the success of practice. I proved, instead, its failure.

So, as you can see, Dr. Brown went from a motto of practice, practice, practice to a motto of don't practice! Another thing to point out is that Dr. Brown had created Thai language programs in the traditional way. He had many years of experience in revising the program and trying to improve it the traditional way. He had left AUA and when he came back is when he started the ALG way. With the old methods of teaching Thai, in 30 years he never had a single student pass his own abilities in Thai. And he wrote that after 10 years with the ALG method, he saw students passing him up all the time.

First, we need an understanding of how advanced Dr. Brown was in Thai. He studied Thai for 4 years and was immersed in Thailand for 40 years.

Now what was my own language preparation? I had studied Thai for 2 years at Cal at 3 hours a week and 2 years at Cornell at 6 hours a week. ... So when I arrived in Thailand I had been through almost 500 hours of classroom study by the Army Method. I could make near-perfect sounds once I had assembled a sentence for delivery, but I couldn’t even begin to ‘carry on a conversation’.

Where was the guinea pig after 32 years? I told you that by 1960 I thought I had arrived. Well I kept getting better and better through the 60’s ... People described my Thai as ‘legendary’ and I tended to believe them. When I gave lectures to Thai schools, the teachers would later tell me that my Thai was better than theirs. Now I knew full well how damning this comment can be, but I still lapped it up. More convincing were things like this. I phoned to speak to an American friend, and the servant who answered the phone later told him that a Thai man had called -- and swore by it. “Are you sure it wasn’t a foreigner with perfect Thai?” (he had been expecting me to call). “No. It was a Thai. I’m 100% certain.” I could see through this too, but I was succumbing to something I said earlier: ‘Short term satisfaction tends to blind us to long term goals.’

Now, the point that I am making here is that when your language skill is that much advanced and you recognize that someone else is even bettter, then that "better" person must be really, really good!

But what were the long-term goals of the guinea pig? I had set out to prove that the Army method could produce perfect speakers. Then, I thought I had proved the method right. Now, I can see that I had proved it wrong. The difference is hiding in the word ‘speak’. Then, I was thinking of ‘delivery’ (how the speaking comes out). Since my delivery was near perfect, I had proved it right. Now, I’m thinking of ‘production’ (how I get from thought to sentence). Since my production of Thai is very different from my production of English, I must have proved it wrong. Let me put it this way. When I speak Thai, I think in Thai. When I speak English, I think only in thought--I pay no attention to English.

A mif is a mental image flash. There is an article on it by David Long at the ALG World archive page. For now, I just needed to tell you what 'mif' stands for so when you read the next quote, you won't be wondering so much.

I found long ago that whenever I was in a Thai-speaking group together with other foreigners, I could easily tell whether they were better or worse than me. When I could see what they were trying to say, I would be flashing my own internal speaking (mifs), and I could easily see how my mifs compared to theirs. Was I faster or slower than them? Better or worse? Of course anyone could do the same thing for their own range. We’ve all got such a meter.

So, how long does it take for a successful student of the ALG method to pass up Dr. Brown at speaking Thai?

Our first success story came in 1988 when our course had grown to a full year. He was the first ‘student’ to pass me up. It took him about 5 years (one year of class plus 4 years of partial immersion). The most recent success story that I noticed was in 2001--after our course had reached new heights. It took her 2½ years (1½ years of class plus 1 year of partial immersion). And this is the current state of the art: 2½ years.

Remember now, I’m talking about a level above me. Her 2½ years had overtaken my 40! Notice also that my ‘bell test’ could only come at some time after a student had finished our course; that is, after a certain amount of immersion. It just so happened that the two people mentioned above worked in our department after their course and we were thus able to observe their immersion.

So, the proof is there. The concept has been proven. To sum it up, I'll state it this way. Not thinking about the language while acquiring it is far superior to drilling, practicing, and learning the language.

ALG World

I might consider ALG World the ultimate in extreme language learning and seems by far the best method there is. ALG stands for Automatic Language Growth. This is total immersion and no translation. So you start at Level 1 with no knowledge of the language and the teachers only speak in the target language. Notice that they have 2 teachers, not just one. I think that it is best to have 2 teachers in the classroom. 2 native speaking teachers. Since you start out not knowing the language, the teachers use more than just speaking in order to communicate to you. So you are understanding. You are not trying to remember words and not being asked to speak in the target language. You are just acquiring the language. Your ability to guess is what facilitates your acquisition of the language. This natural acquisition gets you native fluency. That means you speak with the facility and pronunciation of someone who grew up speaking the language.

In a way, this seems similar to an English lesson at a conversation school in Japan because the native English speaking teachers here (in Japan) cannot all be expected to be able to speak Japanese so therefor the lessons that students take at one of these "schools" is all in English. Therefor I would like to point out what some of the differences are. First and foremost, here in Japan, you get only one teacher teaching a lesson. At ALG World there are 2 teachers in the classroom. Having 2 teachers provides natural interaction and dialog for the students. With only 1 teacher, the teacher has a much bigger challenge to display the natural language. The next point is that at ALG World, the students are not under any pressure to produce output. In Japan, progress is measured by output. The pressure and stress to speak is quite counter productive. I know I can perform better and remember things more easily when I am not under any pressure. The last major difference I would like to point out is the number of hours. At ALG World, the students take class for 6 hours a day. So that would be 1500 hours in a year and could be 3000 in 2 years. The average student may take 1 or 2 hours a week of lessons in Japan. So it could all just be the number of hours. But the difference between the approaches shows up in pronunciation and facility in the language, not just the number of years it takes.

There are some videos on YouTube. This one is a Japanese lesson at ALG World.
I don't know which level that class is, but I can understand it 100%.

Here is a level 1 Thai lesson. Very interesting. It seems to me that in Thai some sounds are made with the whole mouth. It's like the sound is not just being pushed out but it is being held in the mouth. Obviously I can't describe what I mean or what I hear. But it just feels like the sounds are produced in a totally different way. Maybe it's not just some, but maybe all the sounds. I noticed this also in the movie Ong Bak. I bought this movie in May or June this year here in Japan so I've got the original Thai as well as a Japanese dub and Japanese subtitles.

If you want to know more about the ALG method, there is a presentation on YouTube divided into six parts. The first part is here.

Accents

OK, I've finally decided to write something. In my last post, I alluded to a reason for children being able to eventually speak their new language without an accent, whereas those a little older typically get stuck with an accent. Now I will tell you why that is. It is just my idea, though. So take it or leave it.

First of all, I should mention that we are talking about immigrant children. They are brought by their parents to a new country and they have to learn a new language.

What is the difference between the younger children and the older children? It is not physical. It is not that the older children or even the adults are too old to be able to speak without a foreign accent. So what is the difference?

Well, what is expected is what is different! The older you are, the more you are expected to start speaking and using your new language skills. The younger you are, the less that is expected of you. If you are only 8 years old, nobody is going to ask you to explain why the president's plan is doomed from the outset. No, you are just going to go to school, tell people your name and that is about it. You'll come home, watch hours and hours of TV, go to school and listen to your teachers and classmates talking. An 8 year old is not going to jump right in and start hacking away at the language. The younger you are, the more time you have to absorb the sounds of the language.

A high school student is at a much higher social level than an elementary school kid. The high schooler will be asked many more questions and fellow classmates will be interested in talking and finding out about the new foreign kid on the block. The high school student will be interacting and involved to a much deeper degree, while the younger brother learns how to play tag and yell, "You're it!"

So now you can see that the kids don't have any magic. They just have more time before they need to talk. They listen and learn how the language sounds. In a year, maybe two, the younger child has absorbed much more of the language and done less thinking. The older child has done much more thinking, speaking, and reinforcing bad habits.

It's essential to work on pronunciation before you get used to speaking. Lots of listening helps. At least do 2 weeks of listening before ever attempting to speak. If you really work on pronunciation in the beginning, then I think the maximum listening-only period would be about 2 months. In the beginning of language learning, the only important thing is concentrating on the sounds (pronunciations) of the language. After that, concentrate on reproducing those sounds perfectly.

Once you have pronunciation down perfectly, it will be your second nature. It won't require any extra effort.

Vox16.mp3

A keen sense of awareness

I think I have a keen sense of awareness when I am speaking. I listen to how words come out of my mouth. Even if you do not feel you can hear your own accent when speaking, you should be able to hear it if you record yourself and play it back. Listen to a recording of a native speaker of your target language. Listen to just one sentence. Concentrate on it. Get an audio editor like Audacity and save just that one sentence to a file. Convert it to an MP3 and then import it into iTunes. Then play that file in a loop. Listen to it 25 times at least. Then begin practicing the sentence. Say the sentence at the same time as the recording. Match your speed, intonation and rhythm with the recording. When you think you've got it, note how many times it took for you to get it. Was it another 25 times? If so, continue repeating 25 more times along with the recording. However many times it took for you to "get it" is the number of times you should continue. Then you will have doubled the number of times you have said this sentence. Think you're perfect now? Then record yourself and listen to your recording. Now what do you think? Do you sound like the native speaker you were listening to? If not, how do you differ? Where do you need to concentrate more on? If you follow this kind of training for a while, I believe you will develop a keen sense of awareness. You will be able to hear the way you speak even while you are speaking. From this point, you'll be able to continually improve your accent in the language. It won't take long before people mistake you for a native speaker!

Vox06.mp3
EDIT: I forgot to mention, after you try out this suggestion, come back here and give me a report. I would love to hear how it went for you.

The listening-only period

Today, I would like to tell you about the "listening-only" period of language learning. It is an idea that I first heard about on the forum over at how to learn any language dot com and I think it was Max who first posted the idea.

The idea is, when you begin learning a language, only listen and do not try speaking. You need time to get used to the sounds, rhythm and intonation of the language. If you start speaking before you are familiar with the language then you will make a habit of your poor pronunciation. And everybody knows, bad habits are hard to kick. Once you have a feel for the language and you begin speaking, you should sound pretty good and if you don't, you'll hear it yourself! You'll be able to correct yourself right away. Most likely, you will be able to sound pretty natural since the language has become a part of you.

How long should you wait before you start practicing your voice? I would say, the longer, the better. At least a minimum of 2 months. 3 or 4 months would be ideal in most situations. Right now, I am in a listening-only period for the Chinese language. I have been listening for about 4 months now. I will continue for another 3 months making a total of 7 months. During this period I listen to lessons and to radio podcasts. I try to increase my knowledge and understanding of words in the language. I call it my preparation stage because I am preparing to speak Chinese.

Do you have any comments about the listening-only period?

Vox05.mp3