• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.199-216
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• 2009

This study investigates how Korean speakers develop their interlanguage of English passive constructions with a reference to the learners' grammar proficiency levels. Sixty two college students of different levels of English participated in this study. They were asked to complete a sentence-completion task. Their production was classified into accurate passives, malformed passives, pseudo-passives, unaccusatives, and actives according to the use of transitive, ergative and unergative verbs. They then were further analyzed depending on the subjects' levels of grammar by three main factors: L1 transfer, the English voice system, and universal cognitive factors. The results showed that the subjects of the lower group produced more pseudo-passives, malformed passives, and overpassivization than those of the higher group, and even subjects of higher group still made passives for ergative verbs. It was also shown that L1 and universal factors had more influence on the lower group than on the higher group. Based on the analyses of the subjects' responses, the development of the English passive system by Korean learners is shown and some implications are suggested for effective teaching of English.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.95-112
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• 2005

We investigate Korean learners' speech-timing of English before and after instruction in comparison with native speech, in an attempt to resolve disagreements in the literature as to whether speech-timing is measurable (Lehiste, 1977; Roach, 1982; Dauer, 1983 vs. Low et al., 2000; Yun 2002; Jian, 2004). We measured the pair-wise variability between the adjacent stressed and unstressed syllables within a foot as well as that among adjacent feet in approximately 555 English sentences, which were read by 29 native speakers and 41 Korean learners in the intermediate proficiency level. The results show that in comparison with native American English, Korean learner speech is before instruction significantly (p<.001) smaller for the pair-wise variability between the adjacent stressed and unstressed syllables within a foot; and significantly (p=.01) bigger for the variability among adjacent feet within the utterance. The learner speech after instruction showed significant (p=.01) improvement in the pair-wise variability of syllable sequence toward native speech values. The variability among adjacent feet was progressively smaller for learner speech before and after instruction and for native speech (p=.03). We thus conclude that the speech timing difference between Korean English and American English is measurable in terms of the duration. of stressed and unstressed syllables and that the latter is stress-timed and the former is syllable-timing interfered.

• Journal of Engineering Education Research
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.10-19
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• 2013

Recently, Korean universities have increased the number of English Medium Instruction (EMI) lectures in order to allow students to gain both specialized knowledge and enhanced English ability. Previous researches on effective EMI lectures have focused on exploring the effects of learners' cognitive and affective characteristics on learning outcomes. Whereas the input variables of learning have been investigated as predicting variables of effects in EMI lectures, there has been a few research for investigating process variables to yield learning outcomes. The purpose of this study is to analyze the structural relationships among variables affecting on learner satisfaction and effects. The participants are 209 engineering students from various majors. Independent variables are defined as English motivation, English competency, and English confidence, a mediated variable is Cognitive engagement, and dependent variables are Learning satisfaction and Educational effect perception. The results show that the relationships are statistically significant: learners' English competency & English confidence ${\rightarrow}$ Cognitive engagement ${\rightarrow}$ Learning satisfaction ${\rightarrow}$ Educational effect perception. Especially, the structural model confirms that the effect of learners' English confidence on Learning satisfaction and Educational effect perception is mediated by the level of learners' Cognitive engagement. Further, the implication for effective EMI lectures is discussed based on the observed research results.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.47-55
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• 2020

The current study was designed to investigate which type of phrase boundary tones high-intermediate Korean learners of English used in their spontaneous speech. These boundary tones were compared to those used in native speakers' spontaneous speech to examine whether the learners successfully acquired the use of boundary tones. To achieve this purpose, 10 Korean learners of English and four native speakers of English participated in the current study. The participants were asked to summarize the stories of short videos, and the tonal and the phrasing patterns of the obtained spontaneous speech were analyzed using Tone and Break Indices (ToBI) transcription conventions. The results indicated that both the native speakers and the Korean learners frequently marked their intonational phrase boundaries with high boundary tones. However, regarding the prosodic phrase positions within a sentence, Korean learners frequently used steep rising tones (i.e., H-H%) while native speakers used gradual rising tones (i.e., L-H%) for sentence-final intonational phrases. Overall, the findings suggested that high-intermediate Korean learners understood the forward-looking function of the high boundary tones and that they were able to make use of these tones to mark intonational phrases in their spontaneous speech.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.17-26
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• 2014

The present study examined epenthetic vowels produced by Korean learners of English in read sentences, in terms of acoustic measures and extra-phonological factors. The results demonstrated three main findings. First, epenthetic vowels had relatively high F1 values and a wide range of F2 values. Most of the epenthetic vowels were inserted near Korean high central vowels, but some vowels were inserted near front vowels due to co-articulation with surrounding vowels. Second, vowel epenthesis was affected by the context. The results showed that the epenthesis was frequently seen with word junctions between obstruents (e.g., stops-fricatives). Third, Korean learners were not affected by English background and were very weakly affected by orthography. English experience, which is one of the extra-phonological factors, was not related to epenthesis production. However, orthography, the other extra-phonological factor, very weakly affected the amount of epenthesis production. Nine percent of all epenthesis production was affected by the English past-tense suffix '-ed'; approximately 70% of the participants were affected by this suffix. The findings of the present study contributed to understanding vowel epenthesis. First, the study revealed that the epenthetic vowels produced by Korean learners of English were close to the high central vowel, supporting previous studies that the epenthetic vowel is quite close to the shortest vowel. Second, the study examined the various phonetic environments of epenthetic vowels, revealing that vowel epenthesis occurred more frequently in a certain phonetic circumstance.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.43-54
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• 2006

The purpose of this study is to examine temporal structures of English words beginning with an /s/ plus stop sequence through production experiments with native speakers of Korean learning English and native speakers of English. According to the results of our production experiment, both a beginner and an advanced group of Korean English learners produced /s/ shorter than a following stop, while the opposite pattern was observed in English native speakers' production. An advanced group of Korean English learners were good at producing a stop after /s/ as unaspirated, but their production of a stop following /s/ was different from English native speakers' production in that the closure duration of the stop was much longer.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.1 no.4
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• pp.11-15
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• 2009

The aim of this study was to identify production difficulties of Korean learners of English in their articulation of English bilabial stops /p, b/ and labiodental fricatives /f, v/. Sixty non-sense syllables and twelve words were produced three times by nine graduate students. Test scores were measured from the score board made by FluSpeak, a speech training software program, which was designed for English pronunciation practice and improvement. Results show that 1) the subjects had lower scores in producing /p, b/ than /f, v/ from all positions, and 2) subjects had lower scores in medial (inter-vocalic) position than in initial (pre-vocalic) position and in final (post-vocalic) position when they produced /p/, /b/, /f/, and /v/. The results suggest that on the whole, Korean learners of English have much difficulty in producing /b/ and that they also have more articulatory problems in intervocalic than in the other positions when they produce these bilabial stops and labiodental fricatives.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.56 no.6
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• pp.1163-1190
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• 2010

Korean EFL learners' stylistic sensitivity was examined through the two types of letter writing, professional and personal. The base of comparison with the English native speakers' stylistic sensitivity was the linguistic style markers that were statistically found by Biber's (1988) multi-dimensional model of variation of English language. The main finding was that Korean university students were sensitive to stylistic difference in the correct direction, though their linguistic repertoire was limited to the easy and simple linguistic features. Also, the learners were skewed in the involved style in both types of the letters unlike the native speakers and it was interpreted as due to the general developmental direction from informal to formal linguistic style. Learners were also skewed in the explicit style in both types of letters unlike the native speakers and it was interpreted as due to the learners' heavy reliance on one particular linguistic feature. As a whole, the learners' stylistic sensitivity heavily relied on the small number of linguistic features that they have already acquired, which happen to be simple and basic linguistic features.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.1-13
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• 2019

This study explored the relationship between accurate vowel production and proficiency levels in L2 English produced by Korean EFL adult learners. To this end, nine English vowels /i, ɪ, ɛ, æ, ʌ, ɔ, ɑ, ʊ, u/ were selected and adjacent vowels paired up (e.g., /i/-/ɪ/, /u/-/ʊ/, /ɛ/-/æ/, /ʌ/-/ɔ/, /ɔ/-/ɑ/). The spectral features of the pairs were measured instrumentally, namely F1 (indicating tongue height) and F2 (indicating tongue backness). Meanwhile, the durations as well as spectral features of the tense and lax counterparts in /i/-/ɪ/ and /u/-/ʊ/ were measured, as both temporal and spectral features are important in distinguishing them. The findings of this study confirm that higher-rated speakers were better able to distinguish the contrasts in the front vowel pairs /i/-/ɪ/ and /ɛ/-/æ/ than lower-rated learners, but in the central and back vowel pairs /u/-/ʊ/and /ʌ/-/ɔ/ (though not /ɔ/-/ɑ/), Korean EFL learners generally showed difficulty distinguishing adjacent vowels with spectral cues. On the other hand, the durations of the tense and lax vowels showed that the lower-rated speakers were less able to use the temporal feature to differentiate tense vowels from their lax counterparts, unlike previous studies that found that in general Korean learners depend excessively on the temporal cue to distinguish tense and lax vowels.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2005.11a
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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.