• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.15 no.8
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• pp.579-587
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• 2015

The purpose of this study is to investigate how Korean learners perceive English vowels and further to test SLM which claims that new L2 vowel categories are more easily acquired than similar L2 vowel categories. Twenty Korean learners participated in English-to-Korean mapping test and English vowel identification test with target vowels /i, ɪ, u, ʊ, ɛ, æ/. The result revealed that Korean participants mapped the English pairs /i/-/ɪ/ and /u/-/ʊ/ onto single Korean vowel /i/ and /u/, respectively. in addition, both of English /ɛ/ and /æ/ were simultaneously mapped onto Korean /e/ and /ɛ/. This indicated that the Korean participants seemed to have perceptual difficulty for the pairs /i-ɪ/, /u-ʊ/, and /ɛ-æ/. The result of the forced-choice identification test showed that the accuracy of /ɪ, ʊ, æ/(ɪ: 81.3%, ʊ: 62.5%, æ: 60.0%) was significantly higher than that of /i, u, ɛ/(i: 28,8%, u: 28.8%, ɛ: 32.4%). Thus, the claim of SLM is confirmed given that /ɪ, ʊ, æ/ are new vowel categories whereas /i, u, ɛ/ are similar vowel categories. Further, the conspicuously low accuracy of the similar L2 vowel categories /i, u, ɛ/ was accounted for by over-generalization whereby the Korean participants excessively replaced L2 similar /i, u, ɛ/ with L2 new /ɪ, ʊ, æ/ as the participants were learning the L2 new vowel categories in the process of acquisition. Based on the findings this study, pedagogical suggestions are provided.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.285-294
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• 2021

Motivated by the mixed results in the previous studies on the relationship between speech production and perception, the current study aims to investigate the relationship between production and perception in depth through a case study on how Korean EFL university students produce and perceive American English vowels. To this end, 19 Korean students at a university located in the Seoul-metropolitan area participated in the production and perception tests on American English vowels to elucidate the precedence relationship and the correlation between production and perception. Results showed that precedence of neither perception nor production was found in the overall result. However, either precedence of perception or production was found for the vowels [ɛ], [α], [ɔ], [u], which implies that the precedence relationship between production and perception varies depending on individual vowels. As for the correlation between production and perception, no correlation was attested between production and perception, suggesting that production and perception skills are not closely linked for these participants. Given that mastering language requires to coordinate two distinct production and perception skills and that L2 learners' preception and production skills become more closely connected as the learners' L2 experience and proficiency increases, no correlation between production and perception attested by the current EFL students implies that the correlation between production and perception varies during the course of foreign language/L2 acquisition in such a way that production and perception skills become increasingly related. Implications of the findings were further discussed and pedagogical suggestions were provided.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.23-34
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• 2021

This study aims to discuss how Egyptian learners of Korean perceive and categorize Korean vowels, how Koreans perceive Korean vowels they pronounce, and how Egyptian learners' Korean vowel categorization affects their perception and production of Korean vowels. In Experiment 1, 53 Egyptian learners were asked to listen to Korean test words pronounced by Koreans and choose the words they had listened to among 4 confusable words. In Experiment 2, 117 sound files (13 test words×9 Egyptian learners) recorded by Egyptian learners were given to Koreans and asked to select the words they had heard among 4 confusable words. The results of the experiments show that "new" Korean vowels that do not have categorizable ones in Egyptian Arabic easily formed new categories and were therefore well identified in perception and relatively well pronounced, but some of them were poorly produced. However, Egyptian learners poorly distinguished "similar" Korean vowels in perception, but their pronunciation was relatively well identified by native Koreans. Based on the results of this study, we argued that the Speech Learning Model (SLM) and Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM) explain the L2 speech perception well, but they are insufficient to explain L2 speech production and therefore need to be revised and extended to L2 speech production.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.27-35
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• 2023

This study aimed to investigate the effect of Chinese on the production of Korean rhythm. Korean and Chinese are typologically classified into different rhythmic categories; because of this, the phonological properties of Korean and Chinese are similar and different at the same time. As a result, Chinese can exert both positive and negative influences on the realization of Korean rhythm. To investigate the influence of the rhythm of the native language of L2 learners on their target language, we conducted an acoustic analysis using acoustic metrics like of the speech of 5 Korean native speakers and 10 advanced Chinese Korean learners. The analyzed material is a short paragraph of five sentences containing a variety of syllable structures. The results showed that KS and CS rhythms are similar in %V, VarcoV, and nPVI_S. However, CS, unlike KS, showed characteristics closer to those of a stress-timed language in the values of %V and VarcoV. There was also a significant difference in nPVI_V values. These results demonstrate a negative influence of the native language in the realization of Korean rhythm. This can be attributed to the fact that all vowels in Chinese sentence are not pronounced with the same emphasis due to neutral tone. In this sense, this study allowed us to observe influences of L1 on L2 production of rhythm.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.19-33
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• 2019

This paper examines the perception of Korean phonemes by Egyptian learners of Korean and presents the learnability gradient of Korean consonants and vowels through High Variability Phonetic Training (HVPT). 50 Egyptian learners of Korean (27 low proficiency learners and 23 high proficiency learners) participated in 10 sessions of HVPT for Korean vowels, word initial and final consonants. Participants were tested on their identification ability of Korean vowels, word initial consonants, and syllable codas before and after the training. The results showed that both low and high proficiency groups did benefit from the training. Low proficiency learners showed a higher improvement rate than high proficiency learners. Based on the HVPT results, a learnability gradient was established to give insights into priorities in teaching Korean sounds to Egyptian learners.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.27-36
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• 2014

This study provided longitudinal examination of the Chinese learners' acquisition of Korean vowels. Specifically, I examined the Chinese learners' Korean monophthongs /i, e, ɨ, ${\Lambda}$, a, u, o/ that were created at the time of 1 month and 12 months, tried to verify empirically how they learn by dealing with their mother tongue, and Korean vowels through dealing with pattern of the Perceptual Assimilation Model (henceforth PAM) of Best (Best, 1993; 1994; Best & Tyler, 2007) and the Speech Learning Model (henceforth SLM) of Flege (Flege, 1987; Bohn & Flege, 1992, Flege, 1995). As a result, most of the present results are shown to be similarly explained by the PAM and SLM, and the only discrepancy between these two models is found in the 'similar' category of sounds between the learners' native language and the target language. Specifically, the acquisition pattern of /u/ and /o/ in Korean is well accounted for the PAM, but not in the SLM. The SLM did not explain why the Chinese learners had difficulty in acquiring the Korean vowel /u/, because according to the SLM, the vowel /u/ in Chinese (the native language) is matched either to the vowel /u/ or /o/ in Korean (the target language). Namely, there is only a one-to-one matching relationship between the native language and the target language. In contrast, the Chinese learners' difficulty for the Korean vowel /u/ is well accounted for in the PAM in that the Chinese vowel /u/ is matched to the vowel pair /o, u/ in Korean, not the single vowel, /o/ or /u/.