• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 1997.07a
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• pp.213-216
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• 1997

• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.247-252
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to suggest the visual teaching method for the English vowel pronunciation, especially for the hearing-impaired who mostly rely on the visual aids, based on the SVM technique. By extracting phonetic features using the SVM technique from the sounds that are hard to hear by ear, the lip shapes for each vowel were refined. The lip shape refinement for vowels is advantageous in that language learners can easily see the movement of articulators by eye, and it is helpful for learning and teaching English vowels for the hearing-impaired.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.1-23
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• 2007

The purpose of this research is to explore the effects of systematic teaching English pronunciation and listening in English. Focusing on phonemes and words in pairs and sentences, the sound systems of the English and Korean languages are dealt with in conjunction with the test data. This paper first discusses the systemic, or primary interference and the habitual, or secondary interference that hinder comprehension of certain English sounds. Second, the analysis of input and output test data on the contrasting vowels and consonants shows statistic significance in terms of the probability (p value) of t-test. Third, the comparative data by means of percentile of right answers on contrasting vowel and consonant sounds expound the different sound systems of the English and Korean languages. With this data, problems in pronunciation of and listening to English, and the factors that may cause these problems are analyzed so that they can be used as a guideline for a systematic approach in teaching English learners, thus leading to more satisfactory performance.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2007.05a
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• pp.203-206
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• 2007

The purpose of this study was to investigate and quantitatively describe the acoustic characteristics of current Korean monophthongs. Recordings were made of 33 men and 27 women producing the vowels /i, e, ${\varepsilon}$, a, (표현불가), O, u, (표현불가)/ in a carrier phrase "This character is _." A listening test was conducted in which 19 participants judged each vowel. F1, F2, and F3 were measured from the vowels judged as intended vowels by more than 17 people from the listening test. Analysis of formant data shows some interesting results including the undeniable confirmation of 7-vowel system in current Korean.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.143-148
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• 2002

This study examined the foreign accent of Korean speakers of English concerning vowel length and utterance position. It then attempts to explain the foreign accent of Koreans when they speak English. The method was to measure the sentence-initial and sentence-final vowels as spoken by Koreans. I chose these two positions, sentence-initial and sentence-final, in order to know if Korean speakers of English, compared with native English speakers, show a difference in sentence stress. I chose English diphthongs, because most Koreans have difficulty pronouncing these sounds. I found that Korean speakers of English as a second language do not know English sentence stress patterns and show a foreign accent, especially when using diphthongs.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.56 no.1
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• pp.65-78
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• 2010

The purpose of this paper is to suggest that the International Phonetic Alphabet be included in English curriculum and taught in English classroom. Current English curriculum for elementary and middle school students doesn't specify anything for the education of the IPA. The knowledge of IPA is essential for the students to study by themselves how to pronounce English words. The IPA, however, is either too little or too much to be taught at school. It is too little in that it doesn't tell us anything about allophones, the knowledge of which could enable us to get rid of foreign accents as much as possible. It is too much in that it can represent more than one sounds (e.g., /ɔ/ in American and British English). To overcome these drawbacks, it should be introduced gradually with the allophones in the same environments. The correct vowel sounds should be introduced with the aid of pronunciation dictionary so that the students could get their own vowel quality. Moreover, the IPA symbol should be adopted for the English textbooks.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.25-31
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• 2013

This study examined cross-generational changes in the vowel system of Seoul Korean. Acoustic analyses of the vowel formants of /o/ and /u/, and their Euclidean distances in the vowel space were undertaken to explore an on-going merger of these two vowels as proposed in previous acoustic studies and a phonological analysis by Chae (1999). A robust cross-generational change of /o/ and /u/ was found, more evident for female speakers than for male speakers. For female speakers, with each successive generation, /o/ became increasingly approximated with /u/, regardless of the syllable positions that the target vowels were posited, whereas the cross-generational differences in the Euclidean distances were only shown in the second syllable position for the male speakers. These results demonstrate that 1) women are more advanced than men in the on-going approximation of /o/ and /u/; 2) the approximation of /o/ and /u/ is common in the non-initial position. Taken together, the merger of /o/ and /u/ appears to be in progress in Seoul Korean.

• Journal of Convergence for Information Technology
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.37-42
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• 2018

This study focuses on investigating and comparing the lengths of the five words, vowels, and the ratio of the length of vowels to that of words among the Korean college students with the English native speaker. English sentences were read and recorded by Korean subjects to do this experiment. The vowel lengths were measured from a sound spectrogram, the Praat software program, and these data were analyzed through statistical analysis. I could easily tell that there were differences between the groups and they were significant. In the English front low vowel /${\ae}$/, I was able to find out that native subjects pronounced differently from Korean subjects, and the differences were significant. However, the pronunciation of the English diphthong /ai/, native subjects pronounced significantly shorter than Korean subjects.