Stephen Paton

Steve Paton (Med; CELTA) taught English in his hometown of Sydney, Australia, before moving to Japan in 2008. His professional interests include automaticity in language learning and educational technology.

Consonant clusters: one beat at a time

Each language background brings with it some particular challenges when it comes to English pronunciation. These include certain phonemes, intonation characteristics or stress patterns. One feature of English pronunciation that my Japanese learners have special difficulty with is consonant clusters, and their speaking can often be augmented with copious superfluous syllables.