抄録
Discrimination drill which gives students practice in discriminating phonetic contrasts in such a pair as: He gave his vote to the woman. He gave his boat to the woman, now appears frequently in most LL texts. This type of drill is based on the theory of structural linguistics and might be an indispensable step toward acquisition of linguistic competence, but still the method of drill presentation presents problems. The present writer concerns himself with (1) discrimination ability among native speakers (2) cause of failure in sound discrimination among native speakers (3) the educational significance of sound discrimination drills in learning language. To study the above, a series of experiments with both native speakers and Japanese students have been made. As an interim report we can conclude the following: (1) native speakers cannot distinguish all phonemic pairs with equal ease, (2) the recording quality of the discrimination drills markedly affects perception and sound distinction, (3) sound discrimination drills have some significance, but comprehension practice is as important, or sometimes more important, so we should make a deliberate plan as to how much and when students practice phonetic contrast drills.
