English Pronunciation: Why Your Students Find It Hard And How You Can Help

Table of Contents

Why is it that even after years of study, many English learners still struggle with pronunciation? Today, we’ll explore what makes pronunciation such a challenge – especially for your students from Japan – and share some ways to help!

Reason #1: Different speech sounds

When we talk, we make different sounds by moving our mouth and our tongue in different ways. These are called “speech sounds,” and every language has its own unique set of them. For example, English has around 44 different speech sounds.

Here are some consonant sounds:

The TH sound in “the” and “there.”
The V sound in “vet” and “very.”

And here are some vowel sounds:

The "e" vowel sound in “bed” and “pet.”
The "i" vowel sound in “chick” and “tip.”
The "a" vowel sound in “mad” and “cat.”

It just so happens that all the sounds listed above don’t exist in many languages, including Japanese. In fact, English has nearly twice as many distinct vowel and consonant sounds as Japanese.

This means that there are a lot of sounds in English that Japanese students won’t be able to easily pronounce. In fact, they may not even recognize them as distinct sounds.

For example, since the TH sound doesn’t exist in Japanese, Japanese people have problems hearing it. So if you say “mouth,” many Japanese people will think you’re saying “mouse.”

The R and L sounds are another example of this. Because the Japanese R sound is somewhere in between the English R and L sounds, Japanese speakers have problems differentiating between them. So if you say “rice,” they might hear “lice” and vice versa.

Here are some more common pronunciation mistakes that Japanese students make because certain speech sounds either don’t exist or aren’t considered distinct sounds in Japanese:

What they’re trying to say	What they actually say	Why?
Work	Walk	The ER sound doesn’t exist in Japanese.
Who’d, who’ll	Food, Fool	The H sound in Japanese approaches an F sound when it occurs before “oo” sounds.
Sit, seat	Sheet	In Japanese, there is only a SHI syllable – no syllable that is just S followed by an I or EE sound. (You can imagine how they mispronounce the words “sit” and “city”!)
Live	Leave	In Japanese, there’s no distinction between lax and tense vowels, such as the vowels in “leave” and “live.”
Hat, Hut	Hot	In Japanese, there’s no distinction between these three vowels, so they will default to pronouncing it the Japanese way – like the first vowel sound in “father.”

Reason #2: Different sound systems

Every language has its own unique “phonology” or “sound system.” This system is how we put sounds together to form syllables, words, sentences and more.

As an example, say the words “ducks” and “dogs” and listen to the word endings. You probably noticed that the S at the end of “ducks” sounds like an S but the one at the end of “dogs” sounds more like a Z. (If you need help, listen to these recordings: “ducks” and “dogs.”)

This has to do with something called “voiced consonants” and how the S after a voiced consonant becomes more like a Z. This is one of many phonological rules in English you either picked up naturally or learned in an English class (if you had a good pronunciation teacher!).

Another phonological rule is that English syllables can end with a TS sound but they can’t start with one. For example, the words “boots” and “parents” both end in -TS. But you won’t find any English words that start with the TS sound.

For example, the word “tsunami” starts with letters T and S, honoring its Japanese origins. But most native English speakers ignore the T at the beginning and just say “sunami.” That’s because starting a word with the TS sound is against English rules of phonology!

In the same way, our students are also limited by the sound system of their native language. If you’ve ever wondered why Japanese students add an extra vowel to the end of every word, it’s because of phonology.

In Japanese, the only consonant sounds that can end a syllable are N and NG. All other syllables end in one of five vowel sounds. That’s why Japanese learners add extra vowel sounds: “cat” becomes “cat-to,” “dog” becomes “dog-gu,” and “judge” becomes “judg-y.”

A similar reason explains why Taiwanese and Thai learners drop final consonants. For example, unless they’re being careful with their pronunciation, they will likely end up pronouncing “name” and “Nate” as “nay.” Many aspects of English pronunciation that we take for granted are against the rules of their phonology!

What does this mean for English tutors?

You’re now familiar with two fundamental reasons your students mispronounce things in English: different speech sounds and different sound systems. But how do you help them overcome these challenges?

When you encounter a word or phrase that your student seems to have trouble pronouncing, try the following two-step process.

Step 1. Repeat the word a few times

Repeat the word a few times, emphasizing the part that they’re struggling with. For example, if they’re saying “nay” instead of “name,” emphasize the M sound at the end: “Nammmmmmmme.” Ask your student to mindfully repeat after you.

Step 2. Focus on teaching mouth movements

If they still have trouble, this might be because the speech sound does not exist in their language. In this case, continuing to repeat the word won’t help since they might not be able to hear it at all.

Instead, focus on teaching the physical movements needed to make those sounds.

Show your student how your mouth and tongue move.
Find diagrams or videos that show how they should move their mouth – we recommend this free resource by Baruch College.
Have them practice making the sounds themselves.
Ask them to focus on how the sounds feel in their mouth.

It also helps to have them compare the sounds to ones that they are already familiar with, such as through minimal pair exercises. You can get an idea of this from these two blog posts: “R or L? 3 Easy Ways to Teach Students the Difference” and “’Beet’ or ‘Bit’? ‘Eat’ or ‘It’? — How to Teach the Difference.”

Tip: Be realistic about how quickly they’ll improve

Just remember to be realistic about how much your student can improve during the lesson. Since a lot of their pronunciation problems are rooted in differences in speech sounds and sound systems, they will need to practice a lot to make noticeable improvements.

What you can do is leave a note for yourself to check the student’s pronunciation in future lessons. And if you notice they’ve improved, tell them! Students find it encouraging to hear they’ve improved and will feel more certain they’re making progress!

That’s it for now!

We hope you enjoyed learning about the main reasons your students struggle with English pronunciation. If you want to learn even more about pronunciation, check out these other blog posts too:

Happy tutoring!