• 음성과학
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• 제11권2호
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• pp.105-117
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• 2004

Recently, many scholars have emphasized the importance of English listening ability for smoother communication. Most audio materials, however, were recorded in a quiet sound-proof booth. Therefore, students who have spent so much time listening to the ideal audio materials are expected to have difficulty communicating with native speakers in the real life. In this study, we examined how well thirty three Korean university students and five native speakers will repeat the recorded English sentences under noise and speed conditions. The subjects' production was scored by listening to each recorded sentence and counting the number of words correctly produced and determined the percent ratios of correctly produced words to the total words in each sentence. Results showed that the student group correctly repeated around 65% of all the words in each sentence while the native speakers demonstrated almost perfect match. It seemed that the students had difficulty perceiving and repeating function words in various conditions. Also, high-proficiency student group outperformed the low-proficiency student group particularly in their repetition of function words. In addition, the student subjects' accuracy of repetition remarkably dropped when the normal sentences were both sped up and mixed with noise. Finally, it was observed that the Korean students' percent correct ratio fell down as the stimulus sentence became longer.

• 한국전자통신학회논문지
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• 제16권3호
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• pp.519-524
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• 2021

최근 4차 산업혁명은 주요 선진국을 중심으로 세계의 국가들의 관심을 갖는 분야가 되고 있다. 4차 산업혁명 기술의 핵심기술인 인공지능기술은 다양한 분야에 융합하는 형태로 발전하고 있으며, 에듀테크 분야에도 많은 영향을 미치고 있으며 교육을 혁신적으로 변화하기 위해 많은 관심과 노력을 하고 있다. 본 논문은 DTW 음성인식 알고리즘을 이용하여 실험환경을 구축하고 다양한 원어민 데이터와 비원어민 데이터를 딥러닝 학습하고, CNN 알고리즘과의 비교를 통해 영어 발음의 유사도를 측정하여 비원어민이 원어민과 유사한 발음으로 교정할 수 있도록 연구한다.

• 영어어문교육
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• 제17권2호
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• pp.59-77
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• 2011

In recent years, as many native English speakers are working in Asia to as English teachers, team teaching with local teachers has been commonly implemented within the Korean EFL classroom. Using qualitative case studies, this paper aims to explore native English-speaking teachers' (NESTs) perceptions of team teaching and their challenges at different secondary Korean schools. The study documents the challenges faced by three foreign teachers embedded in intercultural teaching teams. The data shows that common challenges include vague role distribution among teachers, problems presented by mixed levels of students, large classes, and students' low valuation during foreign teacher's classes, which go ungraded. The study calls for serious governmental efforts to change these fundamental problems and closely examine local factors that strongly affect team teaching practices before initiating a system of importing foreign teachers without proper preparation.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제1권3호
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• pp.3-18
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• 2009

Do loanword properties emerge in the acquisition of a foreign language and if so, how? Classic studies in adult language learning assumed loanword properties that range from near-ceiling to near-chance level of appearance depending on speech proficiency. The present research argues that such variations reflect different phonological types, rather than speech proficiency. To investigate the difference between learner speech and loanword phonology, the current research analyzes the speech data from five different proficiency levels of 92 Korean speakers who read 19 pairs of English words and sentences that contained loanwords. The experimental method is primarily an acoustical one, by which the phonological cause in the loanwords (e.g., the insertion of [$\Box$] at the end of the word stamp) would be attested to appear in learner speech, in comparison with native speech from 11 English speakers and 11 Korean speakers. The data investigated for the research are of segment deletion, insertion, substitution, and alternation in both learner speech and the native speech. The results indicate that learner speech does not present the loanword properties in many cases, but depends on the types of phonological causes. The relatively easy acquisition of target pronunciation is evidenced in the cases of segment deletion, insertion, substitution, and alternation, except when the loanword property involves the successful command of the target phonology such as the de-aspiration of [p] in apple. Such a case of difficult learning draws a sharp distinction from the cases of easy learning in the development of learner speech, particularly beyond the intermediate level of proficiency. Overall, learner speech departs from loanword phonology and develops toward the native speech value, depending on phonological contrasts in the native and foreign languages.

• 영어어문교육
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• 제15권2호
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• pp.261-280
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• 2009

This study focuses on providing the pedagogical implications of stress in English pronunciation teaching since stress is one the most important characteristic factors in English pronunciation (Bolinger, 1976; Brown, 1994; Celce-Murcia, Brinton & Goodwin, 1996; Kreidler, 1989). The author investigated stress production regarding in terms of duration, pitch, and intensity by a group of native speakers of English and a group of low-proficiency South Kyungsang Korean college students for their pre-test. For both of the pre- and post-test, the same stimuli, which consisted of a one-syllable word, two two-syllable words, three three-syllable words, and three four-syllable words, were used along with the various sentence positions: isolation, initial, medial, and final. Soft ware programs, ALVIN and Praat, were used to record and analyze the data. Since Celce-Murcia et al. (1996), Klatt (1975), and Ladefoged (2001) treat duration of the stressed syllable more significantly than other factors, pitch and intensity, with respect to the listener's point of view, the author developed a special method of teaching English stress using a traditional Korean drum to emphasize duration. In addition, the results from the native speakers' production showed that their main strategy to realize stress was through lengthening stressed syllables. After six weeks of stress instruction using the drum, the production of the native speakers and the SK Korean participants from the pre- and post-test were compared. The results from the post-test indicated that the participants showed great improvement not only in duration but also in pitch after the stress instruction. Pitch improvement was unexpected but well-explained by the statement that long vowels receive accent in loan word adaptation in North Kyungsang Korean. The results also showed that the Korean participants' pitch values became more even in their duration values for each syllable as the structure of the word or the sentence became more complex, due to their dependency upon their L1.

• 음성과학
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• 제15권3호
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• pp.53-63
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• 2008

This paper examined the acoustic differences in English speech production between English native speakers and Korean learners. Korean speakers seem to produce errors by over-applying the Korean phonological rules(nasalization and lateralization) to English speech under the conditions comparable to those of Korean which contain nasal+lateral or lateral+nasal sequences. Being based on this prediction, the experimental data is grouped into three sets, [n]+[l] sequence, [l]+[n]sequence, and [m]+[l] sequence. The result shows that, Korean speakers usually nasalize or lateralize the target words or phrases in every three categories while English natives don't. In set A([n]+[l] sequence), both nasalization and lateralization were found in [n]+[l] sequence, the same circumstances where both nasalization and lateralization can be placed as in Korean. In the case of set B([l]+[n] sequence), only lateralization is observed. It is because the nasalization never occurs in the sequence of l-n in Korean. There is no lateralization in set C([m]+[l] sequence), because only nasalization occurs in the sequence of m-l in Korean. This results reconfirmed that the nasalization and lateralization rules in Korean deeply influence on the English production data. Korean speakers need to be taught not to over-apply Korean phonological rule to English production for accurate pronunciation.

• 음성과학
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• 제12권4호
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• pp.95-112
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• 2005

We investigate Korean learners' speech-timing of English before and after instruction in comparison with native speech, in an attempt to resolve disagreements in the literature as to whether speech-timing is measurable (Lehiste, 1977; Roach, 1982; Dauer, 1983 vs. Low et al., 2000; Yun 2002; Jian, 2004). We measured the pair-wise variability between the adjacent stressed and unstressed syllables within a foot as well as that among adjacent feet in approximately 555 English sentences, which were read by 29 native speakers and 41 Korean learners in the intermediate proficiency level. The results show that in comparison with native American English, Korean learner speech is before instruction significantly (p<.001) smaller for the pair-wise variability between the adjacent stressed and unstressed syllables within a foot; and significantly (p=.01) bigger for the variability among adjacent feet within the utterance. The learner speech after instruction showed significant (p=.01) improvement in the pair-wise variability of syllable sequence toward native speech values. The variability among adjacent feet was progressively smaller for learner speech before and after instruction and for native speech (p=.03). We thus conclude that the speech timing difference between Korean English and American English is measurable in terms of the duration. of stressed and unstressed syllables and that the latter is stress-timed and the former is syllable-timing interfered.

• 영어어문교육
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• 제16권1호
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• pp.189-208
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• 2009

Most if not all research articles published in journals require the author to write an abstract regardless of academic field. However, abstract writing in English is a highly specialized genre on its own. In this light, the purpose of this study is to investigate differences in journal article abstracts written in English by Korean and native English scholars. 90 research paper abstracts written in English by Korean national scholars, US-educated Korean scholars and native English scholars were compared according to rhetorical organization. A generalized rhetorical scheme was used in analysis which was based on Graetz (1985) and Swales (1990): Background-Purpose-Method-Result-Conclusion. In addition, the use of conjunctions as a cohesive device was analyzed based on the categories proposed by Halliday and Hasan (1976). Analyses of the research paper abstracts showed that the majority of the abstracts included the purpose, method and result components. However, while approximately 70 percent of native English writers used research background in the abstract, only 26 percent of Korean national scholars did so. Regarding the use of conjunctions, Korean-national scholars overused and inappropriately used additive and temporal conjunctions. The US-educated Korean scholars showed similar patterns to the native English speakers. The findings obtained here imply that there is a need to provide academic writing instruction of abstracts to non-native scholars.

• 음성과학
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• 제14권4호
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• pp.115-128
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• 2007

The purposes of this paper were to develop an automatic script to collect such acoustic parameters as duration, intensity, pitch and the first two formant values of English words produced by two native Canadian speakers either alone or in a two-word phrase at a normal speed and to compare those values by the position in the phrases. A Praat script was proposed to obtain the comparable parameters at evenly divided time point of the target word. Results showed that the total duration of the word in the phrase was shorter than that of the word produced alone. That was attributed to the pronunciation style of the native speakers generally placing the primary word stress in the first word position. Also, the reduction ratio of the male speaker depended on the word position in the phrase while the female speaker didn't. Moreover, there were different contours of intensity and pitch by the position of the target word in the phrase while almost the same formant patterns were observed. Further studies would be desirable to examine those parameters of the words in the authentic speech materials.

• 음성과학
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• 제14권1호
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• pp.105-119
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• 2007

The purpose of this study is to examine Korean students' production and perception of word-final stop voicing in light of their overseas experience. Subjects were English native speakers, Korean university students with residence experience in America, Korean university students without residence experience in America, and Korean elementary school students. They participated in both production and perception tests. Results showed that the students' production and perception with residence experience in America appeared quite similar to those of the English native speakers. In the production tests, we noticed somewhat different results in temporal and frequency features. The one-year residence in America had some influence on their frequency features, but not the temporal features in the word final stop production. That difference could be seen in the perception tests, too. We could not find any difference in the identification test of the final release environment between the Korean university students who had studied abroad and those who didn't. Rather the difference could be found in the cue influence test in both the final release and non-release environments.