• MALSORI
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• no.48
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• pp.69-80
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• 2003

음성 영어교육에서 각 음소(모음.자음) 음가 인식이 중요한 것은 물론이지만, 실제로 영어를 듣고 말하는 데는 강세모음과 약음(주로 음)이 번갈아들며 엮어내는 영어 특유 말씨 박자에 대한 이해가 오히려 더 중요한 면이 있다. 그런데 영어 철자가 자음 정보는 비교적 잘 보여주지만, 모음 정보는 정확히 알려주지 못한다. 이를테면 (equation omitted)를 적는 철자가 각각 20가지 이상이며, 특히 쭉정모음(schwa) $\partial$를 적는 철자는 무려 90가지가 넘는다. 이 $\partial$는 강세 그늘에서 비록 짧고 약하게 발음되지만 영어에서 딴 어느 모음보다도 훨씬 높은 빈도를 보이기 때문에 [(equation omitted)] 음가와 그것이 있는 자리, 즉 철자 밑에 숨어 그 존재를 알기 어려운 $\partial$ 음의 소재를 철저히 파악하는 것은 영어를 잘 듣고 영어답게 말하는 데에 필수 요체라 할 수 있다. 이 글에서는 쭉정모음(schwa) [$\partial$]를 포함한 영어 주요 모음 철자 다양성을 고찰하여 우리나라 음성 영어 교육(TEFL/TESOL)에 귀중한 참고 자료를 제공하고, 이를 통한 올바른 영어 발음 학습 태도를 제언한다.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.20 no.8
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• pp.101-113
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• 2020

This study aimed to explore how effective explicit form-focused instruction (FFI) is in teaching the schwa vowel /ə/ to EFL students in a classroom setting. The participants were 25 female high school students, who were divided into the experimental group (n=13) and the control group (n=12). One female American also participated in the study for a speech sample as a reference. The treatment, which involves shadowing model pronunciation by the researcher and a free text-to-speech software and the researcher's feedback in a private session, was given to the control group over a month and a half. The speech samples, for which the participants read the 14 polysyllabic stimulus words followed by the sentences containing the words, were collected before and after the treatment. The paired-samples t test and non-parametric Wilcoxon signed-rank test were used for analysis. The results showed that the participants of the experimental group in the post-test reduced the duration of the schwa by around 40 percent compared to the pre-test. However, little effect was found in approximating the participants' distribution patterns of /ə/ measured by the F1/F2 formant frequencies to the reference point, which was 539 Hz (F1) by 1797 Hz (F2). The findings of this study suggest that explicit FFI with multiple repetitions and corrective feedback is partly effective in teaching pronunciation.

• Proceedings of the Acoustical Society of Korea Conference
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• spring
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• pp.321-324
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• 2000

한국어는 어두에서 유성파열음이 나타나지 않고 약한 기식이 있는 연자음으로 실현되므로 영어의 유성파열음을 발음하기 어렵다. 한국인이 어두 유성파열음을 습득할 때 후속하는 모음의 높이가 영향을 미치리라 가정하고 /이, 에, 어, 우/ 4개의 모음을 선택하여 어두유성파열음 의 VOT에 영향을 미치는가를 단독단어와 문장에서 살펴보았다. native, 숙련자, 미숙련자의 세 그룹으로 나누어 실시한 결과 native의 경우 후속하는 모음이 어두파열음의 VOT에 영향을 끼치지 않았으며, 이러한 경향은 숙련자 그룹에서도 지켜짐을 알 수 있었다. 그러나 미숙련자 그룹인 경우 고모음이 저모음에서보다 VOT가 현저하게 길었고 통계검사 결과 유의미한 차이를 보여, 고모음에서 유성발음을 잘 못함을 알 수 있었다. native와 숙련자 그룹은 intermediate phrase(이하 iP) initial인 단어나 iP medial인 문장에서 VOT가 거의 유사한데 비해 미숙련자 그룹에서는 문장 내에서 VOT가 조금씩 짧아졌고 이 경향은 고모음에서 두드러져 통계적으로 유의미한 차이를 보였다.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.455-464
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• 2009

Based on the observation that Korean speakers of English have difficulties in producing English fricatives, a perception experiment was designed to investigate whether Korean speakers also have difficulties perceiving English labial consonants including fricatives. Forty Korean college students were asked to perform a multiple-choice identification test. The consonant perception test consisted of nonce words which contained English labial consonants [p, b, f, v] in 4 different prosodic locations: initial onset position, intervocalic position before stress, intervocalic position after stress, and final coda position. The general perception pattern was that the mean accuracy rates were higher in strong position like CV and VCVV than in weak position like VC and VVCV. The difficulties in perceiving the English targets resulted mainly from bidirectional manner confusion between stop and fricative across all prosodic locations. The other types of misidentification were due to place confusion as well as voicing confusion. Place confusion was generated mostly by the target [f] in all prosodic position due to acoustic properties. Voicing confusion was heavily influenced by prosodic position. The misperception of the participants was accounted for by phonetic properties and/or the participants' native language properties.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.167-180
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• 2005

The present study examines the phonetic realizations of the unstressed weak vowel /e/ in English words produced by native and Korean ESL speakers. Traditionally, the stressed elements in utterance are considered to be prominent. In this sense, the unstressed weak vowel /e/ is predicted to be shorter in length, lower in pitch and intensity than the stressed vowels. The experiment shows that native English speakers correlate the unstressed weak vowel /e/ with both shorter duration and lower pitch; Korean ESL speakers correlate it with lower pitch only. We cannot find any significant statistical difference in intensity between /e/ and the stressed vowels in both cases. This study suggests it is important to acquire and produce the correct prosodic correlates of the unstressed weak vowel /e/ for Korean ESL speakers to command more natural English intonation, since /e/ is the most common vowel in English speech and consists of the English foot rhythm along with stressed vowels.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.10 no.5
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• pp.460-466
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• 2010

It is well-known that Korean EFL learners have difficulties in producing English fricatives which are not in the inventory of Korean and consequently tend to replace English fricatives with stops. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether Korean students also have difficulties perceiving English anterior coronal consonants including fricatives. To this end, forty Korean college students participated in an identification test which consisted of 24 nonce words with English anterior coronal consonants in 4 different prosodic locations (CV, VC, VCVV,VVCV). It was shown that the mean accuracy rates were higher in strong position like CV and VCVV than in weak position like VC and VVCV, providing confusion matrices for each target consonant. It was also found that Korean participants had a great difficulty identifying English[$\theta$] and [$\eth$], which are novel in Korean. Importantly, the confusion patterns found in the perception test tended not to be identical with those found in the previous production studies in that both stops and fricatives were misperceived as fricatives while fricatives were misproduced as stops. Further, perceptual devoicing and intervocalic voicing were attested inVC and intervocalic position, respectively. Based on the findings of this study, pedagogical implications were drawn.