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Introduction

In an attempt to take some of the pain out of learning the kind of clear English pronunciation that reduces communication problems, I have here devised a set of memorable sentences as practice drills. The full range of English sounds is gone through systematically and spoon-fed in a form overseas students will want to repeat to themselves — and then to the world.

First they might think it's a kind of entertainment, but before they know it they'll be speaking like a native!

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The 20 Vocalic and Diphthongal Sounds

The 24 Consonantal Sounds

Problem Sounds for Japanese Learners

The Japanese language has roughly half as many sounds as English, but this doesn't prevent it from eagerly soaking up vast quantities of Western words and expressions. This process is uniquely facilitated by the existence of the katakana phonetic script, which basically compresses foreign words into the same limited range of sounds available for native ones. The Japanese themselves think that this system is very smart. The downside is that school children face an almost impossible task unlearning it when approaching real English in the classroom. They fail to distinguish between the separate English sounds in, for example, birth, bus and bath — all of which for local convenience are similarly transcribed in the katakana syllabary. 

After more than a decade of teaching English in Japan, I have come up with the following series of contrastive sounds that Japanese speakers really need to learn to tell apart if they are to avoid comprehension difficulties with English speakers who are unfamiliar with Japanese.