• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
• /
• 2005.11a
• /
• pp.91-95
• /
• 2005

The aim of this paper is to investigate the effects of postvocalic voicing(Contrasting voiceless fricative and affricate with voiced fricative and affricate) on vowel duration. In particular we focused on the durational differences between vowels followed by voiceless and voiced consonants across three groups of speakers: English speakers, English bilinguals and Korean learners of English. the result of experimental I showed that durations of vowels preceding voiced fricative and affricates as well as voiced stops are significantly longer than those preceding voiceless counterparts. Experiment Ⅱ indicated that as the subjects exposed themselves longer to English speaking society, their pronunciation was increasingly similar to those of English native speakers.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
• /
• 2000.07a
• /
• pp.220-234
• /
• 2000

This paper focuses on how and where to set learner goals in English phonetic education in Japan, especially at the threshold level, and on what components are necessary to achieve them both from practical and theoretical perspectives. It first describes some issues mainly through the speaker's own teaching plan and a literature review of various researchers such as Morley (1991), Kajima (1989), Porcaro (1999), Matsul (1996), Lambacher (1995, 1996), Dalton and Seidlhofer (1994), and Murphy (1991). By comparing and analyzing these and other researchers, the speaker tries to set and elucidate reasonable and achievable goals for students to attain intelligibility for comprehensible communicative output. The paper then suggests detailed components that form an essential part of desirable pronunciation teaching plan in order to realize a well-balanced curriculum between segmental and suprasegmental aspects.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
• /
• 2000.07a
• /
• pp.283-300
• /
• 2000

This paper is intended to suggest how to improve Korean high school students' awareness of the pronunciation in order to foster communicative effectiveness. Initially it is focused on the tasks of listening to the suprasegmental aspects. The strategies used in the listening process are (1)discerning intonation units, (2)recognizing rhythm pattern, and (3)identifying contraction and linking in connected speech. The tasks including in each process are listening discrimination, guided practice activity, and listening and speaking activity. The teacher should avoid methods which yield discouraging outcomes and try to help students enjoy experience of success in doing exercises and activities. So I suggested: students put the slash on the pause perceptible to chunk the stream of speech into the intonation units, and mark the content words to internalize English rhythm. And then I suggested that students listen to pop song English in order to improve the awareness of function words and connected speech in the intonation unit.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
• /
• 2003.05a
• /
• pp.71-74
• /
• 2003

In this paper, we present some of experimental results developed in computer-based English Pronunciation Correction System for Korean speakers. The aim of the system is to detect incorrectly pronounced phonemes in spoken words and to give correction comment to users. Speech data were collected from 254 native speakers and 411 Koreans, then used for phoneme modeling and test. We built two types of acoustic phoneme models: native speaker model and Korean speaker model. We also built langugage models to reflect Koreans' commonly occurred mispronunications. The detection rate was over 90% in insertion/deletion/replacement of phonemes, but we got under 75% detection rate in diphthong split and accents.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.20 no.4
• /
• pp.582-590
• /
• 2020

This paper aims to analyze and introduce the primary English curriculum of North Korea reformulated according to the New Educational Program. Sources for analysis are the 4th and 5th primary school English syllabus based on the New Educational Program, explanations of the New Educational Program appeared in People's Education and Kim, Jeong-Il's selected writings. The analytical sources are classified into characteristics, objectives, contents, methods and evaluation. The findings are as follows: The primary English education aims to reach to the basis of middle school English by learning English alphabets and basic English expressions. 4th graders learn basic oral English such as pronunciation, stress and intonation for the first semester and learn English alphabets and their sounds for the second semester. 5th graders learn familiar topics in English and repeatedly practice the important components of English such as pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. The method is to maintain students' interests in English and encourage students to use classroom English. Also, structural practice is an important part of the method. Evaluation is primarily process-oriented and must motivate students to excel in English rather than fail in English.

• MALSORI
• /
• no.42
• /
• pp.37-46
• /
• 2001

Recently speech technologies have shown notable advancements and they now play major roles in computer-aided language learning systems. In the current paper, use of speech recognition technologies is viewed with our system for teaching English pronunciation to Japanese speakers.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
• /
• 2000.07a
• /
• pp.17-28
• /
• 2000

Recently speech technologies have shown notable advancements and they now play major roles in computer-aided language learning systems. In the current paper, use of speech recognition technologies is viewed with our system for teaching English pronunciation to Japanese speakers.

• Journal of Digital Contents Society
• /
• v.18 no.6
• /
• pp.1101-1107
• /
• 2017

This study explored the effect of ASR-based pronunciation instruction, using a mobile platform, on EFL learners' pronunciation development. Particularly, this quasi-experimental study focused on whether using mobile ASR, which provides voice-to-text feedback, can enhance the perception and production of target English consonants minimal pairs (V-B, R-L, and G-Z) of Korean EFL learners. Three intact classes of 117 Korean university students were assigned to three groups: a) ASR Group: ASR-based pronunciation instruction providing textual feedback by the mobile ASR; b) Conventional Group: conventional face-to-face pronunciation instruction providing individual oral feedback by the instructor; and the c) Hybrid Group: ASR-based pronunciation instruction plus conventional pronunciation instruction. The ANCOVA results showed that the adjusted mean score for pronunciation production post-test on the Hybrid instruction group (M=82.71, SD =3.3) was significantly higher than the Conventional group (M=62.6, SD =4.05) (p<.05).

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.6 no.1
• /
• pp.39-45
• /
• 2014

This study investigates twenty four Korean females' production of English front vowels focusing on the distinction in /i/ vs /ɪ/ and /ɛ/ vs /${\ae}$/ and formant values of stressed and unstressed vowels compared with those of native English speakers. The Korean learners were asked to read a textbook passage which includes ten sentences including target vowels. The major results indicate that: (1) Korean learners have trouble producing a distinct version (tense and lax) of front vowels in the paragraph reading; (2) The vowel space of the stressed vowels in a paragraph is smaller than that of embedded sentences; and (3) The vowel quality of the unstressed vowels produced by the Korean learners is similar to that of the native English speakers. The findings from this study can be applied to the pronunciation teaching for the Korean learners of English vowels and realization of English stress.

• KIPS Transactions on Software and Data Engineering
• /
• v.6 no.5
• /
• pp.267-278
• /
• 2017

As the same letter can be pronounced differently depending on word contexts, one should refer to a lexicon in order to pronounce a word correctly. Phonetic alphabets that lexicons adopt as well as pronunciations that lexicons describe for the same word can be different from lexicon to lexicon. In this paper, we use a sequence-to-sequence model that is widely used in deep learning research area in order to convert automatically from one pronunciation to another. The 12 seq2seq models are implemented based on pronunciation training data collected from 4 different lexicons. The exact accuracy of the models ranges from 74.5% to 89.6%. The aim of this study is the following two things. One is to comprehend a property of phonetic alphabets and pronunciations used in various lexicons. The other is to understand characteristics of seq2seq models by analyzing an error.