the two sets of materials in assimilation of long and short AE vowels to J long (2-mora) and short (1-mora) vowel categories (temporal assimilation pattern). The long AE vowels were perceived as similar to long J vowels only when they were produced and presented in sentence context. In a second study in which the final /a/ portions of the disyllables were electronically shortened, assimilation of long AE vowels to long J categories did not differ from the original disyllable condition. This suggests that the better temporal differentiation of long and short AE vowels in the sentence condition was due to the presence of a larger rhythmic context. They have difficulty in picking up sounds (vowels) they are not familiar to. (Reiko Akahane-Yamada, Rieko Kubo, Sonja A. Trent, Kanae Nishi, James J. Jenkins 1998) Japanese English learners especially have a problem in phonological learning and inherent phonetic contrastiveness in the perception of non-native sounds. They mostly have difficulties in perceiving foreign sounds and have the tendency to convert foreign sounds to their nearest native (L1) phonemic sounds. This is not purely because Japanese language does not have the similar phonemic sound to English, but due to the lack of practicing. Most Japanese students do not get expose to NE speakers in daily life or be taught by NE speakers at school. The ideal enviroment should be: there is the individual student going through the process of acquiring an L2 in school. Central to that student's acquisition of language are all of the surrounding social and cultural processes occurring in everyday life within the student's past, present, and future, in all contexts -- home, school, community, and the broader society. Sociocultural processes include individual students' emotional responses to school, such as self-esteem, anxiety, or other affective factors. However, in most English classes, it's the one-way grammar-based education where N...
