• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.33-37
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• 2018

Korean students with much exposure to the relatively slow and clear speech used in most English classes in Korea can be expected to have difficulty understanding the casual style that is common in the everyday speech of English speakers. This research attempted to investigate an effective way to utilize casual speech in English education, by exploring the way different speech styles (clear vs. casual) affect Korean learners' comprehension of spoken English. Twenty Korean university students and two native speakers of English participated in a listening session. The English utterances were produced in different speech styles (clear slow, casual slow, clear fast, and casual fast). The Korean students were divided into two groups by English proficiency level. The results showed that the Korean students achieved 69.4% comprehension accuracy, while the native speakers of English demonstrated almost perfect results. The Korean students (especially the low-proficiency group) had more problems perceiving function words than they did perceiving content words. Responding to the different speech styles, the high-proficiency group had more difficulty listening to utterances with phonological variation than they did listening to utterances produced at a faster speed. The low-proficiency group, however, struggled with utterances produced at a faster speed more than they did with utterances with phonological variation. The pedagogical implications of the results are discussed in the concluding section.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.119-132
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• 2001

The purpose of this study is to investigate the intonation of Korean speakers in English sentence adverbials. The intonation of English sentence adverbials is realized by its syntactic and semantic meaning. Many Korean speakers realize falling or stylized high-rising intonation instead of fall-rising in attitudinal adverbials. In addition, Korean students don't realize deaccenting in likelihood adverbials. These results suggest that the intonation patterns in current English textbooks are not sufficient for English intonation education at school.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.119-136
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• 2004

Ellipsis is the figure of speech characterized by the deliberate omission of words that are obviously understood, but that must be supplied to make a construction grammatically or semantically complete. The purpose of this study is to examine how ellipsis affects its adjacent elements acoustically and phonologically in English VP-ellipsis, sluicing and gapping. In the experiment, the realizations by English native speakers are set as the criteria for the observing point and are compared to Korean speakers' realizations. For the results, while English native speakers utilized various acoustic information such as word duration and pitch range and phonological information such as pith accent realization in order to intend the cues for decoding the missing constituent, Korean English learners relied on only duration information and could not use various information effectively.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.47-63
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• 2010

This study provides a description of the glottal characteristics of the word-initial low vowels /a, $\ae$/ in terms of a set of acoustic parameters and discusses glottal configuration as their acoustic correlates. Furthermore, it examines the effect of prosodic boundary on the glottal properties of the vowels, seeking an account of the possible role of prosodic structure based on prosodic theory. Acoustic parameters reported to indicate glottal characteristics were obtained from the measurements made directly from the speech spectrum on recordings of Korean and English collected from 45 speakers. They consist of two separate groups of native Korean and native English speakers, each including both male and female speakers. Based on the three acoustic parameters of open quotient (OQ), first-formant bandwidth (B1), and spectral tilt (ST), comparisons were made between the speech of males and females, between the speech of native Korean and native English speakers, and between Korean and English produced by native Korean speakers. Acoustic analysis of the experimental data indicates that some or all glottal parameters play a crucial role in differentiating the speech groups, despite substantial interspeaker variations. Statistical analysis of the Korean data indicates prosodic strengthening with respect to the acoustic parameters B1 and OQ, suggesting acoustic enhancement in terms of the degree of glottal abduction and the glottal closure during a vibratory cycle.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.57-62
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• 2011

Focused items in English sentences are usually accompanied by changes in acoustic manifestation. This paper investigates the acoustic characteristics of $H^*$ in English utterances produced by natives speakers of English and Korean learners of English. To obtain more reliable results, the changes of the acoustic feature values (F0, intensity, syllable duration) were normalized by a median value and a whole duration of each utterance. Acoustic values of sentences with no focused words were compared with those of sentences with focused words within each group (Americans vs. Koreans). Sentences with focused words were compared between the two groups, too. In the instances in which a significant Group x Focus Location (initial, middle and final of a sentence) interaction was obtained, further analysis testing the effect of Group on each Focus Location was conducted. The analysis revealed that Korean learners of English produced focused words with lower F0, lower intensity and shorter syllable duration than native speakers of English. However, the effect of intensity change caused by focus was not significant within each group. Further analysis examining the interaction of Group and Focus Location showed that the change in F0 produced by Korean group was significantly lower in the middle and the final positions of sentences than by American group. Implications for the intonation training were also discussed.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.19 no.8
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• pp.572-583
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• 2019

This study sought to find out what the most ideal and appropriate native English speakers-Korean English teacher cooperative class model and the defining factors for organizing effective cooperative classes in the English education environment of our country. To achieve this goal, a total of 165 sixth graders of five elementary schools in Seoul were subject to the study. For about a month from April 1 to April 30, 2019, the survey and statistical analysis were conducted, including multiple return analysis, correlation analysis, cross analysis, and t/F verification. In summary, the results of the study are as follows. First, it was found that among the recognition of cooperative classes between native English speakers and Korean English teachers, it affected the defining factors in the order of class-related skills, task orientation, teaching-learning strategies, and motivation. Second, based on learner characteristics, the difference in perception of cooperative classes between native English speakers and Korean English teachers was verified, and the perception of native-Korean English teachers' cooperative classes was different depending on gender and the type of English cooperative classes currently participating, but the recognition of native-Korean English-Korean English cooperative classes, which were statistically significant, was not confirmed. Third, according to learner characteristics, the difference in the definition factors of the learner was verified and the difference between the sexes occurred, but the learner-defined factors according to the current type of English cooperative class did not occur. Also, there was no difference in the definition factors of scholars according to the type of English cooperative classes desired.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.129-136
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• 2013

This study investigated how acoustic characteristics (i.e., duration, F1, F2) of English high front vowels /i, ɪ/ are modulated by boundary- and prominence-induced strengthening in native vs. non-native (Korean) speech production. The study also examined how the durational difference in vowels due to the voicing of a following consonant (i.e., voiced vs. voiceless) is modified by prosodic strengthening in two different (native vs. non-native) speaker groups. Five native speakers of Canadian English and eight Korean learners of English (intermediate-advanced level) produced 8 minimal pairs with the CVC sequence (e.g., 'beat'-'bit') in varying prosodic contexts. Native speakers distinguished the two vowels in terms of duration, F1, and F2, whereas non-native speakers only showed durational differences. The two groups were similar in that they maximally distinguished the two vowels when the vowels were accented (F2, duration), while neither group showed boundary-induced strengthening in any of the three measurements. The durational differences due to the voicing of the following consonant were also maximized when accented. The results are discussed further in terms of phonetics-prosody interface in L2 production.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.235-252
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• 2000

The purpose of this study is to characterize the intonational realizations of vocatives in comparison with those of appositives in English statements and questions, and to compare the realizations produced by English native speakers with those of Korean students. Unlike Pierrehumbert(1980), in which the tag expressions do not have pitch accents, Beckman & Pierrehumbert(1986) proposed that the vocatives have a special status in tonal alignment and duration and that they form an independent phrase with pitch accent. Our results reinforce Beckman & Pierrehumbert(1986): both English native speakers and Korean students realize the vocatives in terms of rising tone, and the appositives in terms of both falling tone in statements and rising tone in questions. Moreover, they pronounced the nouns before vocatives longer than those before appositives. However, native speakers impose the low phrase tone before vocatives in statements and the high tone in questions; whereas, Korean students either put the low phrase tone on pitch contours of both statements and questions, or tend to pause before vocatives, thereby constituting an intonational phrase.

• Asia Pacific Journal of Corpus Research
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.27-39
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• 2020

This paper examines the frequency and distribution of the so-called "non-discourse marker functions" of so in essay writings produced by 200 L1 English speakers and 1,300 EFL learners in China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. Based on the data drawn from the International Corpus Network of Asian Learners of English, this study compares EFL learners and L1 English speakers' uses of so, identifying four grammatical uses, as (1) an adverb, (2) part of a fixed phrase, (3) a pro-form, and (4) a conjunction phrase specifying purpose. This study aims to show the wide variability among EFL learners with different L1s, identifying the tendency of usage both common among and specific to the sub-groups of EFL learners. The findings suggest that the learners demonstrate patterns distinctively different from those of L1 English speakers, indicating an underuse of so as a marker expressing "purpose" and an overuse as part of fixed phrases. Compared to L1 English speakers, the learners also tend to overuse so in the discourse marker functions, regardless of their L1s. The study proposes pedagogical implications focusing on discourse flow and diachronic aspects of so in order to understand its multifunctionality, although the latter is primarily suggested for advanced learners.

• 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.