• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 1996.10a
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• pp.37-42
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• 1996

This study aims to see some prosodic features of English spoken by Japanese learners of English. It focuses on speech rates, pauses, and intonation when the learners read an English passage. Three Japanese learners of English, who are all male university students, were asked to read the speech material, an English passage of 110 word length, at their normal reading speed. Then a native speaker of English, a male American English teacher. was asked to read the same passage. The Japanese speakers were also asked to read a Japanese passage of 286 letters (Japanese Kana) to compare the reading of English with that of japanese. Their speech was analyzed on a computerized system (KAY Computerized Speech Lab). Wave forms, spectrograms, and F0 contours were shown on the screen to measure the duration of pauses, phrases and sentences and to observe intonation contours. One finding of the experiment was that the movement of the low speakers' speech rates showed a similar tendency in their reading of the English passage. Reading of the Japanese passage by the three learners also had a similar tendency in the movement of speech rates. Another finding was that the frequency of pauses in the learners speech was greater than that in the speech of the native speaker, but that the ration of the total pause length to the whole utterance length was about tile same in both the learners' and the native speaker's speech. A similar tendency was observed about the learners' reading of the Japanese passage except that they used shorter pauses in the mid-sentence position. As to intonation contours, we found that the learners used a narrower pitch range than the native speaker in their reading of the English passage while they used a wider pitch range as they read the Japanese passage. It was found that the learners tended to use falling intonation before pauses whereas the native speaker used different intonation patterns. These findings are applicable to the teaching of English pronunciation at the passage level in the sense that they can show the learners. Japanese here, what their problems are and how they could be solved.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.7-15
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• 2017

The purpose of this study was to investigate the different aspects of word-initial liquid sounds in Korean according to generations. Five women in their 50s and seven in their 20s participated in the experiment. We examined FL (formant of liquids) and voice sustained time by using Praat software. Three English native speakers were asked to judge the Korean speakers' recorded speech samples for marking [l] or [r] using evaluation sheet. The results of the two experiments revealed three important aspects. First, there was a statistically significant difference between the two groups in the FL of the words 'racket' and 'ruby.' Second, we found statistically significant differences in 'rhythm', 'ruby' and 'litter' from the measurement of the duration of the acoustic data. Third, there was no difference in pronunciation between the two groups according to the phonemes of the original language. The results of this study showed that it is difficult to say that the duration of word-initial liquids and the phoneme difference of the original language are indicators to distinguish the word-initial liquids between generations. Also, it was seen that the pronunciation of Korean word-initial liquid sounds varied across generations.

• Korean Business Review
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• v.5
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• pp.241-274
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• 1992

General American English(=A.E.) has conservative elements as well as progressive elements. A.E. and B.E. are languages which have more similarities than differances. In this paper. I studied the process of English progress before the A.E. had come into being, and the historical background and the cahristics of A.E. coming into being. Considering the differences between A.E. and B.E. from spelling, pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar, I can give the outline as follows. A spelling 1. B.E. : au, ou $${\rightarrow}$$A.E. : a, o 2. B.E. : e $${\rightarrow}$$A.E. : i 3. B.E. : $${\ae}$$ oe $${\rightarrow}$$A.E. : e 4. B.E. : our $${\rightarrow}$$A.E. : or 5. B.E. : re $${\rightarrow}$$A.E. : er B. pronunciation 1. B.E. : [e] $${\rightarrow}$$A.E. : [i], [e], $$[\partial]$$ 2. B.E. : [a] $${\rightarrow}$$A.E. : 3. B.E. : [i(:)] $${\rightarrow}$$A.E. : [ai], $$[\partial]$$, $$[{\varepsilon}]$$ 4. B.E. : $$[{\ae}]$$ $${\rightarrow}$$A.E. : [e], [c] 5. B.E. : [ai] $${\rightarrow}$$A.E. : $$[{\ae}]$$, [e] 6. B.E. : [c] $${\rightarrow}$$A.E. : [e], [a], [o] 7. In case of "Vowel+[t]+Vowel", [t] is pronounced into [d] or [r] 8. In case of "-nt", [t] becomes a mute. 9. [t]+[j, l, m, n, r, u, or, w] $${\rightarrow}$$A.E. : [?] (=glottal stop) 10. B.E. : [w] $${\rightarrow}$$A.E. : [hw] 11. B.E. : [Voiceless consonants], [Voiced consonants] $${\leftarrow}$$A.E. : [Voiced consonants], [Voiceless consonants] C. Vocabulary The historical background and geographical conditions of those days caused lots of new compounds and neologies. D. Grammar Though we use "of" to indicate the possessive case of inanimate object, -s genitive is used in A.E. In the perfect tense, "have" is often omitted and also auxiliary verb "will" is used in any case

• Journal of Convergence for Information Technology
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• v.7 no.6
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• pp.245-251
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• 2017

This presents an English conversation training system with which learners train their conversation skills in English, which makes them converse with native speaker characters in a virtual reality environment with voice. The proposed system allows the learners to talk with multiple native speaker characters in varous scenarios in the virtual reality environment. It recongizes voices spoken by the learners and generates voices by a speech synthesis method. The interaction with characters in the virtual reality environment in voice makes the learners immerged in the conversation situations. The scoring system which evaluates the learner's pronunciation provides the positive feedback for the learners to get engaged in the learning context.

• Journal of Korea Game Society
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.111-122
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• 2019

This study investigated the psychological effects of using a serious game with young learners in the English classroom compared with those of a dictionary application. A tablet PC-based serious game was created for the training of English phoneme discrimination for Korean 6th graders, and its psychological effects were measured using a paper-based survey and face-to-face interviews. The overall results revealed that the serious game had more positive psychological effects on young learners than the dictionary app. These findings provide supporting empirical evidence for using serious games in English classrooms.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.40 no.5
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• pp.299-304
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• 2016

The importance of clear and effective communication at sea has been greatly emphasized due to the increase in multiculturalism on board both ocean-going and coastal vessels, and the necessity of systematic English training based on 'Knowledge, Understanding, and Proficiency' specified in STCW has also been recognized. With these growing needs in mind, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) updated the Maritime English (ME) Model Course 3.17 in 2015 by providing guidelines on language education within two separate categories, General Maritime English (GME) and Specialized Maritime English (SME). The IMO is now attempting to create a new, global framework of ME education and training, and this this new course model must first be thoroughly understood in order to explore the ways to apply the modified version into the context of current ME education in Korea and to design an updated language curriculum. Therefore, the general structural features of the new model course will be explained in this paper, and the course focus set by IMO and to be considered and/or adopted by the Republic of Korea will be closely examined. Finally, suggestions will be made on how to implement this revised model course in practice with the following focus: the development of localized curriculum for GME and SME; the provision of practical teaching guidance through relevant online and offline materials for class and self-study; and the establishment of qualification guidelines and a teaching support system for language teachers in maritime and language education.

• Journal of Digital Contents Society
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.621-630
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• 2018

This paper presents a case study on foreign language learning applications based on the speech recognition technology, aiming to grasp their current status and limitations of the technology applied to the foreign language speaking education, especially for English and French. As a result of examining the characteristics of the selected English and French applications by drawing on speech learning, it is shown that the use of speech recognition technology has the advantage of creating a speaking practice environment and giving feedback. However, in the case of feedback, there is a lack of appropriate calibration feedback which can help learners correct errors by themselves.

• Journal of Engineering Education Research
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.26-30
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• 2012

Nowadays, fewer Japanese university students are taking PhD degrees in the U.S.A than Koreans or Taiwanese. The language barrier is considered as one of major reasons for this. This lack of international education is one of the reasons cited, as Japan has been falling behind in industrial globalization. Reading aloud is a good practice for learning a foreign language, since many areas of our brains are simultaneously activated. Furthermore, students have a chance to overcome the psychological barrier in reading aloud in front of others, in a meeting. The authors start the voluntary meeting (which is unrelated to official classes of the curriculum) by reading English articles aloud. Topics in the meeting are selected from articles on web sites, therefore, (1) textbooks were not needed, (2) voice data could be listened to, and (3) the meaning and the pronunciation of an unknown word could be checked by web tools. Once the methodology has been mastered, volunteer students can manage the meeting. The authors introduce our experiments conducted at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Ehime University.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.43-51
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• 2004

The convergence of mobile communications and handheld computers offers the opportunity to develop technology that will assist individuals and groups to learn anytime, anywhere. In this thesis, we suggest a learning model for educational mobile contents, and implement a mobile contents for English vocabulary learning. The mobile contents consist of two parts: vocabulary learning and vocabulary evaluation. The vocabulary learning provides the mobile learner not only the display of English vocabulary but also the pronunciation of native speaker. The degree of learning achievement is evaluated by the quiz program of game style. Accordingly, the proposed prototype system for English vocabulary learning is designed and implemented, as an exemplar of personal mobile systems for edutainment mobile learning.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2000.07a
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• pp.364-364
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• 2000

It has been widely discussed in phonology that syllable structure of mother tongue influences one's acquisition of foreign language. However, the topic was hardly examined experimentally. So, we investigated effects of Korean syllable structure when Korean speakers pronounce English words, especially focusing on consonant strings that are not allowed in Korean. In the experiment, all the subjects are divided into 3 groups, that is, native, experienced, and inexperienced speakers. Native group consists of 1 male English native speaker. Experienced and inexperienced are each composed of 3 male Korean speakers. These 2 groups are divided by the length of residence in the country using English as a native language. 41 mono-syllable words are prepared considering the position (onset vs. coda), characteristic (stops, affricates, fricatives), and number of consonant. Then, the length of the consonant cluster is measured. To eliminate tempo effect, the measured length is normalized using the length of the word 'say' in the carrier sentence. Measurement of consonant cluster is the relative time period between the initiation of energy (onset I coda) which is acoustically representative of noise (consonant portion) and voicing. bar (vowel portion) in a syllable. Statistical method is used to estimate the differences among 3 groups. For each word, analysis of variance (ANDY A) and Post Hoc tests are carried out.