• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2000.07a
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• pp.75-85
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• 2000

Koreans and English have different phonotactic constraints and phonological rules. It causes Korean learners to have difficulty in pronouncing certain English consonant clusters correctly. This paper aims to discuss what English consonant clusters are difficult for Korean learners to learn and why this difficulty arises by comparing phonotactic constraints and phonological rules of English and Korean.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.141-149
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• 2009

An emphasis on teaching suprasegmental features of English, specifically English rhythm, is essential in order to improve the 'intelligibility' of the pronunciation of Korean EFL learners among interlocutors who use English as a Lingua Franca(ELF). By redefining the ELF suggested by Jenkins (2000, 2002), this paper argues that Lingua Franca Core (LFC) must include suprasegmental features such as 'stress-based rhythm' and word stress. However, because 'isochrony' is difficult to measure in a foot, the rhythm unit must be expanded to an intonational phrase which has prominence in it and the rhythm of the unit can be measured by calculating the duration of each segment in context The rhythmic pattern of Korean learners of English and that of native speakers or other non-native English speakers can then be calculated and compared by using correlation coefficients of the segmental duration. In terms of sociolinguistic factors, improving the 'comprehensibility' and 'accentedness' of Korean EFL learners' pronunciation is also important in international communication, which calls for more emphasis on suprasegmental features.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.20 no.11
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• pp.378-390
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• 2020

English stress plays such a critical role in understanding spoken English words that its misplacement can lead to a breakdown of communication. Korean learners of English, whose native language is known to lack this feature, are expected to have some difficulty acquiring this English prosodic system. This study explored how Korean is different from English in manifesting prominence at the word level and how the interlanguage of Korean learners of English is dissimilar to both languages in that regard. Four polysyllabic English loanwords in Korean and their English source words were used as stimuli. Ten native English speakers read the English source words while ten Korean learners of English read the English loan words first and then the English source words. The analysis of 120 speech samples revealed that Korean words did not have any salient syllable realized by all stress features: duration, amplitude, and F0. On the contrary, English words had syllables with relative prominence, which was consistently manifested by all the features. Interestingly, in realizing English stress, the interlanguage of the Korean English learners bore more resemblance to that of English than that of their native language.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.11-16
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• 2023

The present study examines how a cognitive attention affects Korean learners of English (L2) in perceiving the English stop voicing distinction (/d/-/t/). This study tested the effect of attentional distractor on primary and non-primary acoustic cues, focusing on the role of Voice Onset Time (VOT) and fundamental frequency (F0). Using the dual-task paradigm, 28 Korean adult learners of English participated in the stop identification task carried with (distractor) and without (no-distractor) arithmetic calculation. Results showed that when distracted, Korean learners' sensitivity to VOT decreased as priorly reported with native English speakers. Furthermore, as F0 is a primary cue for a L1 Korean stop laryngeal contrast, its role in L2 English voicing distinction was also affected by a distractor, without compensating for the reduced VOT sensitivity. These findings suggest that flexible use of multiple cues in L1 is not necessarily beneficial for L2 phonological processing when coping with a adverse listening condition.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.31-38
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• 2008

The aim of this study was to find how English vowels affect the pronunciation of English sibilants /$d_3,\;{_3}$, z/ by Korean learners of English. Fifteen nonsense syllables composed by five vowels /a, e, i, o, u/ were pronounced six times by twelve Korean learners of English. Test scores were measured from the scoreboard made by a speech training software program, which was designed for English pronunciation practice and improvement. Results show that 1) the subjects had the lowest scores in /a_a/ position, and 2) subjects had lower scores in the /i_i/ position than in /e_e/, /o_o/ and /u_u/ positions when they pronounced $/d_3/,\;/{_3}/$, and /z/ in their respective inter-vocalic position. This study found that for the group studied Korean learners of English have more difficulty in pronouncing sibilants in /a_a/ and /i_i/ positions than in the other positions.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.91-112
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• 1998

This paper aimed at examining the influence of L1 (native language) phonology when speakers of L1 perceive L2 (foreign language) sounds. Korean and Japanese learners of English took a perception test of Australian English words 'work', 'walk' and 'wok'. Based on Korean and Japanese phonology, it was predicted that Korean subjects would face more difficulties than Japanese subjects. The results of the experiment substantiated the influence of L1 phonology in L2 learners' L2 sound perception.

• Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.83-102
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• 2004

The purpose of this paper is to find out some major characteristics of intermediate-advanced Korean learners' English by corpus- linguistically analyzing their essays in comparison with native speakers'. We construct a corpus of CBT TOEFL essays by Korean learners, NNS1 (94076 words in 402 texts), and its sub-corpus, NNS2 (14291 words in 45 texts), and then a corpus of model essays written or meticulously edited by native speakers, NS (14833 words in 35 texts). We compare NNS1 and NNS2 with NS, and with some other corpora, in terms of high-frequency words, and show that Korean learners' writings have more features of informal writing than those of formal writing, which is in accord with the reports in Granger (1998) that EFL writings by European advanced learners are characterized by informality.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.103-113
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• 2016

This paper aims to propose articulatory features as novel predictors for automatic pronunciation assessment of English produced by Korean learners. Based on the distinctive feature theory, where phonemes are represented as a set of articulatory/phonetic properties, we propose articulatory Goodness-Of-Pronunciation(aGOP) features in terms of the corresponding articulatory attributes, such as nasal, sonorant, anterior, etc. An English speech corpus spoken by Korean learners is used in the assessment modeling. In our system, learners' speech is forced aligned and recognized by using the acoustic and pronunciation models derived from the WSJ corpus (native North American speech) and the CMU pronouncing dictionary, respectively. In order to compute aGOP features, articulatory models are trained for the corresponding articulatory attributes. In addition to the proposed features, various features which are divided into four categories such as RATE, SEGMENT, SILENCE, and GOP are applied as a baseline. In order to enhance the assessment modeling performance and investigate the weights of the salient features, relevant features are extracted by using Best Subset Selection(BSS). The results show that the proposed model using aGOP features outperform the baseline. In addition, analysis of relevant features extracted by BSS reveals that the selected aGOP features represent the salient variations of Korean learners of English. The results are expected to be effective for automatic pronunciation error detection, as well.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.63-70
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• 2019

This study investigated individual variability of L2 learners' categorical judgments of L2 stops by exploring English learners' perceptual processing of two acoustic cues (voice onset time [VOT] and f0) and working memory capacity as sources of variation. As prior research has reported that English speakers' greater use of the redundant cue f0 was responsible for gradient processing of native stops, we examined whether the same processing characteristics would be observed in L2 learners' perception of Korean stops (/t/-/t^h/). 22 English learners of L2 Korean with a range of L2 proficiency participated in a visual analogue scaling task and demonstrated variable manners of judging the L2 Korean stops: Some were more gradient than others in performing the task. Correlation analysis revealed that L2 learners' categorical responses were modestly related to individuals' utilizations of a primary cue for the stop contrast (VOT for L1 English stops and f0 for L2 Korean stops), and were also related to better working memory capacity. Together, the current experimental evidence demonstrates adult L2 learners' top-down processing of stop consonants where linguistic and cognitive resources are devoted to a process of determining abstract phonemic identity.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.53 no.2
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• pp.335-357
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• 2007

This study aims to investigate the pragmatic features of Korean EFL learners' interlanguage in the communicative act of complaining. Since a complaint, by its nature, is likely to cause offence, thereby threatening the social relationship between the speaker and the hearer, making a complaint in a polite manner is of crucial importance in maintaining harmonious social relationships. However, very little research has been carried out on the complaint speech act performances of Korean EFL learners. In particular, studies which attempt to examine the effect of social status on the choice of complaint speech act strategies are rare. The present study compared the complaint speech act performances of Korean EFL learners and those of native speakers of English with respect to social status. 24 Korean EFL learners and 28 native speakers of English participated and the data were collected via a Discourse Completion Test. The findings revealed that Korean EFL learners differed from native English speakers in the use of complaint strategies. These results indicate that Korean EFL learners lack certain important skills necessary to make complaints appropriately, suggesting the need for the foreign language learners to develop a more extensive pragmatic knowledge of complaint strategies.