• Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.215-234
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• 2002

This study is designed for two purposes. The first one is to compare the realization and perception of English contrastive focus between Korean learners of English and native speakers of English. The second purpose is to study the phonological and phonetical features of contrastive focus by examining the results of production and perception experiments. English native speakers' results show that the English contrastive accents are generally accompanied by higher peak heights. The findings agree with the results of Bartels & Kingston (1994). Unlike native speakers of English, Korean speakers seem to be poor at relating the phonetical features of contrastive focus to their actual speech. Korean speakers' results are especially unsuccessful when the contrast is not distinctly grasped through syntactic structure, or when the function words are contrasted. Furthermore, Korean speakers' utterances tend to have pitch accents on every content word, whether the word is contrasted or not.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.7-16
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• 2005

The purpose, this experimental study was to identify pronunciation difficulties between male and female Korean speakers in their articulation of English vowels. Ten English mono-syllabic words were spoken six times by six male and six female college students. Formant frequencies were measured from sound spectrograms made by Pitch Works. Results show that Korean female speakers uttered English vowels more similar to those uttered by English native speakers than did Korean male speakers. While Korean male speakers could not readily distinguish between /i/ and /I/, /u/ and /v/, and /$\epsilon$/ and /ae/, respectively, Korean female speakers had difficulty only with /$\epsilon$/ and /ae/. The tentative results suggests that on the whole Korean speakers have difficulty in discriminating tense vowels from lax vowels, and they also have articulatory problems pronouncing low and back vowels such as /ae/. /a/ and /c/.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.11-17
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• 2018

This study reports on a production experiment designed to investigate how Korean speaking learners of English produce English forms ending in stops. In a repetition experiment, Korean participants listened to English nonce words ending in a stop and repeated what they heard. English speakers were recruited for the same task as a control group. The experimental result indicated that the transcriptions of the Korean productions by English native speakers showed vowel insertion in only 3% of productions although the pronunciation of English final stops showed that noise intervals after the closure of final stops were significantly longer for Korean speakers than for English speakers. This finding is inconsistent with the loanword data where 49% of words showed vowel insertion. It is also not compatible with the perceptual similarity approach, which predicts that because Korean speakers accurately perceive an English final stop as a final consonant, they will insert a vowel to make the English sound more similar to the Korean sound.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2000.07a
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• pp.332-332
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• 2000

The purpose of this study is to investigate the perception and production of English vowels by native speakers of Korean. In perception test, twelve English vowels /${\ae},{\;}a,{\;}{\Game},{\;}e,{\;}{\varepsilon},{\;}i,{\;}I,{\;}a,{\;}o,{\;}u,{\wedge},{\;}{\mho}$/, as in had, hard, hoard, hayed, head, heed, hid, hod, hoed, whod, Hudd, and hood produced by native speakers of English were used as perception test materials and subjects were asked to identify the vowels. Two different groups of subjects participated in the perception test. One consisted of 90 students who were taking an English phonetics course, and the other consisted of 64 who were not. The results showed that the former did better than the latter m identifYing English vowels, and that vowels in 'head' and 'had' were relatively hard to identify, while vowels in 'hayed', 'hard', and unexpectedly, 'heed' and hid' were easy to perceive. In production test, two native English speakers and 4 native Korean speakers served as subjects. The 4 native Korean speakers were divided into two groups as in the perception test, experienced and inexperienced, depending on whether they were taking an English phonetics course or not. Native English speakers generally showed significant differences both in vowel duration and in FI & F2 values between members of the vowel pairs which are of special interest of this study: /i/ vs. /I/, /${\ae}$/ vs. /$\varepsilon$/, and /u/ vs. and /$\mho$/. There was no significant difference between the two Korean groups. Native Korean speakers showed much difference in neither duration nor FI & F2 values except significant durational difference in /i/ vs. /I/ pair.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.25-36
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• 2008

Language transfer means that the speaker's first language or previously acquired language influences on the production of the target language. This study aims at examining if there is native language influence on the production of English intonation by Korean speakers. The pitch accent patterns and the values of duration, F0, and intensity of the stressed vowel of the word with emphatic accent in the sentence produced by Korean speakers are compared to those of American English speakers. The results show that when the word receives emphatic accent in the sentence, American English speakers put H* accent on the stressed syllable of the word, but Korean speakers mostly assign high pitch on the last syllable of the word and have LH tonal pattern despite the fact that primary stress does not come on the last syllable within a word. In addition, comparison of the values of duration, F0, and intensity of the stressed vowel of the word with emphatic accent to those of the word with unmarked neutral accent shows that Korean speakers do not realize the intonation of the accented word appropriately because the values decrease even though the word has emphatic accent. This study finds out that there are differences in the production of English intonation of the word with emphatic accent between native speakers of English and Korean speakers, and that there is negative transfer of Korean intonation pattern to the production of English intonation by Korean speakers.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.1-18
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• 2005

This study is a preliminary investigation of the nature of discourse marker acquisition in Korean American speakers of English. Discourse markers are of interest because they are not an aspect of language taught through formal instruction either to native or non-native speakers. Therefore, discourse marker use serves as indirect evidence of face-to-face interaction with native speakers and an indicator of integration. In this light, the present study examines the presence of discourse markers in Korean Americans. The markers chosen for analysis were you know, like, and I mean. The data consist of spontaneous speech elicited from interviews. Sociolinguistic variables such as age, sex, and generation (i.e., $1^{st}$, 1.5, $2^{nd}$) were examined. Results show that there appears to be interaction between the variables and discourse marker use. While all speakers showed variable acquisition of markers, younger, female, and 1.5 generation speakers were found to use discourse markers more than other speakers. Although discourse marker use is optional and thus not a linguistic feature that must be necessarily acquired, it is clear that use is pervasive and acquired differentially by English speakers irrespective of whether they are native or not.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.251-271
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• 2011

The present study analyzed Korean learners' production of English /z/-/$d{\Box}$/ and /z/-/${\Box}$/ contrasts in terms of native speaker judgments and acoustic measurements. Korean learner's production was judged to be either correct or incorrect by native English speakers. Correct and incorrect productions were then compared with productions of native speakers' in terms of acoustic analyses. The results indicated that Korean speakers' correct production was more similar to that of native speakers by sharing more acoustic cues. Incorrect production by Korean speakers indicated patterns either different or opposite from that of native speakers, confirming native speaker judgments. The results also revealed acoustic cues on which native speakers rely in judging L2 speech, thereby implying that the more consistent along with more number of acoustic cues used by native speakers may facilitate the acquisition of segment contrasts by L2 learners.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.157-173
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• 2003

The purpose of this experimental study is to investigate and compare the. vowel lengths of English diphthongs and low vowels among native-English-speaking Americans with Korean college students from the Chungnam and Gyungnam provinces. Eight words and sixteen sentences were uttered five times by twenty five subjects from three groups; 1) Chungnam dialect speakers, 2) Gyungnam dialect speakers and 3) five native-English-speaking Americans. Acoustic features (duration) were measured from sound spectrograms made by the PC Quire. Results showed that the vowel lengths of English diphthongs and low vowels between native English speakers and Korean collegians of Chungnam and Gyungnam provinces were different. Comparing the average length of English diphthongs of Korean collegians with those of American natives, we can see that native English speakers tend to pronounce the English diphthongs shorter than Korean collegians do. However, native English speakers tend to pronounce the English low vowels longer than Korean collegians do. In this study we also tried to find out the differences of English diphthongs and low vowel lengths in relation to their utterance positions among American natives and Chungnam and Gyungnam dialect speakers. By the results of this experiment, we observed a lengthening effect in the three groups. However, in the pronunciation of American natives, a lengthening effect of English vowels was more clearly observed, especially in the pronunciation of English diphthongs.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.3-10
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• 2013

This study investigated the rhythmic accommodation of Korean English learners' interlanguage talk. Twelve Korean speakers, 6 native English speakers and 6 non-native English speakers in London participated in multiple conversations on different topics which produced 36 conversational data in interlanguage talk (ILT) settings. 190 utterances from the 36 conversational data were analyzed to investigate the rhythmic patterns of Korean English learners when they communicated with English speakers with different language backgrounds. Save for the final-syllable, the normalized duration of consecutive syllables was compared in order to derive a variability index (VI). It was found that there was no significant variability in the measurement of the syllable-to-syllable duration for the utterances of Korean English learners, regardless of their interlocutor's language background. Conversely, it was found that there was evidence that Korean English learners showed rhythmic accommodation in ILT when they conversed with non-native English speakers. The speaking rate became significantly slower when Korean English learners talked to non-native English speakers, than when they talked to other Korean English learners. Furthermore, there was a negative correlation between speaking rate and the VI in the utterances of Korean English learners in ILT.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.23-40
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• 2007

This paper discusses why Korean speakers have problems in pronouncing some medial sonorant clusters in English. We argue that the main reasons lie in the sonority sequence requirement difference between the two languages. English does not have any specific sonority sequence preference between the medial sonorant sequences while Korean has a strict requirement between the two sonorants over a syllable boundary. This sonority sequence requirement difference between the two languages acts as an interference for Korean speakers in learning English pronunciation. This barrier for Korean speakers in acquiring correct pronunciation is implemented in a constraint ranking difference in the Optimality Theory, which is not familiar for Korean speakers. Understanding the details of sonorant production mechanisms along with the different constraint ranking will facilitate the learning process of Korean speakers learning English.