• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.35-70
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• 2003

This study investigates the acquisition of English prepositions of location and direction by Malaysian Chinese ESL learners. It was conducted with the objective of finding out which of the two types of prepositions was more problematic to the L1 Chinese learners. The study also sought to investigate the effect of age and proficiency levels in English on the acquisition of the English prepositions of location and direction by these learners. Additionally, the study sets out to determine the extent to which the L1 Chinese learners have acquired the English prepositions of location and direction. This study involved three groups of Chinese ESL learners: elementary, intermediate and advanced. They were selected based on their age and their performance on a standardized proficiency test. The instrument used to collect data was a preposition test comprising 85 items. These items on prepositions of location and direction were randomly arranged in the tasks. The test required subjects to respond to multiple choice questions, match given sentences with appropriate prepositions, fill in blanks with the appropriate prepositions, judge given sentences to see if they are grammatical or ungrammatical and correct the ungrammatical sentence by providing the appropriate prepositions. The results indicate that age and proficiency levels of the learners made a difference in the acquisition of English prepositions of location and direction. The older learners with higher proficiency levels seem to fare better than the younger and less proficient learners. The results suggest that the prepositions of location arc slightly more problematic than prepositions of directions to the L1 Chinese learners. Our data also suggest that certain prepositions of each type are more problematic than others.

• MALSORI
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• no.57
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• pp.43-58
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• 2006

This study aims to investigate whether Chinese learning Korean and Korean native speakers show any difference in length and formant structures of the Korean liquid 'ㄹ' in the environments of v_v and v_# through the acoustic analysis of 10 Chinese learners' and 10 Koreans' utterances. The acoustic analysis of L2KSC DB shows that the length and formant structures of 'ㄹ' produced by Chinese learners are significantly different from the ones by Koreans. I explain these differences by contrasting the liquids and syllable structure constraints of the two languages, Chinese and Korean. In addition, I relate the F1 and F2's values to the tongue's movement when making a constriction, and conclude that Chinese learners pronounce the 'ㄹ' in the v_# environment with the tongue lower and backer than Koreans do.

• Journal of Korean language education
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.251-268
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• 2017

This study is based on differences of syllable type between Korean and Chinese language pronunciation. For example, Nasal consonant ending 【n】 and 【${\eta}$】 reside in both Korean and Chinese phonetics simultaneously. However, in experiential training, Chinese learners will make errors in pronunciation of the Korean syllable nasal consonant ending like 【n】 and 【${\eta}$】. In the previous research, analysis of pronunciation errors were often based on the perspective of phonological system and combination of the phoneme rules. However, in this study, the analysis is based on the differences between Korean and Chinese syllables category to indicate the cause of pronunciation errors. The main findings of this study indicated that in the process of pronunciation of Chinese, nasal consonant syllable rime and its 【back】 tongue vowel are combined with each other. However, this rule does not apply in Korean pronunciation. Therefore, the Korean syllabic types like "앤, 응, 옹, 앵, 은, 온, 언" also exist in the Chinese language. When theChinese learners pronounce these types of syllables, the combination of the voweland nasal syllable rime rule will be taken, which will result in pronunciationerrors.

• 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/.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.27
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• pp.497-523
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• 2012

Characteristics of the Listening and Pronunciation of Korean Obstruents of Chinese Learners -Based on the Phonetic Experiments Using Kalvin and Praat- This study aims at investigating the characteristics of confrontation in three ways, lax/ fortis/ aspirated consonants, in Korean obstruents through experimental phonetic analysis for the Chinese Korean language learners. On one hand, as a result of comparing Korean and Chinese obstruent systems, there is no big difference regarding the articulatory location. On the other hand, in regards to the articulatory method there is a difference. In a Korean obstruent system, the confrontation presented in three ways by the strength of aspiration. On the contrary, the Chinese obstruent system showed confrontation in two ways by the existence of aspiration. To examine the difficulty of the learners caused by the above-mentioned reason objectively, this paper studied the relationship between input and output of sound through the experimental phonetic analysis such as Kalvin and Praat. To research the input of sound, the listening ability of the learners was examined by 'Choosing Consonant' among the Menu of Kalvin. As a result of that experiment, many errors were shown. They recognized the fortis as lax in the area of affricates and plosives. In the area of fricatives, they recognized affricatives as fricatives. To investigate the output of sound, the section of aspiration and the section of friction of a plosive, an affricate and a fricative in Praat, were expressed numerically. The learners' VOT of lax and affricate represented that lax was pronounced close to the fortis, and the VOT of fricatives was not shown the section of aspiration and friction clearly, and also the result showed that they pronounced a fricative like affricative-aspirated one. The result shows that the learners' pronunciation is related to the listening ability. The consequence is caused by the characteristics of the difference between Korean obstruents and Chinese ones. If the training pronunciation is conducted based on above result, it would be a better methodology in teaching Korean.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.61-68
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• 2017

The aim of this study is to investigate the prosodic aspects of ambiguous sentences in Korean produced by Chinese Korean Learners (L1: Chinese, L2: Korean). In Korean, sentence ambiguity can be caused by homonym or syntactically ambiguous structure. In spoken language however all ambiguity can be resolved by different prosodic features according to the meaning that they transmit. In this study we examined whether Chinese Korean Leaners also distinguish, in production, ambiguous sentences on the basis of prosodic characteristics. For this study 4 Korean natives speakers and 10 advanced Chinese Korean learners participated in the production test. The material analysed constituted 10 Korean sentences in which 6 sentences are lexically ambiguous and 4 sentences contain structural ambiguity. The results show that Korean native speakers produced ambiguous sentences by different prosodic structure depending on their semantic and syntactic structure. Chinese speakers also show distinct prosodic structure for different ambiguous sentences in most cases. But in the phonetic realization, the internal pitch range was greater for Korean native speakers than Chinese learners.

• Smart Media Journal
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.24-32
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• 2016

Recently, the development of electronic teaching materials and the demand of digital learners have led the needs on the education contents that replace learning from character information and the change of an information design method for this. Chinese character education in the traditional schooling mainly focuses on writing and memorization (semantic memory). This way that the stories do not exist has brought the learners' recognition that Chinese character is difficult to learn. Meanwhile, for a language study such as English, cross-media development between printed materials and audio-visual materials has been actively introduced. The method that extends episode memories along with memorization through a story is widely used. Therefore, this content suggests a prototype, which is broken away from an existing way of learning Chinese character that mainly focuses on writing, one sided instruction and information cramming. This makes learners learn through a story from printed materials and animation. Furthermore, it suggests a method that extends episode memories through Chinese education contents based on IoT explaining the principle of Chinese character by combining IT technology (information and communications, IoT) and education contents on block toys.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.22 no.8
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• pp.435-443
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• 2022

The purpose of this study was to analyze the relationship between learning motivation, learning strategies and Korean proficiency. Therefore, this study conducted a learning motivation and learning strategies survey on 101 learners of Korean language from Korean and Chinese universities who obtained a middle and high-level on the Test of Proficiency in Korean. A frequency analysis and correlation analysis was conducted on these students using the SPSS 28.0 program. As a result of the study, it was found that the motivation for learning Korean in Chinese learners was high in the order of integrated motivation and instrumental motivation. The frequency of using metacognitive strategies was the highest. There was no difference in learning motivation corresponding to Korean language proficiency, but there was a correlation in the use of social strategies for learners in levels 3, 4 and 5. Based on these research results, I proposed a teaching and learning method for Chinese learners. Further research should be conducted by comparing the learning motives and learning strategies of learners in the beginner-level group and learners in the middle and high-level group.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.11-17
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• 2020

Non-tonal language speakers may have difficulty learning second language lexical tones. In the present study, we explored this issue with Korean-speaking learners of Mandarin Chinese (i.e., non-tonal first language speakers) by examining their perception and production of Mandarin lexical tones. In the perception experiment, the Korean learners were asked to listen to the tone of each stimulus and assign it to one of four Mandarin lexical tones using the response keys; in the production experiment, the learners provided speech production data for the lexical tones and then their productions were identified by native listeners of Mandarin Chinese. Our results showed that the Korean learners of Mandarin Chinese had difficulty in perceptually distinguishing Tone 2 and Tone 3, with the most frequent production error being the mispronunciation of Tone 3 as Tone 2. We also investigated whether unfamiliar non-native phonemes (i.e., Chinese phonemes) that do not exist in the native language phonemic inventory (i.e., Korean) may hinder the processing of the non-native lexical tones. We found no evidence for such effects, neither for the perception nor for the production of the tones.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.47-54
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• 2013

The purpose of this study is to analyse prosodic characteristics of accentual phrases (AP, hereafter) produced by Chinese learners of Korean in Korean text reading. The study is restricted only to the initial APs. Subjects are students who have been studying Korean at a beginner level. The results showed that Chinese learners of Korean tended to make errors in the realization of the tonal patterns of the initial 2 syllables of the initial APs. Also they showed different F0 slopes across the initial and second syllables in the initial APs. Chinese learners of Korean, therefore, need to focus on the prosodic characteristics of the initial 2 syllables of Korean APs to realize fluent Korean intonation.