There are many Japanese people who want to be able to speak English.I know that feeling very well, but the first thing to do is listen as an audio input.
If you're talking one-sidedly, practice speaking and you'll be fine.For example, speeches, presentations, etc.However, since it is usually "interaction" in which "listening and speaking" are mutually performed, if you cannot understand what the other person is saying, you cannot respond and the conversation will not progress.
Listening begins with matching the sounds you hear with the English sounds you have stored in your head.I can hear the sounds of foreign languages I don't know, but I have no idea what they say or what they mean.Unlike "written words," which are written separately for each word, the characteristic of English speech is that the speech changes in the sequence of words. XNUMX-XNUMX words may clump together, or consonants may disappear without being pronounced.
For example, when pronouncing I asked him a question., sentence stress is placed only on the two words asked and question and it sounds clear.Other words, however, are attenuated and voiced differently. The /h/ in him drops out and connects with asked, and the later a also connects with him.In other words, on the first beat, I asked him a becomes one clump, and on the second beat, it becomes a question.If you dare to write it in kana, the first beat is "aiAIt is pronounced suktima. If you don't know that the /h/ in him is dropped or joined, and you think it's pronounced /him/, you won't notice him here no matter how many times you hear it.
Once you can match the sounds you hear with the sounds you have in your brain, the next step is to analyze the grammatical structure of these sounds and add meaning to them so that you can understand the meaning of the sentence. (I have omitted the complicated steps in the middle).That means you have to build up the changing sounds of English in your head, and you can do that by practicing and mastering these pronunciations.These hard-to-hear pronunciations are called weak forms, and they are essential for improving listening skills.These words are called function words, and are groups of words that are semantically insignificant, such as articles, prepositions, conjunctions, personal pronouns, and auxiliary verbs.Moreover, most of them are basic vocabulary learned in junior high school, but weak pronunciations are not learned.It's a simple word when you see it written down, but you'll find it difficult when you hear it aloud.
Also, even with words, if you don't memorize them by their sounds rather than their spellings, they won't help you in listening.Again, you are expected to memorize the words by pronouncing them.Important words are pronounced with stress so they sound clear.On the other hand, weak words are pronounced weakly and vaguely and undergo phonetic changes, making them difficult to listen to.
In Japanese, each sound is pronounced clearly, taking the same amount of time.On the other hand, English uses a stress rhythm, so pronunciation has a stress rhythm, and even if the number of words increases, the stress number becomes the number of beats. It's not meant to be long.Even if you try to listen to English as if it were Japanese, there are ambiguous and weak pronunciations, disappearing sounds, and connected sounds, so you can't hear it.
For example, Cats eat meat. has three beats because all words are stressed.I will add more words below, but since they are all in the weak form (weak beat), all sentences are pronounced on the same three beats (=all sentences are pronounced at the same time).
The cats / eat / meat. → The cats / will eat the / meat. → The cats / will have eaten / the meat.
On the other hand, if you read these English sentences with the rhythm of Japanese, the more words you have, the longer the reading time will be.Have you ever sung an English song and found that the lyrics were still there after the score was finished?Because there is such a difference between English rhythm and Japanese rhythm.
<Continued to Part 2>
