- PhD, professor Emeritus/ Faculty of foreign language Studies, Kansai University
- PhD, Kansai University 2006;
- MA, Kobe City University of Foreign Studies 1979
- Kansai University 2002-present;
- Konan Women’s University 1991-2002;
- Tezukayama College 1979-1991
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My main research interest has been on foreign language education based upon theories in phonetics. One aspect of my research concerns the mechanism of listening comprehension of language learners. When EFL learners listen to spoken English, prosodic factors such as rhythm, intonation, pauses, and speech rate have a great influence on their comprehension. I am interested in analyzing the effects of these prosodic elements on learners’ listening comprehension
A second aspect of my study focuses on the examination of prosodic features of speech produced by Japanese learners of English with the aid of a computer-assisted acoustic analyzer. It is generally agreed that compared with native speakers of English, non-native speakers tend to use a narrower pitch range when they speak in English. My interest in this field is to investigate how learners’ pronunciation is improved by having them "see" their pronunciation in waveforms using a speech analyzer.
A third and more recent area of my inquiry concerns the intelligibility of English spoken by Japanese learners; specifically, to what extent is Japanese English intelligible to native speakers? It is reasonable to assume that there may be some errors in pronunciation which are relatively more understandable for native speakers, while other errors severely disrupt communication.
