• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.52-65
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• 2016

The electronic toll collection system(ETCS), is globally used in about 40 countries. In Korea, the Korea Expressway Corporation led the nationwide introduction of the ETC system in 2007 under the brand name of the Hi-pass. Since then, Hi-pass, with its rate of average daily use reaching about 70%, has become an essential facility in Korean expressways. To identify users' perception on Hi-pass (satisfaction, preference, etc.), this study conducted a Modified Importance-Performance Analysis (M-IPA). With this, this study attempted to identify the kind of efforts necessary to enhance current Hi-pass users' convenience and satisfaction. According to the result of M-IPA, the items including "non-stop payment" and "toll discount" are identified as key items that require further improvement. For improvement in the "non-stop payment" item, operations of Hi-pass toll booths appropriate for the demand for Hi-pass use and the selection of Hi-pass booths' locations in consideration of entry and exit lanes need to be improved. In addition, with regard to the "toll discount" item, although toll discount is currently provided to Hi-pass users, thus, PR thereof will have to be strengthened. It is expected that this study will be used as basic data to devise methods of enhancing Hi-pass usage through improvement of Hi-pass users' satisfaction.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.33-40
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• 2020

The purpose of this research was to find out the relation between Korean learners' English proficiency and the ratio of the length of the stressed vowel in a monosyllabic noun to that of the unstressed vowel in an article of the noun phrases (e.g., "a cup", "the bus", etcs.). Generally, the vowels in monosyllabic content words are phonetically more prominent than the ones in monosyllabic function words as the former have phrasal stress, making the vowels in content words longer in length, higher in pitch, and louder in amplitude. This study, based on the speech samples from Korean-Spoken English Corpus (K-SEC) and Rated Korean-Spoken English Corpus (Rated K-SEC), examined 879 English noun phrases, which are composed of an article and a monosyllabic noun, from sentences which are rated on 4 levels of proficiency. The lengths of the vowels in these 879 target NPs were measured and the ratio of the vowel lengths in nouns to those in articles was calculated. It turned out that the higher the proficiency level, the greater the mean ratio of the vowels in nouns to the vowels in articles, confirming the research's hypothesis. This research thus concluded that for the Korean English learners, the higher the English proficiency level, the better they could produce the stressed and unstressed vowels with more conspicuous length differences between them.