• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제9권2호
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• pp.1-7
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relations between phonetic differences among Korean learners' production of English front vowels, pronunciation intelligibility and speaking proficiency test score. To do so, thirty Korean university students were asked (1) to read English text book paragraphs and (2) describe a picture. Two English native raters and one Korean rater evaluated Korean subjects' English pronunciation intelligibility and speaking. In addition, subjects' English vowel productions were acoustically analyzed(F0, F1, F2, vowel duration, intensity). The results of the study show that the vowel quality and pitch of the unstressed vowels and lax vowel are related to the pronunciation intelligibility. In addition, the scores of pronunciation intelligibility and speaking are highly related.

• 대한음성학회:학술대회논문집
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• 대한음성학회 2005년도 추계 학술대회 발표논문집
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• pp.17-20
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• 2005

The purpose of this project is to develop a device that can automatically measure pronunciation of English speech produced by Korean learners of English. Pronunciation proficiency will be measured largely in two areas; suprasegmental and segmental areas. In suprasegmental area, intonation and word stress will be traced and compared with those of native speakers by way of statistical methods using tilt parameters. Durations of phones are also examined to measure speakers' naturalness of their pronunciations. In doing so, statistical duration modelling from a large speech database using CART will be considered. For segmental measurement of pronunciation, acoustic probability of a phone, which is a byproduct when doing the forced alignment, will be a basis of scoring pronunciation accuracy of a phone. The final score will be a feedback to the learners to improve their pronunciation.

• 대한음성학회:학술대회논문집
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• 대한음성학회 2000년도 3월 학술대회지
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• pp.103-104
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• 2000

As the role and status of English as an international language(EIL) have been widely discussed, studies need to be done to find out new issues and concerns related to teaching EIL In Korea. This presentation will review the changes in teaching English in Korea, teaching pronunciation, in particular, focusing on its goal and major instructional approaches. Suggestions will be made on developing a learner-centered communicative model for teaching English pronunciation and on training both Korean and foreign teachers of English to teach English pronunciation.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제14권2호
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• pp.19-28
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• 2022

The current study was designed to explore whether taking English pronunciation classes could improve the realization of English rhythm by Korean learners of English. Specifically, this study used various rhythm metrics to examine the extent to which the learners' speech became rhythmically similar to the target language after taking classes that focused on English pronunciation. Sixteen learners who took a 15-week English pronunciation course at a university read an English passage twice (at the beginning and the end of the semester). The rhythm metrics such as Deltas, Varcos, and Pairwise Variability Indices were calculated for the learners' speech, as well as that of 8 native speakers of English. The results demonstrated that the learners' speech was slower, and they put more frequent within-sentence pauses than the native speakers even after the classes. The analyses also indicated that the speech recorded at the beginning of the semester was rhythmically much more different from the target language than at the end of the semester. After the classes, however, the learners' consonantal intervals became much more target-like, while the vocalic intervals were rhythmically even further from those in the target language. Overall, the findings suggested that the pronunciation classes helped the learners to produce English speech that was rhythmically similar to the native speakers.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제4권3호
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• pp.51-58
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• 2012

The purpose of this study is to measure the impact of Korean speakers' English stop pronunciation on their general pronunciation proficiency. For these purposes, 20 Korean speakers read English sentences and their pronunciations were rated by native English speakers. The Korean speakers' VOT values of English stops in sentences were then measured and the relation between the VOT values and native speakers' pronunciation rating was compared. Here, the relation between (1) the proficiency score of each speaker and VOT values; and (2) the proficiency score of each sentence and VOT values were analyzed. The results show that there is a relation between the proficiency score of each sentence and VOT values of /t, b, d, g/; and there is a relation between VOT values of /t, b, d, g/ and proficiency scores of each speaker while these is a weak relation between VOT values of /p, k/ and proficiency scores of each speaker.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제15권2호
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• pp.13-20
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• 2023

This study explores the potential of automated speech recognition (ASR) in assessing English learners' pronunciation. We employed ASR technology, acknowledged for its impartiality and consistent results, to analyze speech audio files, including synthesized speech, both native-like English and Korean-accented English, and speech recordings from a native English speaker. Through this analysis, we establish baseline values for the word error rate (WER). These were then compared with those obtained for human raters in perception experiments that assessed the speech productions of 30 first-year college students before and after taking a pronunciation course. Our sub-group analyses revealed positive training effects for Whisper, an ASR tool, and human raters, and identified distinct human rater strategies in different assessment aspects, such as proficiency, intelligibility, accuracy, and comprehensibility, that were not observed in ASR. Despite such challenges as recognizing accented speech traits, our findings suggest that digital tools such as ASR can streamline the pronunciation assessment process. With ongoing advancements in ASR technology, its potential as not only an assessment aid but also a self-directed learning tool for pronunciation feedback merits further exploration.

• 인문언어
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• 제8집
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• pp.331-367
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• 2006

In this paper I attempted to investigate the matters related with the clarification of the close relationship between writing system and pronunciation. On the way of pursuing the research on the subject I found the fact that the same topic has been the main academic target in Korea. There have been some remarks about English alphabets and pronunciation. Nevertheless, the relation between alphabet codes and pronunciation tokens wasn't considered as the main key to master the English pronunciation correctly and completely. As the main target of this paper I argue that it is necessary to comprehend the connection. Then, we can recognize the significant role of alphabetic structure for understanding the gist of pronunciation exercise. This paper is classified into four parts. Each part consists of the material to affirm the fact that writing system should be the inevitable equivalent of sound system, and vice versa. In the first section I show that the development of the way of pronouncing English words is closely related with the endeavors of the scholars. While performing the survey of the studies about the alphabetic structure of the age many scholars found that the spelling construction was recorded without any common denominator. Thus, they not only sought to stage the bedrock for the standard written form of words but also to associate the alphabet letters with phonetic features. Secondly I mention the negative aspect of the 'only spelling based English pronunciation education' for the educational goal of 'Phonics methodology.' In this part I suggest the essentiality of phonemic properties with the phonetic prospect: phonemic awareness. Thirdly I refer to the standardization of the spelling system of English. As the realm of application of the language is extended toward the various professional areas such as commercial, scientific, and cultural spheres, it is quite natural to assume that the usage of the language will be transformed according to the areas in the world. Fourthly I introduce the first English-Korean grammar book with the section of 'the introduction to English pronunciation.' At the chapter the author explained the sound features of English based on the regulation of 'Scientific Alphabet' of U.S.A. In the transcribing system all the symbols were postulated on the basis of the English alphabet form instead of the separate phonetic signs of IPA.

• 영어어문교육
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• 제10권3호
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• pp.159-175
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• 2004

This paper investigated the types of errors on English pronunciation and intelligibility of Korean EFL students, and the relationship between the pronunciation accuracy and intelligibility. Thirty one students were evaluated by six English native speakers in terms of overall intelligibility and accuracy In five areas such as nuclear stress, word stress, syllable structure, consonants and vowels. According to the findings of the study, pronunciation errors were made by the subjects more frequently In word stress than any other area of pronunciation accuracy. The Pearson correlation analysis showed that intelligibility was related with word stress, syllable structure, consonants and vowels, and the stepwise multiple regression analysis indicated that, among the above five areas of pronunciation accuracy, word stress best accounted for the intelligibility of a given sentence. In the conclusion, the importance of teaching pronunciation of in those five areas with a special focus on word stress was emphasized m terms of intelligibility.

• 음성과학
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• 제8권4호
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• pp.221-228
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• 2001

The purpose of this study is to analyze the problems Korean students, having acoustic structure of Korean vowels, have when they pronounce English vowels by measuring formant frequencies. The experimental results show that the pronunciation of English vowels by Korean students is partially influenced by their Korean vowels. There is little distinction between /i/ and /I/, /U/ and /u/ due to the absence of short and long vowels in Korean pronunciation. Also, as observed in typical Korean vowel pronunciation, there is little difference between the F1 values of /$\varepsilon$/ and /$\{\ae}$/ by Korean speakers, resulting in inaccurate English pronunciation. In addition, compared to English native speakers, Korean speakers show the biggest difference in F1 value of /c/. The fact that they make pronunciation of /c/ covering /e/, /$\Lambda$/ and /c/ positions probably accounts for such phenomenon. The results of this experiment show the interference of Korean that occurred in some English vowels by native Korean speakers.

• 대한음성학회지:말소리
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• 제68권
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• pp.33-47
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• 2008

In this paper, we propose a hybrid acoustic and pronunciation model adaptation method based on context dependency for Korean-English speech recognition. The proposed method is performed as follows. First, in order to derive pronunciation variant rules, an n-best phoneme sequence is obtained by phone recognition. Second, we decompose each rule into a context independent (CI) or a context dependent (CD) one. To this end, it is assumed that a different phoneme structure between Korean and English makes CI pronunciation variabilities while coarticulation effects are related to CD pronunciation variabilities. Finally, we perform an acoustic model adaptation and a pronunciation model adaptation for CI and CD pronunciation variabilities, respectively. It is shown from the Korean-English speech recognition experiments that the average word error rate (WER) is decreased by 36.0% when compared to the baseline that does not include any adaptation. In addition, the proposed method has a lower average WER than either the acoustic model adaptation or the pronunciation model adaptation.