• Journal of Korean language education
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.155-180
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to acoustically analyze eight Korean monophthongs produced by 29 Taiwanese learners of Korean and 20 native speakers of Korean, and to compare their pronunciations in experimental phonetics. Using the first formants(F1) and the second formants(F2) of Korean monophthongs, we can estimate the tongue positions of vowels produced by participants. In order to compare them directly, we had to normalize participants' F1 and F2. The result shows that almost all vowels of the Taiwanese learners are significantly different from those of Korean native speakers in their F1 and F2 values without the /ㅏ/ vowel. In particular, when pronouncing Korean monophthongs, the Korean learners of Taiwan had a narrow area of the place of articulation compared to the Korean native speakers except for back vowels. Finally, it shows that the Korean learners in Taiwan had a narrower range of articulation and articulated the vowels towards the back a little comparing to the Korean native speakers.

• Journal of Korean language education
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.137-168
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to prepare the basis for a more objective evaluation of oral fluency by comparing speech patterns of Korean native speakers and L2 Korean learners. For this purpose, the current study focused on the analysis of speech materials of the 21st century Sejong spoken corpus and Korean learner corpus. We compared the oral fluency of Korean native speakers and Korean learners based on speech rate, pause, and discourse markers. The results show that the pattern of Korean learners is different to that of Korean native speakers in all aspects of speech rate, pause, and discourse markers; even though proficiency of Korean leaners show increase, they could not reach the oral fluency level of Korean native speakers. At last, based on these results of the analysis, we added suggestions for setting the evaluation criteria of oral fluency of Korean learners.

• Language and Information
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.67-91
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• 2010

Present study examines L1 transfer effect and UG involvement in the acquisition of binding properties of Korean as second language (L2). The study especially investigates i) whether knowledge from different L1s (English and Chinese) affect the interpretation of binding in Korean as L2 and ii) whether L2 learners of Korean differentiate two Korean anaphors like Korean monolinguals do, based on their knowledge of universal form-function correlation of anaphors. 53 post-puberty L2 learners of Korean with English or Chinese L1, together with 30 Korean monolinguals, were tested over Truth Value Judgment Task with stories, composed of Korean sentences representing various types of binding with two Korean reflexives - caki and caki-casin. The results showed some effect of L1 transfer, though not always. Overall, late L2 learners of Korean seem to know the difference between the two anaphors in their properties related to form-function correlation, though their performance level was lower compared to Korean monolinguals. Detailed pattern of the results and the role of UG in the interpretations of Korean reflexives are also discussed.

• Journal of Korean language education
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.25-53
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• 2018

This study examined the influence of lexical factors on verbal Eojeol recognition. To meet the goal, forty-five L2 Korean learners and twenty-two Korean native speakers took Eojeol decision tasks measured with the lexical factors such as 'number of strokes', 'number of consonants and vowels', 'number of syllables', 'number of morphemes', 'whole Eojeol frequency', 'root frequency', 'first-syllable-sharing frequency', and 'number of dictionary meanings.' As a result, 'whole Eojeol frequency' was the most effective factor to predict Eojeol recognition reaction time for native speakers and L2 learners, which supports the full-list model. Other lexical factors influencing Eojeol recognition reaction time in L2 learners were different following their proficiency level.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.55-75
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• 2006

This paper attempts to discuss the complex nature of social contexts regarding English language education in Korean middle school and to demonstrate the affective factors that should be considered to find appropriate approaches within the context. To do this, a questionnaire survey was conducted among 85 middle school students regarding learners' motivation, and attitudes toward EFL learning. Additionally, teachers in secondary school were asked about the general circumstances of English language education. Findings indicate that in spite of the participants' high instrumental motivation, they rather show a negative attitude toward English learning. This paper intends to raise practitioners' attention to the fact that the effect of learners' affective variables on EFL learning seems distinctive depending on the host country's EFL contexts.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.111-121
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• 2015

The present study examines the auditory boundary between Korean /o/ and /u/ on a synthesized vowel continuum by Chinese learners of Korean language. Preceding researches reported that the Chinese learners have difficulty pronouncing Korean monophthongs /o/ and /u/. In this experiment, a nine-step continuum was resynthesized using Praat from a vowel token from a recording of a male announcer who produced it in isolated form. F1 and F2 were synchronously shifted in equal steps in qtone (quarter tone), while F3 and F4 values were held constant for the entire stimuli. A forced choice identification task was performed by the advanced learners who speak Mandarin Chinese as their native language. Their experiment data were compared to a Korean native group. ROC (Receiver Operating Characteristic) analysis and logistic regression were performed to estimate the perceptual boundary. The result indicated the learner group has a different auditory criterion on the continuum from the Korean native group. This suggests that more importance should be placed on hearing and listening training in order to acquire the phoneme categories of the two vowels.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.15-21
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• 2019

Korean and English are both known to show on-focus pitch range expansion and post-focus pitch range compression (PFC). But it is not clear if this prosodic similarity would make it easy for Korean speakers to learn English focus prosody. In the present study, we conducted a production experiment using phone number strings to examine whether Korean learners of English produce a native-like focus prosody. Korean learners of English were classified into three groups (advanced, intermediate and low) according to their English proficiency and were compared to native speakers. Results show that intermediate and low groups of speakers did not increase duration, intensity, and pitch in the focus positions, nor did they compress those cues in the post-focus positions. Advanced speakers noticeably increased the acoustic cues in the focus positions to a similar extent as native speakers. However, their performance in post-focus positions was quite far from that of native speakers in terms of pitch and excursion size. These results thus demonstrate a lack of positive transfer of focus prosody from Korean to English in L2 learning, and learners may have to relearn it from scratch, which is consistent with a previous finding. More importantly, the results provide further support for the view proposed in other works that acoustic properties of PFC were not easily transferred from one language to another.

• Journal of Korean language education
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.1-38
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• 2017

This longitudinal study analyzed syntactic development (Complexity, Accuracy, and Fluency; CAF) of six L2 Korean learners in a natural learning context. The learners recalled the stories of a short animated video through speaking and writing every 3 months, from month 0 to 15. The learners' responses were analyzed for a series of CAF measures and their cognitive, psychological, and social variables were investigated. The results showed that (i) L2 Korean learners' speaking and writing in various time periods showed significant differences in spoken and written accuracy, and complexity; (ii) the correlation between spoken and written complexity, spoken and written accuracy, as well as spoken and written fluency were significant, and (iii) the regression analysis showed that learners' cognitive, social, and psychological variables have significant effect on the L2 Korean syntactic development. The current study reports that L2 Korean learners engaged in self-learning in a natural learning environment without formal instruction made significant syntactic development.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.1-13
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• 2019

This study explored the relationship between accurate vowel production and proficiency levels in L2 English produced by Korean EFL adult learners. To this end, nine English vowels /i, ɪ, ɛ, æ, ʌ, ɔ, ɑ, ʊ, u/ were selected and adjacent vowels paired up (e.g., /i/-/ɪ/, /u/-/ʊ/, /ɛ/-/æ/, /ʌ/-/ɔ/, /ɔ/-/ɑ/). The spectral features of the pairs were measured instrumentally, namely F1 (indicating tongue height) and F2 (indicating tongue backness). Meanwhile, the durations as well as spectral features of the tense and lax counterparts in /i/-/ɪ/ and /u/-/ʊ/ were measured, as both temporal and spectral features are important in distinguishing them. The findings of this study confirm that higher-rated speakers were better able to distinguish the contrasts in the front vowel pairs /i/-/ɪ/ and /ɛ/-/æ/ than lower-rated learners, but in the central and back vowel pairs /u/-/ʊ/and /ʌ/-/ɔ/ (though not /ɔ/-/ɑ/), Korean EFL learners generally showed difficulty distinguishing adjacent vowels with spectral cues. On the other hand, the durations of the tense and lax vowels showed that the lower-rated speakers were less able to use the temporal feature to differentiate tense vowels from their lax counterparts, unlike previous studies that found that in general Korean learners depend excessively on the temporal cue to distinguish tense and lax vowels.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.91-106
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• 2010

This study examines the use of hedges in cross-cultural communication between EFL learners in an e-learning environment. The study analyzes the use of hedges in a corpus of an interactive web with a bulletin board system through which college students of English at Japanese and Korean universities interacted with each other discussing the topics of local and global issues. It compares the use of hedges in the students' corpus to that of a native English speakers' corpus. The result shows that EFL learners tend to use relatively smaller number of hedges than the native speakers in terms of the frequencies of the total tokens. It further reveals that the learners' overuse of a single versatile high-frequency hedging item, I think, results in relative underuse of other hedging devices. This indicates that due to their small repertoire of hedges, EFL learners' overuse of a limited number of hedging items may cause their speech or writing to become less competent. Based on the result and interviews with the learners, the study also argues that hedging should be understood in its social contexts and should not be understood just as a lack of conviction or a mark of low proficiency. Suggestions were made for using computer corpora in understanding EFL learners' language difficulties and helping them develop communicative and pragmatic competence.