Hey everyone!

The other day in my Japanese class, my teacher started insisting that every time there was a long vowel/double vowel in a word instead of just elongating the sound as in おばあさん　where you would just say hold the “a” longer (another beat), she wants us to say it again as in: O-Ba-ah-san or O-to-oh-san. This immediately sounded odd to me because I’ve never heard it dealt with that way.

She did say that you are supposed to just hold the vowel sound but said, in her experience, that English speakers have a hard time holding it for the whole beat that is necessary so this is better.

Has anyone else come across this? I understand what she is saying but I’m not sure if I should practice words this way. Will it transition easily into just holding the vowel or will it just take longer for me to get it down? Am I going to sound foolish if I speak to a native speaker like this? Does it not make a difference?