• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.69-76
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• 2017

The current study investigated whether Korean learners' English-learning environments, especially target English accent (General American English (GAE) vs. Southern British English (SBE)) and English-language experience affected their production of English vowels. Thirty six EFL learners, 27 ESL-US learners, and 33 ESL-UK learners produced 8 English vowels with a bVt frame (beat, bit, bet, bat, bought, bot, boat, boot). The learners' productions were acoustically analyzed in terms of F1 and F2 frequencies. The overall results revealed that the learners' target accent had an effect on their production of some English vowels. The EFL and ESL-US learners' (especially, female learners') production of bought, bot, boat, and boot, which show characteristic differences between the GAE and SBE accents, was closer to that of the native American English (AE) speakers than the native British English (BE) speakers. In contrast, the ESL-UK learners' production of bought and bot demonstrated the opposite pattern. Thus, the impact of target accent was not demonstrated across the board. The effect of the learners' different English-language experience was also rather limited. This was because the EFL learners' production was not much different from the ESL-US learners' production, in spite of the ESL-US learners' residence in the US for more than 9 years. Furthermore, the Korean learners, irrespective of their different English-language experience, tended to produce bit and bat with lower F1 than the native AE and BE speakers, thus resulting in bit and bat to be produced similarly to beat and bet, respectively. This demonstrates the learners' persistent L1 effects on their English vowel production despite the learners' residence in the English speaking countries or their high English proficiency.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.91-98
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• 2013

This study investigates the difference in the evaluation of foreign-accentedness of English pronunciation across subject groups, evaluated accents, and compared components. This study independently evaluates the prosody and segmentals of the foreign-accented English sentences by pairwise difference rating. Using the prosody swapping technique, segmentals and prosody of the English sentences read by native speakers of American English (one male and one female) were combined with the corresponding segmentals and prosody of the English sentences read by male and female native speakers of Chinese, Japanese or Korean (one male and one female from each native language). These stimuli were evaluated by 4 different subject groups: native speakers of American English, Korean, Chinese, and Japanese. The results showed that the Japanese subject group scored higher in prosody difference than in segmental difference while the other groups scored the other way around. This study is significant in that the attitude toward the difference in segmentals and prosody of the foreign accents of English varies with the native language of the subject group. In other words, for native speakers of some languages, the difference in prosody could have a greater influence on the foreign-accentedness than the difference in segmentals, while for native speakers of other languages the other way around.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2000.07a
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• pp.88-95
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• 2000

This paper attempts to investigate characteristic features of Japanese EFL learners' English intonation and how their Japanese accents are affecting their English intonation, focusing on a comparison between the accent patterns of Japanese compounds and the stress patterns of English compounds. It is based on research dedicated to helping to improve the teaching and learning of English intonation (prosody) for Japanese EFL learners. It examines the Fundamental Frequency (henceforth Fx) contours of two EFL college students, one specializing in English and the other in Japanese. Both of them may be considered upper intermediate EFL students with their TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) scores ranging between 500 and 550.

• Journal of Korean language education
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.105-126
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• 2017

Intelligibility has been widely regarded as an appropriate goal for second language pronunciation teaching. Yet there are few empirical studies that focus on the intelligibility of Korean learners' pronunciation. Therefore, this mixed-methods study examined the relationship among native-like pronunciation, intelligible pronunciation, phonological fluency and comprehensibility. Furthermore, this study investigated how native-like pronunciation and intelligible pronunciation are measured differently in terms of actual pronunciation skills. In addition, this study examined how these two pronunciation styles mutually influence each other. The results of this study show that achieving native-like pronunciation is a much more difficult goal than achieving intelligible pronunciation. It further shows that foreign accented pronunciation has little to do with comprehensibility while better intelligibility is needed for clearer comprehensibility. To achieve better intelligibility, this study recommends pronunciation teaching based on segments, suprasegmentals and fluency as the focus on suprasegmentals and fluency teaching are more important to achieve a native-like pronunciation. Besides the focus on phonology, there are other social factors which could influence the evaluation of native-like pronunciation, but are not part of this study. These findings are expected to contribute not only to a better understanding of pronunciation, but also to a more comprehensive reevaluation and informed direction of pronunciation teaching and research.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 1997.07a
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• pp.248-248
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• 1997

오늘날 영어교육은 교과과정령에 엄연히 명시된 네 가지 기능(four skills) 즉 듣기, 말하기, 원기, 쓰기라는 정당하고도 보편 타당성 있는 명분 하에 어떻게 가르쳐 왔는가 를 반문해 보면 많은 아쉬움이 남는다. 그간 6년간의 중등과정, 심지어는 대학에서 환 두해까지 영어를 이수한 사람틀 중에는 문자를 통해서는 상당한 수준, 그것도 영어 토박이들조차 놀랄 정도의 영어를 이해하지만, 소리를 통해 들을 때는 ---말하는 것은 두말 할 것도 없고---아주 간단한 내용의 영어조차 알아듣기 힘든 경험을 한 사람이 많다는 것은 부인할 수 없는 사실이다. 그 이유는 명백하다. 즉, 문자를 대할 때는 시각적 자극의 형태가 두뇌 속에 저장된 정보---가공할 문법적 지식---와 일치하기 때문에 쉽게 이해를 할 수 있는 반면, 소리를 들을 때는 청각적 자극의 형태가 두뇌 속에 저장된 정보---극히 불완전한 발음사전, 또는 모국어의 음운체계에 의한 영어발음--- 와 차이가 있기 때문일 것이다. 그러므로 적어도 말소리를 매체로 하는 의사소통에 있어서는 영어의 본토박이 발음을 정확히, 아니면 적어도 매우 근접하게 나마 터득하여(습관화하여)두뇌에 저장하는 일이 가장 중요한 일이다. 따라서 영어교사는 모국어의 음운체계에 대한 정확하고도 상세한 지식을 토대로 하여 영어의 음운체계와 '언어학적으로 의미 있는 (linguistically significant)' 대초분석의 방법으로 발음을 지도한다면 보다 나은 학습효과를 기대할 수 있을 것이다. 일반적으로 모국어의 발음이 외국어의 발음에 간섭을 유발하는 경우는 다음과 같다. 1. 분절음체계가 서로 다를 때 2. 한 언어의 음소가 다른 언어의 이음(allophone)일 때 3. 유사한 음의 조음장소와 방법 이 다를 때 4. 분절음의 분포 또는 배열이 다를 때 5. 음운현상이 다를 때 6. 언어의 리듬이 다를 때 위의 여섯 가지 경우를 중심으로 영어와 한국어의 발음특성을 대조하여 '낯선 말투(foreign accent)' 또는 발음오류를 최소로 줄이는 것이 영어교사의 일차적인 목표이다.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.117-128
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• 2015

This paper investigates the acoustic-perceptual relation between Korean dent-alveolar fricatives and the English voiceless alveolar fricative /s/ in varied prosodic contexts (e.g., stress, accent, and word initial position). The denti-alveolar fricatives in Korean show a two-way distinction, which can be referred to as either plain (lenis) /s/ or fortis /$s^*$/. The English alveolar voiceless fricative /s/ that corresponds to the two Korean fricatives would be placed in a one-to-two non-native phoneme mapping situation when Korean listeners hear English /s/. This raises an interesting question of how the single fricative of English perceptually maps into the two-way distinction in Korean. This paper reports the acoustic-perceptual mapping pattern by investigating spectral properties of the English stimuli that are heard as either /s/ or /$s^*$/ by Korean listeners, in order to answer the two questions: first, how prosody influences fricatives acoustically, and second, how the resultant properties drive non-native listeners to interpret them as segmental features instead of as prosodic information. The results indicate that Korean listeners' responses change depending on the prosodic context in which the stimuli are placed. It implies that Korean speakers interpret some of the information provided by prosody as segmental one, and that the listeners take advantage of the information in their judgment of non-native phonemes.

• 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.

• Journal of Convergence for Information Technology
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.37-42
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• 2018

This study focuses on investigating and comparing the lengths of the five words, vowels, and the ratio of the length of vowels to that of words among the Korean college students with the English native speaker. English sentences were read and recorded by Korean subjects to do this experiment. The vowel lengths were measured from a sound spectrogram, the Praat software program, and these data were analyzed through statistical analysis. I could easily tell that there were differences between the groups and they were significant. In the English front low vowel /${\ae}$/, I was able to find out that native subjects pronounced differently from Korean subjects, and the differences were significant. However, the pronunciation of the English diphthong /ai/, native subjects pronounced significantly shorter than Korean subjects.

• Journal of Fashion Business
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.147-160
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• 1999

This paper is intended to compare and analyze the fashion trends that were introduced in the recent shows, held abroad and in Korea, so as to investigate how well the designers in Taegu and Kyungbuk (TK) area are keeping up with the international vogue. The research has done, analyzing Pret-a-Porter in Paris and the three events held in the TK area in 1997 -The Taegu Collection, Kyungbuk Fashion Festival and Textile & Apparel Fair and using reference pictures and documentary records. In order to investigate the trends the research is divided by four groups which are the silhouette, the detail, the color and the Fashion image and has done with the help of three postgraduate students. The results are as follows. 1. The Silhouette The slim-line has the greatest importance in the silhouette analysis of the recent collections. Like Elongated and Fit & Flare, tight-fitting and female-line were also appeared quite a lot. Compared with foreign collection, Korean collections put the bigger importance on the slim-line. 2. The Detail The printings, using paintings and plant-logos had the large portion of the accessories in both foreign and Korean collections. Draw string and wrap style were also presented a lot. Especially, at the Korean collections, layerd, corsage, and craft accent were emphasized, too. As for the necklines the similarity was found over the four events considering. Camisole neckline and halter neck were presented the most, and bared top, Vneckline, boat and low-neck which can highlight the feminity were often appeared as well. Considering collars, tailored and peaked collars which are frequently used for the jackets, were usually shown at the collections. Like convertable, shirts, wing and Italian collar, the collars that can be applied for the sports wears were presented a lot. Virtually no variation of design was found in the sleeve analysis. While set-in-sleeve and sleeveless were found commonly, not so many ornaments were added to the sleeves. The ankle and knee length for the pants and skirts were common. Furthermore, including the micro-mini, showing extremely feminine style the mini-style had the 20% portion of the skirt-length. Unbalanced lengths, using bias-cut were presented quite a lot on the runways. Deep slit skirts, wide pants and irregular hem skirts were in vogue. On the runways of Paris, more than 21% of the design was the burmuda pants. 3. The Color Red and Blue were in vogue in the four collections considering. Sometimes, yellowish was combined in Korean collections. Black and pale tone were appeared to be in fashion also with light grayish, moderate and deep tone. 4. The Fashion image As for the fashion image, feminine-decorative trend amounted to the large percentage in korean collections. At the foreign collection feminine-decorative trend and feminine trend were predominant, then mannish trend and simple trend were apeared equally. The research shows that TK area and foreign collections are fairy similar, which means that the designers in TK area have been making their efforts to satisfy the clients who have the international minds. However, compared with foreign collections, TK collections were apprered to be strongly inclined to only a few trends. Consequently the season trends are not as diverse as the foreign trends, which cannot satisfy the fashion taste of the clients in TK area. The local designers should know the tendency and the taste of the clients and make the more efforts to read local clients' mind.