This action research aims to solve pressing day-to-day problems in
communication faced by four expatriate Japanese adult learners who are
residing in Sabah, Malaysia after retirement. The Japanese language
sound system is different from that of the English Language. As such
some of its prosodic features such as stress, intonation and rhythm
interfere with Japanese learners’ pronunciation of English connected
speech. We embark on improving one of these factors, i.e. English
rhythms, after conducting our initial action research. The intervention
dealt with in this study is a shadowing technique which was originally
developed as a training technique for simultaneous interpreting. It is
embedded in an information-processing model propagated by
McLaughlin (1978) who viewed second language learning as two
performance behaviors i.e. controlled process, or automatic process.
Four adult Japanese learners of English participated as the respondents
in this study. Data was collected through learners’ reflective journals,
tape recordings of shadowing, and observation. Five action core
research cycles were implemented until the learners achieved their goal.
The finding shows recognizable improvement of the participants in their
pronunciation namely English rhythms. This is to a large extent