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In Japan, many scientific terms are katakana loanwords from English. However, significant phonological gaps often exist between the original English pronunciation and the katakana counterpart, potentially hindering auditory recognition. To investigate how to overcome this issue, we examined the extent of the visual and auditory gaps with two groups of pharmacy students.
Two intact classes of third-year pharmacy students participated in this study (n = 100). One class was assigned to the reading (visual) condition (n = 50), and the other to the listening (auditory) condition (n = 50). Participants were tested on 30 scientific terms categorized into three groups based on the degree of the phonological gap from their katakana counterparts: Group A (small gap), Group B (medium gap), and Group C (large gap). Two-way ANOVA and Tukey’s post-hoc tests were conducted to analyze the interaction between presentation modality (between-subjects factor) and the gap size (within-subjects factor).
A two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed a highly significant interaction between the presentation modality and the phonological gap, F(1.86, 182.53) = 43.52, p < .001. In the reading condition, no significant difference in accuracy was observed regardless of the gap size, with a consistently high recognition rate. Conversely, in the listening condition, the accuracy rate decreased as the gap increased; specifically, significant differences were confirmed between Group A and Groups B/C. Furthermore, auditory recognition was substantially lower than visual recognition across all groups.
The results indicate that while Japanese pharmacy students have acquired English technical terms as "textual information," the phonological gap with katakana English significantly hinders their auditory recognition. This suggests that prior knowledge based on Japanese-style katakana pronunciation can interfere with recognition of the original English pronunciation. Consequently, future pharmaceutical English education should incorporate audio-focused training to address these phonological discrepancies.