• Title/Summary/Keyword: English speakers

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"Narrating Rights: Literary Texts and Human, Nonhuman, and Inhuman Demands"

  • Kim, Youngmin
    • Journal of English Language & Literature
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    • v.64 no.3
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    • pp.483-530
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    • 2018
  • Unpacking and dispersing rights of various kinds formerly enjoyed by a selected few has been the constant motivation behind the democratization and modernization of human society. Human rights and later civil rights have continuously been constituted and reconstituted in response to the demands of the laboring class, slaves, women, subalterns, animals, and things, expanding beyond the boundaries of class, race, nation, sexuality, gender, species and organism. Calling attention to the ways in which literary and cultural texts have narrated rights so as to inscribe these human, nonhuman, and inhuman demands. Narrating rights offer opportunities to interrogate the lasting contributions of English language and literature to questioning, reforming, and practicing rights. The interrogation is particularly pertinent in this age in which revised and dispersed rights are creating new conflicts, requiring them to be narrated differently and imaginatively so as to allow all the parties in conflict to participate in working out the conflicts. With the 2017 theme of "Literature and Human Rights," JELL editorial collective hope to explore the relationship between literature and human rights in its multiple simultaneous, and plural manifestations in an open platform. "Narrating Rights" is a double-edged task that, on one hand, reflects the singular life conditions or contexts of a human, inhuman or nonhuman being and, on the other hand, aspires to the perpetual process of rights' universal application. Eleven out of all the keynote speakers at the 2017 ELLAK Convention were invited to this roundtable on Literature and Human Rights. The following transcription includes the dialogues of the eleven discussants.

Using the Deep Learning Techniques for Understanding the nativelikeness of Korean EFL Learners (한국인 영어학습자의 영어 문장은 얼마나 원어민스러운가: 딥러닝 기반 분석)

  • 박권식;유석훈;송상헌
    • Language Facts and Perspectives
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    • v.48
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    • pp.195-227
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    • 2019
  • Building upon the state-of-the-art deep learning techniques, the present study classifies the texts written by Korean EFL learners and English native speakers and thereby demonstrates how the two types of texts differ from each other. To this end, the current work makes use of the Yonsei English Learner Corpus (YELC) and Gacheon Learner Corpus (GLC) as the L2 data, and Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) as the L1 data. Utilizing the sentence classification methods, the current work implements a system to differentiate the two types of texts, the accuracy of which is about 94%. This indicates that the deep leaning-based system is capable of identifying the well-formedness and felicities of the texts written by Korean EFL learners. Nonetheless, the system-based judgments do not overlap with human judgments largely because the deep learning model exclusively focuses on sequence of words. The present study provides a further analysis to see how the two types of judgments differ with respect to grammatical errors (e.g., word order, voice, etc.) and felicity errors (e.g., semantic prosody, the position of adverbs, etc.).

A study on the predictability of acoustic power distribution of English speech for English academic achievement in a Science Academy (과학영재학교 재학생 영어발화 주파수 대역별 음향 에너지 분포의 영어 성취도 예측성 연구)

  • Park, Soon;Ahn, Hyunkee
    • Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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    • v.14 no.3
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    • pp.41-49
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    • 2022
  • The average acoustic distribution of American English speakers was statistically compared with the English-speaking patterns of gifted students in a Science Academy in Korea. By analyzing speech recordings, the duration time of which is much longer than in previous studies, this research identified the degree of acoustic proximity between the two parties and the predictability of English academic achievement of gifted high school students. Long-term spectral acoustic power distribution vectors were obtained for 2,048 center frequencies in the range of 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz by applying an long-term average speech spectrum (LTASS) MATLAB code. Three more variables were statistically compared to discover additional indices that can predict future English academic achievement: the receptive vocabulary size test, the cumulative vocabulary scores of English formative assessment, and the English Speaking Proficiency Test scores. Linear regression and correlational analyses between the four variables showed that the receptive vocabulary size test and the low-frequency vocabulary formative assessments which require both lexical and domain-specific science background knowledge are relatively more significant variables than a basic suprasegmental level English fluency in the predictability of gifted students' academic achievement.

Grapheme-to-Phoneme Conversion Regularity Effects among Late Korean-English Bilinguals (후기 한국어-영어 이중언어화자의 자소-음소 변환 규칙에 따른 영어 규칙성 효과)

  • Kim, Dahee;Baik, Yeonji;Ryu, Jaehee;Nam, Kichun
    • Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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    • v.26 no.3
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    • pp.323-355
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    • 2015
  • This study examined grapheme-to-phoneme regularity effect among late Korean-English bilinguals by using whole word level task (lexical processing) and two meta-phonological tasks(sub-lexical processing): [1] English word naming task(whole word level), [2] rhyme judgement task(rhyme level), and [3] phoneme deletion task(phoneme level). Forty-three late Korean-English bilinguals participated in all three tasks. In these tasks, participants showed better performance in regular word conditions compared to irregular word conditions, demonstrating a clear English regularity effect. Post-hoc correlational analysis revealed strong correlation between word naming task and rhyme judgement task, which is different from the results reported with English monolinguals. The contradicting results might be due to the relevantly low English proficiency level among late Korean-English bilingual speakers. In conclusion, this study suggests that late Korean-English bilinguals make use of L2 grapheme-to-phoneme conversion (GPC) rule when reading L2 English words.

A Convergency Study on University Freshmen's Academic Emotions towards English: Difference depending on level, team-teaching & communicative activities (우리나라 대학 신입생의 영어 학습 감정에 대한 융합적 연구: 수준별, 팀티칭, 의사소통활동유형에 따른 차이)

  • Park, Ok Hee
    • Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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    • v.12 no.4
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    • pp.369-375
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    • 2021
  • The study explores the kinds of emotions freshmen in South Korea universities experience. Specifically, the study examines their emotional experiences on level-differentiated classes, team-teaching by native speakers and Korean professors, and communicative activities. 327 freshmen participated in the survey based on 'Academic Emotions Questionnaire (AEQ)' and the statistical results are as follows: Firstly, research showed that the participants in advanced classes feel higher negative emotions such as 'worries' and 'boredom' than those of beginner and intermediated classes (P < .05). Secondly, participants feel higher level of 'fun', 'satisfaction' and lower level for 'boredom' in the native speaker classes than those of Korean professors (P < .001). Thirdly, participants feel games are the most 'fun' and 'satisfying', while presentations are viewed as the most 'worrying' and 'boring' among the communicative activities (P < .001). Finally, the pedagogical implications and suggestions are discussed.

A Study on the Foreign Accent of English Stressed Syllables (영어강세음절의 외국인어투에 관한 연구)

  • Park, Hee-Suk
    • Journal of Convergence Society for SMB
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    • v.6 no.4
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    • pp.51-57
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    • 2016
  • This study aims at investigating and comparing the vowel lengths of the eight stressed syllable vowels among the Korean college students with the English native speakers. To do this English sentences were uttered and recorded by twenty Korean subjects. Acoustic features were measured from a sound spectrogram with the help of the Praat software program and analyzed through statistical analysis. From the results of the experiment, I was able to find out that the differences of the lengths of the first syllable stressed vowels were significant. Especially in the pronunciation of the English front low vowel /${\ae}$/, native subjects pronounced significantly longer than Korean subjects, and this result could be used as a teaching material in pronunciation class.

A Study on Low Pitch Accent Produced in Different Locations in English Sentences (영어 문장 내 상이한 위치에 나타난 저성조 피치 액센트 연구)

  • Yi, So-Pae;Kim, Soo-Jung
    • Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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    • v.3 no.4
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    • pp.63-70
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    • 2011
  • Recent studies on English $L^*$ (low pitch accent) have revealed the difference of changes in acoustic manifestation between utterances produced by Koreans and those produced by native speakers of English. However, not much effort has been made to compare $L^*$ focused constituents and non-focused constituents. At the same time, most previous works on focus realization are lacking in terms of normalization of acoustic measurement. Therefore, this research is dedicated to comparing the $L^*$ focused items and non-focused items realized by Koreans and Americans and to examining the realization of English $L^*$ produced by the two language groups with improved normalization of the acoustic features (F0, intensity and duration). Within-group analysis comparing focused words and non-focused words showed both Americans and Koreans prolonged the $L^*$ focused syllables but the effect size of syllable lengthening made by Koreans was far less than that made by Americans. Furthermore, significant F0 lowering was found in Americans but not in Koreans. However, the effect of intensity change caused by $L^*$ focus was not significant within each group. The effect of focused words was tested between the two groups revealing that Koreans implemented English $L^*$ focus with higher F0, lower intensity and shorter duration than Americans. In the instances in which a significant Group x Focus Location (initial, middle and final of a sentence) interaction was found, further analysis testing the effect of Group on each Focus Location was conducted. The testing showed that the Koreans produced shorter syllables at initial and middle of a sentence and higher F0 at initial of a sentence than Americans. Implications for the intonation training were also discussed.

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The relationship between fluency levels and suprasegmentals according to the sentence types in the English read speech by Korean middle school English learners (한국 중학생의 영어 읽기 발화에서 문장유형에 따른 유창성 등급과 초분절 요소의 관계)

  • Kim, Hwa-Young
    • Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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    • v.14 no.3
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    • pp.51-66
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    • 2022
  • This study aims to help Korean English learners to learn English pronunciation by revealing which suprasegmentals affect the implementation of English sentences closer to native English speakers when they read English sentences. To this end, Korean middle school English learners were selected as subjects and research data were gathered through sentence types (declarative, interrogative, imperative, and exclamative), as well as syllables. Speech rate, pause frequency, pause duration, F0 range, and rhythm among suprasegmentals were used for analysis of these English sentence utterances. Mean analysis, correlation analysis, and regression analysis were performed. The results showed that speech rate, pause frequency, pause duration, and F0 range affected the evaluation of fluency levels. In the regression analysis between all suprasegmentals and fluency levels, the suprasegmentals that most affected fluency levels were speech rate and F0 range. Rhythm had no meaningful relation with fluency levels. Therefore, when teaching English pronunciation, it is necessary to teach students to increase their speech rate and F0 range. In addition, students should be trained to reduce both the number and the duration of pauses during utterance to improve their fluency. It is noteworthy that of the four sentence types, exclamative sentences were produced with faster speech rate, fewer pauses, shorter pause duration, and higher rhythm values.

Comparison of the pronunciation of word-initial liquids between generations in Korean (세대 간 어두 유음의 발음 양상 비교)

  • Yun, Eunmi;Sim, Hyeran;Park, Seegyoon;Kim, Hyungi;Kang, Jinseok
    • 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.

The correlation between learners' psychological and social factors and syntactic complexity of L2 Korean speaking (한국어 학습자의 심리적, 사회적 요인과 구어 통사 복합도 간의 상관관계)

  • Kim, Youngjoo;Baik, Juno;Lee, Sunjin;Oh, Jinhee;Jung, Hyewon
    • Journal of Korean language education
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    • v.28 no.2
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    • pp.1-36
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    • 2017
  • This study investigated the correlation between learners' psychological and social factors and their syntactic complexity of speaking. The study collected samples of Korean spoken production of 61 learners with English, Chinese, Japanese and other L1 backgrounds and applied mini-TOPIK, mini-AMTB, and SASIQ for 70 minutes. The study found that: (i) integrative motivation showed positive correlation with a number of simple complex clauses, but instrumental motivation correlated negatively with a number of adverbial clauses, indicating that high motivation hindered producing highly complex clauses although it triggered producing simple complex clauses, (ii) social contact with L2 native speakers showed positive correlation with general L2 development and a number of simple complex clauses, but revealed negative correlation with double or triple complex clauses, (iii) hours of L2 listening showed very strong positive correlation with producing triple complex clauses and general proficiency, but indicated negative correlation with a number of simple complex clauses. The study reported that high motivation toward Korean learning and active social activities with Korean native speakers helped produce simple complex clauses while hours of listening to Korean helped produce triple complex clauses.