• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.3-18
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• 2009

Do loanword properties emerge in the acquisition of a foreign language and if so, how? Classic studies in adult language learning assumed loanword properties that range from near-ceiling to near-chance level of appearance depending on speech proficiency. The present research argues that such variations reflect different phonological types, rather than speech proficiency. To investigate the difference between learner speech and loanword phonology, the current research analyzes the speech data from five different proficiency levels of 92 Korean speakers who read 19 pairs of English words and sentences that contained loanwords. The experimental method is primarily an acoustical one, by which the phonological cause in the loanwords (e.g., the insertion of [$\Box$] at the end of the word stamp) would be attested to appear in learner speech, in comparison with native speech from 11 English speakers and 11 Korean speakers. The data investigated for the research are of segment deletion, insertion, substitution, and alternation in both learner speech and the native speech. The results indicate that learner speech does not present the loanword properties in many cases, but depends on the types of phonological causes. The relatively easy acquisition of target pronunciation is evidenced in the cases of segment deletion, insertion, substitution, and alternation, except when the loanword property involves the successful command of the target phonology such as the de-aspiration of [p] in apple. Such a case of difficult learning draws a sharp distinction from the cases of easy learning in the development of learner speech, particularly beyond the intermediate level of proficiency. Overall, learner speech departs from loanword phonology and develops toward the native speech value, depending on phonological contrasts in the native and foreign languages.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.13 no.9
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• pp.495-503
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• 2013

The purpose of this study was to investigate how Korean speakers produce English vowels. Twenty one Korean learners produced the vowels [i, ɪ, eɪ, ɛ, æ, ɑ, ʌ, ɔ, oʊ, ʊ, u] in bVt or pVt forms of real words. Acoustic measurements were conducted for the vowel formant frequencies (F1, F2) and duration. Results showed that Korean learners tended to produce the vowel duration longer than native English speakers. Also, the front vowels produced by Korean participants tended to be produced at the more frontal part of the tongue. In addition, Korean participants distinguished the tense and lax pairs not through quality(F1, F2) but through vowel duration. This is different from the native English speakers in that they differentiate tense and lax pairs by quality(F1, F2) as well as vowel duration. Based on these results, pedagogical implications are discussed.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.1-18
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• 2009

The study aims to answer two questions: (a) what perceptions do NNESTs have about teaching native English speaking (NES) students? (b) what perceptions do NES students have of their NNESTs? The study participants were four NNESTs and 17 NES students. Data were collected through one-on-one interviews, which were analyzed qualitatively. Major study findings showed the differences between the NNESTs and their NES students in the area of teaching and language performance. The NNESTs were perceived by their students as using ineffective teaching techniques, lacking in their command of English, especially accent; the NNESTs, in turn, perceived themselves as well-prepared teachers with not too much concern about nonnativeness of English, and felt that their students were not actively engaged in their class. The present study indicates, for both NNESTs and NES students, the need to be aware of World Englishes (WE) in terms of language and pedagogy. This involves the variety of Englishes, especially with different accents existence among nonnative speakers, and the variety of learning and teaching methods in English class, where both need to create a balance between the old and new perspective to maintain a middle ground.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.187-210
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• 2002

The goal of this study is to investigate the course development for the Korean students in the immersion English program. This study describes the detailed curriculum and makes some suggestions to improve the courses for regular, extracurricular, and special activities in the five-week immersion English program managed by KAIST in summer 2001. This immersion English program was designed to develop the students' communicative competence in speaking English with native speakers in the age of globalization, by providing students with the English-speaking immersion setting. The results of the students' tests and the data concerning the program revealed that the program was very significant in improving students' communicative competence focused on communication and presentation and in attaining the high motivation for the natural English communication by performing the student-centered and task-based extracurricular activities and special events.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Language and Information Conference
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• 2001.06a
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• pp.185-197
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• 2001

It is quite burden-some for non-native speakers of English to write and read more and more IT-related reports due to the rapid development of IT technology. Thus, this study aims at designing ESP materials by using huge volume of electronic ITU texts, corpora and concordancer SW. Various tests are designed to study the usage of articles, hyponym, agreement, synonym, and others. The results of this study will bring general and practical benefits to technical English writing and improving IT area students' lexical knowledge of actual English usage. The ESP materials produced by this study will also make an extensive contribution to other industries and academic areas in Korean society.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.23-29
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• 2019

This study acoustically examines the quality of fricatives produced by ten dysarthric speakers with cerebral palsy. Previous similar studies tend to focus only on sibilants, but to obtain a better understanding of how dysarthria affects fricatives we selected a range of samples with different places of articulation and voicing. The Universal Access (UA) Speech database was used to select thirteen words beginning with one of the English fricatives (/f/, /v/, /s/, /z/, /ʃ/, /ð/). The following four measurements were taken for both dysarthric and healthy speakers: phoneme duration, mean spectral peak, variance and skewness. Results show that even speakers with mild dysarthria have significantly longer fricatives and a lower mean spectral peak than healthy speakers. Furthermore, mean spectral peak and variance showed significant group effects for both healthy and dysarthric speakers. Mean spectral peak and variance was also useful for discriminating several places of articulation for both groups. Lastly, spectral measurements displayed important group differences when taking severity into account. These findings show that in general there is a degradation in the production of fricatives for dysarthric speakers, but difference will depend on the severity of dysarthria along with the type of measurement taken.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.455-464
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• 2009

Based on the observation that Korean speakers of English have difficulties in producing English fricatives, a perception experiment was designed to investigate whether Korean speakers also have difficulties perceiving English labial consonants including fricatives. Forty Korean college students were asked to perform a multiple-choice identification test. The consonant perception test consisted of nonce words which contained English labial consonants [p, b, f, v] in 4 different prosodic locations: initial onset position, intervocalic position before stress, intervocalic position after stress, and final coda position. The general perception pattern was that the mean accuracy rates were higher in strong position like CV and VCVV than in weak position like VC and VVCV. The difficulties in perceiving the English targets resulted mainly from bidirectional manner confusion between stop and fricative across all prosodic locations. The other types of misidentification were due to place confusion as well as voicing confusion. Place confusion was generated mostly by the target [f] in all prosodic position due to acoustic properties. Voicing confusion was heavily influenced by prosodic position. The misperception of the participants was accounted for by phonetic properties and/or the participants' native language properties.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2002.11a
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• pp.169-172
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• 2002

English is one of the stress-timed languages and has much more dynamic rhythm, stress and the tendency toward the isochronism of stressed syllables. It goes with various English utterance restructuring, irrespective of the pauses by syntactic boundaries, and post-lexically phonological phenomena. Specifically in the real speech acts, the natural utterances of fluent speakers or the broadcasting speech cause much more various English restructuring and phonological phenomena. This has been an obstacle for students in speaking fluent English and understanding normal speech. Therefore, this study tried to focus the most problematic factor in English speaking and listening difficulty on English restructuring and post-lexically phonological phenomena caused by stress-timed rhythm and, second, to point out the importance of teaching English rhythm bearing that in mind.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.129-153
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• 2007

When English language teachers are deciding on their priorities for teaching pronunciation, it is imperative to know what kind of differences and errors are most likely to interfere with communication, and what special problems particular first-language speakers will have with English pronunciation. In other words, phoneme discrimination skill is an integral part of speech processing for the EFL learners' learning to converse in English. Training using sound visualization technique can be effective in improving second language learners' perceptions and productions of segmental and suprasegmental speech contrasts. This study assessed the efficacy of a pronunciation training that provided visual feedback for EFL learners acquiring pitch and durational contrasts to produce and perceive English phonemic distinctions. The subjects' ability to produce and to perceive novel English words was tested in two contexts before and after training; words in isolation and words in sentences. In comparison with an untrained control group, trainees showed improved perceptual and productive performance, transferred their knowledge to new contexts, and maintained their improvement three months after training. These findings support the feasibility of learner-centered programs using sound visualization technique for English language pronunciation instruction.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.243-257
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• 2001

In English textbooks, there are three kinds of English intonation representations: Trager & Smith's, Weak-strong, Audio-lingual way. Each representation has its merits and demerits. Therefore, just one of them is insufficient to represent English intonation properly. Trager & Smith's representation is relevant to show holistic intonation itself. In contrast to this merit, it is not appropriate to represent downstep, declination, etc. With Weak-strong, it is good to show weak and strong point in the sentence. It is not, however, consistent with intonation. Instead of these representations, some textbooks accept Audio-lingual method. Audio-lingual method gives students more chances to hear native speakers' intonations. But it doesn't give ways to understand English intonation itself. In English textbooks, they don't have any hierarchies dependent upon students' proficiency. In spite of various intonations, they just accept a few limited intonation models. Thus, it is necessary to review all kinds of intonation representations and to develop more advanced and relevant English intonation representation.