Emiri

今日はアクセントの付け方、鼻濁音、無声化、長音などについて勉強しました。Emiri先生は、細かいところまでバッチリ聞き取れて、調音のやり方を詳しく説明してくださいました。微妙に変えることで、音の違いを作り出せたのは、本当に面白い体験でした。こういう練習で、日本語のリスニング力も上達できると思います。ありがとうございました。

Today was my 50th lesson. Emiri usually prepares a short text appropriate to my level of reading comprehension, and we use that as a starting point. She explains things at the right moment. Never overwhelming, but never missing a small mistake either. When I first learned about pitch accent, I was a little overwhelmed... Yet another major obstacle to fluency. By now it feels no different than learning kanji: just like you can reasonably predict pronunciation of compound words at some points, do I now also begin to recognize patterns in pitch accent as well. I am very grateful for all the effort Emiri has put into our lessons. It has been equally helpful to progress, and motivating to keep learning Japanese.

Emiri is a great teacher. The basics of Japanese pronunciation are perhaps not so hard, but there is so much more to it that is never addressed in textbooks. If you want to sound clearer, I can highly recommend her classes.

I learned a lot about the hiragana pronunciations during this first lesson. Emiri先生 was very good at explaining how to position the tongue and shape the lips to form the proper sounds. It was useful to know what I had been doing wrong, and what the letters should sound like instead. I look forward to improving my Japanese pronunciation through more lessons with her.

エミリ先生、本日はありがとうございました！ 先生はとても熱心で、特にアクセントや発音のルールの説明が非常に分かりやすかったです。今までなんとなくで発音していた部分が、先生の解説のおかげで「なぜそうなるのか」をしっかり理解できました。あっという間の楽しいレッスンでした。また次回の授業も楽しみにしています！

This is one of my first lessons on italki. Emiri immediately provided me with actionable feedback, making it easy to improve my pronunciation and know what to focus on. I will definitely try more lessons!