• Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.127-138
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• 2000

The aim of this paper is to find the speech problems of English Laterals by Korean learners and to contribute to the effective pronunciation education with visualizing the pronunciation. In this paper we analyzed 18 words including lateral sounds which were divided into such as: initial, initial consonant cluster, intervocalic, final consonant cluster, and final. To analyse the words we used High speed speech analysis system. We examined acoustic characteristics of English lateral spectrogram by using voice sustained time(ms), FL1, FL2, FL3. Before we started, we had expected that the result would show us that the mother tongue interfere in the final sounds because we have similar sounds in Korea. The results of our experiments showed that initially, voice sustained time showed many more differences between Korean and native pronunciation. Also, it was seen that Korean pronunciation used the syllable structure of the own mother tongue. For instance, in the case of initial consonant cluster CCVC, Koreans often used CC as a syllable and VC as another. This was due to the mother tongue interference. For this reason in the intervocalic and in the final, we saw the differences between Korean and native. Therefore we have to accept the visualized analysis system in the instruction of pronunciation.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.185-200
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• 2005

The objective of this study is to examine acoustic cues in spoken French for the assessment of pronunciation which is necessary to realization of the multimedia system. The corpus is composed of simple expressions which consist of the French phonological system include all phonemes. This experiment was made on 4 male and female French native speakers and on 20 Korean speakers, university students who had learned the French language more than two years. We analyzed the recorded data by using spectrograph and measured comparative features by the numerical values. First of all, we found the mean and the deviation of all phonemes, and then chose features which had high error frequency and great differences between French and Korean pronunciations. The selected data were simplified and compared among them. After we judged whether the problems of pronunciation in each Korean speaker were either the utterance mistake or the interference of mother tongue, in terms of articulatory and auditory aspects, we tried to find acoustic features as simplified as possible. From this experiment, we could extract acoustic cues for the construction of the French pronunciation training system.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.55 no.6
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• pp.1057-1085
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• 2009

This paper addresses the question of why prepositions are particularly difficult forEFL learners. The first reason for such difficulty lies in the distinction between seemingly equivalent prepositions such as to and with, as in compared to and compared with. Most monolingual learners' dictionaries regard these two phrases as virtually synonymous. Yet, the results of the corpus analysis conducted in this study indicate that there are differences between the two. A second reason why EFL learners have problems with prepositions is that there are often variations in the inputdata. For example, although from generally follows different, in American English different than is also used. On the other hand, in British English, different to is the second most commonly used construction. This type of regional variation, confirmed in the corpus findings of the present paper, causes confusion in students of English. A learner who is not accustomed to British English may be puzzled by the expression different to. Finally, L1 negative transfer is responsible for the incorrect use of expressions such as discuss about. An error of this sort is the result of interference from the learner's mother tongue. The English verb discuss is not subcategorized for a preposition, whereas the equivalent Korean verb, for example, requires a noun phrase combined with the postposition.

• MALSORI
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• no.4
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• pp.20-30
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• 1982

The aim of this paper is to analyse difficulties of the pronunciation in swedish vowels encountered by Koreans learners and to seek solutions in order to correct the possible errors. In the course of the analysis the swedish and Korean vowels in question are compared with the purpose of describing differences aha similarities between these two systems. This contrastive description is largely based on the students' articulatory speech level ana the writer's auditory , judgement . The following points are discussed : 1 ) Vowel length as a distinctive feature in Swedish compared with that of Korean. 2) A special attention is paid on the Swedish vowel [w:] that is characterized by its peculiar type of lip rounding. 3) The six pairs of Swedish vowels that are phonologically contrastive but difficult for Koreans to distinguish one from the other: [y:] ~ [w:], [i:] ~ [y:], [e:] ~ [${\phi}$:], [w;] ~ [u:] [w:] ~ [$\theta$], [$\theta$] ~ [u] 4) The r-colored vowel in the case of the postvocalic /r/ that is very common in American English is not allowed in English sound sequences. The r-colored vowel in the American English pattern has to be broken up and replaced hi-segmental vowel-consonant sequences . Korean accustomed to the American pronunciation are warned in this respect. For a more distinct articulation of the postvocalic /r/ trill [r] is preferred to fricative [z]. 5) The front vowels [e, $\varepsilon, {\;}{\phi}$) become opener variants (${\ae}, {\;}:{\ae}$] before / r / or supradentals. The results of the analysis show that difficulties of the pronunciation of the target language (Swedish) are mostly due to the interference from the Learner's source language (Korean). However, the Learner sometimes tends to get interference also from the other foreign language with which he or she is already familiar when he or she finds in that language more similarity to the target language than in his or her own mother tongue. Hence this foreign language (American English) in this case functions as a second language for Koreans in Learning Swedish.