Improvement of Katakana for English Karaoke and Its Effects on the Improvement of Pronunciation Through Singing Exercise
英語カラオケ用カタカナ・ルビの改善と歌唱練習による発音向上の検証

湯舟 英一, 井上 高志, 濱屋 宗人
2020 LET Kanto Journal  
The exiting type of katakana alongside the English lyrics for Karaoke is far different from its phonetic realization of the original song phrase. Under these circumstances, we proposed a new katakana system which approaches the real rhythm and phonetic realization of the original English songs. In so doing, we attempted to reconcile the trade-offs among the phonetic reproducibility, visibility, and affinity so that Japanese learners or singers may have less cognitive load and entertain
more » ... s to have a feeling of self-efficacy. We also report an experiment to verify the effects of our new katakana system on the improvement of pronunciation through singing exercise. The results of the evaluations by five raters in terms of six phonetic evaluation items show that singing the target song along with the new katakana five times leads to better phonetic performance in most of the evaluation items. The results of the questionnaire also support the effectiveness and validity of our new katakana system, suggesting that it may help learners sing or read aloud English phrases and sentences more fluently with greater confidence and motivation.
doi:10.24781/letkj.4.0_21 fatcat:hsalotnvaregvmiu73f7htuxta