Abstract
This study uses a multiple-choice vocabulary survey containing 50 Japanese words of Chinese origin to examine the effectiveness of presenting both the Cantonese and corresponding Japanese pronunciation of the characters in the phonetic teaching of Kanji (Chinese characters used in Japanese) to Cantonese-speaking learners of Japanese at a large urban university in Malaysia. The average score for the correct answers achieved by the 30 respondents was 35.7 out of 50. The average amount of Kanji newly acquired by the participants was 30.83 out of 50. At a 5% confidence level, a clear significant difference was found in their scores before and after the Cantonese pronunciations were presented (t = 26.41, p = 0.000). From these results, this study concludes that the explicit presentation of Cantonese pronunciation benefits Cantonese-speaking Malaysian university students when beginning to learn Japanese as a foreign language.
