The intonation patterns of Japanese and English do not have many features in common. Some of the meaning that the English native speaker conveys by stress and/or a change of pitch is differently expressed in Japanese (for example, by adverbials). Learners often benefit from explicit instruction and practice in these areas. In general, however, those learners who have had significant exposure to English and have become competent in it often acquire much more natural English prosody than, for example, Spanish or French with comparable levels of English proficiency.