Introduction
For this assignment I interviewed a Japanese student called Akiko. Akiko originates from North Tokyo and moved to England 3 and a half years ago with her husband and her son.
Akiko has a very good level of education with a degree in Psychology which she obtained in Japan. She learnt English as a compulsory subject at school and has been learning to speak English for the past 10 years. Akiko would eventually like to teach English to children in Japan. As well as English, Akiko can also speak a little Mandarin.
Akiko does not speak a lot of English outside of the classroom as the majority of her friends are Japanese. Therefore, there is not a great urgency for her to speak very much English. This may be the reason why Akiko …show more content…

Throughout our conversation, Akiko was able to answer all of my questions; however, she did hesitate and hedge quite a lot before answering most of the questions. I was not sure whether this was because she was thinking of an appropriate answer or if it took her a few moments to completely understand what I was asking her. Although it is clear that Akiko is not a native speaker, she was easy to understand. She spoke in clear sentences and elaborated on answers voluntarily; such as when I asked her what she found the most difficult about the English language, she explained that her son had told her she needs to work on her pronunciation. Akiko admitted that she found speaking English harder than the other three skills. In particular she mentioned had trouble pronouncing the letters ‘r’ and ‘l’ as they are not commonly used sounds in the Japanese language.
Suggested approaches/materials to help with development 1. Pronunciation: problems with R & L. This pronunciation issue is very common amongst Japanese learners of English as there is no specific ‘L’ sound in the Japanese language therefore when Japanese students use this letter within English words it often sounds like a mixture of /r/ and /l/. I think that the best way to help with this problem is to do lots of drilling as this would allow the student to become physically used to how to pronounce each letter. I would begin the lesson by showing a video clip of a cross section of the human