• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.6 no.3
• /
• pp.81-89
• /
• 2014

Korean English learners tend to have difficulty perceiving and producing English vowels. The purpose of this study is to examine a link between perceived and produced vowel spaces of Korean learners of English. Sixteen Korean male and female participants perceived two sets of English synthetic vowels on a computer monitor and rated their naturalness. The same participants produced English vowels in a carrier sentence with high and low pitch variation in a clear speaking mode. The author compared the perceived and produced vowel spaces in terms of the pitch and gender variables. Results showed that the perceived vowel spaces were not significantly different in either variables. Korean learners perceived the vowels similarly. They did not differentiate the tense-lax vowel pairs nor the low vowels. Secondly, the produced vowel spaces of the male and female groups showed a 25% difference which may have come from their physiological differences in the vocal tract length. Thirdly, the comparison of the perceived and produced vowel spaces revealed that although the vowel space patterns of the Korean male and female learners appeared similar, which may lead to a relative link between perception and production, statistical differences existed in some vowels because of the acoustical properties of the synthetic vowels, which may lead to an independent link. The author concluded that any comparison between the perceived and produced vowel space of nonnative speakers should be made cautiously. Further studies would be desirable to examine how Koreans would perceive different sets of synthetic vowels.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.2 no.2
• /
• pp.43-50
• /
• 2010

English vowels can be divided into monophthongs and diphthongs depending on the number of vocal tract shapes. Diphthongs are usually produced with more than one shape. This study attempts to collect acoustical data of English diphthongs published by Hillenbrand et al.(1995) online and to examine acoustic features of the diphthongs for phoneticians and English teachers. Sixty three American males and females were chosen after excluding those subjects with different target vowels or ambiguous formant tracks. The author used Praat to obtain the acoustical data systematically at eleven equidistant timepoints over the diphthongal segment. Obvious errors were corrected based on the spectrographic display of each diphthong. Results show that the formant trajectories of the diphthongs produced by the American males and females appeared quite similar. When the female formant values were uniformly normalized to those of the males, almost a perfect collapse occurred. Secondly, the diphthongal movements on the vowel space appeared not linear due to the coarticulatory gesture for the following consonant. Thirdly, the average duration of the diphthongs produced by the females was 1.156 times longer than that of the males while the pitch ratio between the two groups turned out to be 1.746 with a similar contour over measurement points. The author concludes that English diphthongs produced by various groups can be compared systematically when the acoustical values are obtained at proportional timepoints. Further studies will be desirable on the comparison of English diphthongs produced by native and nonnative speakers.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.14 no.3
• /
• pp.67-76
• /
• 2022

This paper presents two experiments examining different gemination behavior of English affixes. Experiment 1 focused on geminates through affixation with im-, un-, -ness, and -ly. The English group articulated geminates with longer absolute and relative durations than singletons for im-, un-, and -ness, but there was no difference for -ly. This suggests that -ly words are more likely to be perceived as whole words, and that -ly is less decomposable. Furthermore, un- geminates exhibited longer absolute and preceding vowel durations than im- geminates, suggesting that im- is more decomposable than un-. However, the Korean group produced geminates with longer absolute and relative durations than singletons for all im-, un-, -ness, and -ly, and produced comparable absolute durations of im- and un- geminates. Experiment 2 investigated different gemination behaviors of locative and negative im- prefixes. The English group showed durational contrast between geminates and singletons only for negative im-, indicating that locative im- is not easily separated from stem. However, the Korean group produced longer absolute and relative durations for geminates than for singletons for both locative and negative im-. According to the findings of Experiments 1 and 2, affix decomposability is less likely to influence Korean speakers' English affix gemination, and spellings may have a greater influence.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
• /
• v.57 no.6
• /
• pp.1017-1041
• /
• 2011

This study investigates Korean EFL learners' awareness and use of the English existential there-construction by examining data collected from 54 Korean EFL learners of English by means of a pragmalinguistic judgment task and a controlled discourse completion task. The results of the judgment task reveal that lower proficiency learners rated canonical sentences and existentials with a preposed locative best in the communicative situations where the use of existentials would have been most appropriate. A comparison of the ratings by more proficient learners and native speakers shows that existentials received highest ratings by both groups where they are the most natural option, while canonical sentences received significantly higher ratings by the learners. With regard to the production data, learners tended to avoid existentials, but rather relied on canonical sentences. Existentials were rarely used by lower proficiency learners and not used productively even by more proficient learners in the situations where existentials would have been the most natural option. These results suggest that Korean learners' difficulty with the use of existentials is not merely a product of performance limitations, but attributable to limited knowledge about existentials and their syntactic alternatives in terms of contextual appropriateness. Lower proficiency learners lack such knowledge, and more proficient learners, while showing better awareness of the use of existentials, have problems as to the placement of new information when engaging in writing tasks that place lower level of demands on attention to the information status of noun phrases compared to communicative, oral tasks.

• The Southeast Asian review
• /
• v.23 no.3
• /
• pp.135-179
• /
• 2013

This study explores the study experiences of Southeast Asian students at a reputable Korean private university in Seoul. In particular, this study focuses on difficulties and coping strategies of both non-native speaker of English and native-speakers of English who are working for their undergraduate or postgraduate degrees. Interviews of fourteen students from five Southeast Asian countries were collected and analyzed by NVivo 9. Thematic analysis result shows that many students, particularly non-native speakers of English, had much more difficulties than their counterparts, in contemporary Korean university context, where internationalization indices-driven strategies including expanding courses conducted in English language. Also, this study observes and documents contrasting patterns of different degree of difficulties experienced by students, depending on their degree levels and majors. Undergraduate students in science and engineering majors had the greatest degree of difficulties among all. In contrast, their graduate counterparts seem to have less difficulties. This might be related to the fact that graduate students in science and engineering majors are mostly working with their peers in their own labs, which provides institutional support. Coping strategies of students show that international students, facing unfavorable or unfriendly treatments by their Korean peers, developed innovative strategies, including using the internet technology to catch up with the classes that they could not fully understand. As a whole, adaptation process of international students do not seem to be passive or one-way. This study also provides policy implications for international students, particularly, who can be categorized as linguistic and ethnic minorities.

• Journal of Korean language education
• /
• v.29 no.1
• /
• pp.1-23
• /
• 2018

This paper investigates how adult Mandarin- and English- speaking learners of Korean perceive Korean vowels, with focus on the effect of the first language (L1) and the second language (L2) acoustic relationship, as well as the influence of Korean language experience. For this study, native Mandarin and Canadian English speakers who have learned Korean as a foreign language, as well as a control group of native Korean speakers, participated in two experiments. Experiment 1 was designed to examine acoustic similarities between Korean and English vowels, as well as Korean and Mandarin vowels to predict which Korean vowels are relatively easy, or difficult for L2 learners to perceive. The linear discriminant analysis (Klecka, 1980) based on their L1-L2 acoustic similarity predicted that L2 Mandarin learners would have perceptual difficulty rankings for Korean vowels as follows: (the easiest) /i, a, e/ >> /ɨ, ʌ, o, u/ (most difficult), whereas L2 English learners would have perceptual difficulty rankings for Korean vowels as follows: (the easiest) /i, a, e, ɨ, ʌ/ >> /o, u/ (most difficult). The goal of Experiment 2 was to test how accurately L2 Mandarin and English learners perceive Korean vowels /ɨ, ʌ, o, u/ which are considered to be difficult for L2 learners. The results of a mixed-effects logistic model revealed that English listeners showed higher identification accuracy for Korean vowels than Mandarin listeners, indicating that having a larger L1 vowel inventory than the L2 facilitates L2 vowel perception. However, both groups have the same ranking of Korean vowel perceptual difficulty: ɨ > ʌ > u > o. This finding indicates that adult learners of Korean can perceive the new vowel /ɨ/, which does not exist in their L1, more accurately than the vowel /o/, which is acoustically similar to vowels in their L1, suggesting that L2 learners are more likely to establish additional phonetic categories for new vowels. In terms of the influence of experience with L2, it was found that identification accuracy increases as Korean language experience rises. In other words, the more experienced English and Mandarin learners of Korean are, the more likely they are to have better identification accuracy in Korean vowels than less experienced learners of Korean. Moreover, there is no interaction between L1 background and L2 experience, showing that identification accuracy of Korean vowels is higher as Korean language experience increases regardless of their L1 background. Overall, these findings of the two experiments demonstrated that acoustic similarity between L1 and L2 sounds using the LDA model can partially predict perceptual difficulty in L2 acquisition, indicating that other factors such as perceptual similarity between L1 and L2, the merge of Korean /o/ and /u/ may also influence their Korean vowel perception.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
• /
• v.18 no.1
• /
• pp.35-56
• /
• 2007

The English language has developed from a language with optional subjecthood Into a language with obligatory subjecthood due to a general reduction of inflections. Two types of subject omission, pro-drop and conjunction reduction, have been reported in the history of English. Old English with rich inflections had both referential pro-drop and conjunction reduction. Middle English with much lesser inflections still witnessed pro-drop and conjunction reduction, but in such a decreasing way that modern English with a loss of inflections developed from Middle English hardly has either pro-drop or conjunction reduction. This paper explores both the phenomena relating to optional subjecthood in Old, Middle, and Modern English in light of the cognitive processes of the universal, hierarchical constraints that are assumed to be inherent in English speakers' cognitive fatuity. It is found that optional subjecthood in Old, Middle, and Modern English is correctly raptured in terms of the distinct rankings of the proposed constraints, and that it is closely related to whether each of Old, Middle, and Modern English has rich inflections.

• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.14 no.1
• /
• pp.73-89
• /
• 2007

This study explored the perception of transplanted English prosody by thirty American and Korean, male and female listeners. The English utterances of various sentence types produced by Korean and American male speakers were employed to transplant the American prosody contours to Korean English utterances. Then, the thirty subjects were instructed to rate the transplanted prosodic components. Results showed that the interactions between the three factors (e.g., rater groups & transplantation types; transplantation types & sentence types; rater groups & transplantation types & sentence types) turned out to be meaningful. Both Americans and Koreans perceived the effectiveness of the combined effect of transplanted duration and pitch or duration and pitch and intensity. However, when perceiving individual prosodic components, Americans and Koreans showed different perceptual ratings. As for the overall prosody change, Americans perceived the change of intensity in a significant way but Koreans did not because intensity is not a crucial semantic factor in Korean. Americans rated the transplantation of duration alone as ineffective while Koreans rated otherwise. This was explained by the difference between English and Korean. The difference of perspective was also significant with different sentence types, especially with the three sentence types that had speech rates slower than other sentence types. A slower speech rate intensified the mismatch between the transplanted duration and the original pitch causing a negative impression on American listeners whereas this did not affect Korean listeners. Pedagogical implications of the findings are discussed.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
• /
• v.12 no.2
• /
• pp.215-235
• /
• 2006

This paper explores the effects of two different methods of instruction for 106 low-level Korean learners of English at a college in learning request expressions. Both of the methods contained the focus-on-form and function characteristics, while the degree of explicitness for input enhancement was differentiated. Abundant email samples written by English native speakers for the input were provided and email writing practice for the output was proceeded for both groups of the students in the treatment sessions. The numbers of target forms used in pretest and posttest results were compared quantitatively: The tests included email writing and open-ended Discourse Completion Test (DCT). The results indicated that the target pragmatic features were slightly better learned under the condition of relatively high degree of explicit instruction with metapragmatic information, even though the difference was statistically insignificant. In addition, the students' use of request strategies both in email and DCT was affected positively by the treatment with email input and output. That is, the students applied the request strategies they learned through email into their oral production (open-ended DCT) as well as their email writing. Further study on the output effect of target features in advancing pragmatic competence is suggested.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.11 no.4
• /
• pp.63-70
• /
• 2019

This study investigated individual variability of L2 learners' categorical judgments of L2 stops by exploring English learners' perceptual processing of two acoustic cues (voice onset time [VOT] and f0) and working memory capacity as sources of variation. As prior research has reported that English speakers' greater use of the redundant cue f0 was responsible for gradient processing of native stops, we examined whether the same processing characteristics would be observed in L2 learners' perception of Korean stops (/t/-/t^h/). 22 English learners of L2 Korean with a range of L2 proficiency participated in a visual analogue scaling task and demonstrated variable manners of judging the L2 Korean stops: Some were more gradient than others in performing the task. Correlation analysis revealed that L2 learners' categorical responses were modestly related to individuals' utilizations of a primary cue for the stop contrast (VOT for L1 English stops and f0 for L2 Korean stops), and were also related to better working memory capacity. Together, the current experimental evidence demonstrates adult L2 learners' top-down processing of stop consonants where linguistic and cognitive resources are devoted to a process of determining abstract phonemic identity.