• 제목/요약/키워드: native speakers of English

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INTONATION OF TAIWANESE: A COMPARATIVE OF THE INTONATION PATTERNS IN LI, IL, AND L2

  • Chin Chin Tseng
    • 대한음성학회:학술대회논문집
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    • 대한음성학회 1996년도 10월 학술대회지
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    • pp.574-575
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    • 1996
  • The theme of the current study is to study intonation of Taiwanese(Tw.) by comparing the intonation patterns in native language (Ll), target language (L2), and interlanguage (IL). Studies on interlanguage have dealt primarily with segments. Though there were studies which addressed to the issues of interlanguage intonation, more often than not, they didn't offer evidence for the statement, and the hypotheses were mainly based on impression. Therefore, a formal description of interlanguage intonation is necessary for further development in this field. The basic assumption of this study is that native speakers of one language perceive and produce a second language in ways closely related to the patterns of their first language. Several studies on interlanguage prosody have suggested that prosodic structure and rules are more subject to transfer than certain other phonological phenomena, given their abstract structural nature and generality(Vogel 1991). Broselow(1988) also shows that interlanguage may provide evidence for particular analyses of the native language grammar, which may not be available from the study of the native language alone. Several research questions will be addressed in the current study: A. How does duration vary among native and nominative utterances\ulcorner The results shows that there is a significant difference in duration between the beginning English learners, and the native speakers of American English for all the eleven English sentences. The mean duration shows that the beginning English learners take almost twice as much time (1.70sec.), as Americans (O.97sec.) to produce English sentences. The results also show that American speakers take significant longer time to speak all ten Taiwanese utterances. The mean duration shows that Americans take almost twice as much time (2.24sec.) as adult Taiwanese (1.14sec.) to produce Taiwanese sentences. B. Does proficiency level influence the performance of interlanguage intonation\ulcorner Can native intonation patterns be achieved by a non-native speaker\ulcorner Wenk(1986) considers proficiency level might be a variable which related to the extent of Ll influence. His study showed that beginners do transfer rhythmic features of the Ll and advanced learners can and do succeed in overcoming mother-tongue influence. The current study shows that proficiency level does play a role in the acquisition of English intonation by Taiwanese speakers. The duration and pitch range of the advanced learners are much closer to those of the native American English speakers than the beginners, but even advanced learners still cannot achieve native-like intonation patterns. C. Do Taiwanese have a narrower pitch range in comparison with American English speakers\ulcorner Ross et. al.(1986) suggests that the presence of tone in a language significantly inhibits the unrestricted manipulation of three acoustical measures of prosody which are involved in producing local pitch changes in the fundamental frequency contour during affective signaling. Will the presence of tone in a language inhibit the ability of speakers to modulate intonation\ulcorner The results do show that Taiwanese have a narrower pitch range in comparison with American English speakers. Both advanced (84Hz) and beginning learners (58Hz) of English show a significant narrower FO range than that of Americans' (112Hz), and the difference is greater between the beginning learners' group and native American English speakers.

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A Study on Routine Formulas and Downgraders of Request Act in High School English Textbooks

  • Yang, Eun-Mi
    • 영어어문교육
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    • 제11권2호
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    • pp.111-134
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    • 2005
  • This paper examines high school English textbooks to ascertain if they appropriately reflect the kinds and frequencies of routine formulas and downgraders of request act used by English native speakers. It is important to present authentic routine formulas in textbooks for students to acquire proper, efficient and safe communication strategies to communicate with other English speakers. For the analysis, currently available 7 series of 21 high school English textbooks under the $7^{th}$ National Curriculum were selected. Each series of textbooks contains 3 school grade textbooks as High School English, High School English I, and High School English II. The results show that the high school English textbooks generally demonstrate a secund reflection of the English native speakers' use of request strategies and downgraders. That is, the textbooks were found to have presented mostly casual forms of routine formulas while they have not presented sufficient coverage of elaborated polite routine formulas for requesting which English native speakers frequently use. The presence of some kinds of the frequently used downgraders was also very small in proportion in the textbooks. More effort should be given to complement the deficiency in this area by teachers and researchers.

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Avoidance Strategy Usage of English Articles

  • Lee, Eun-Hee
    • 영어어문교육
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    • 제16권3호
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    • pp.101-117
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    • 2010
  • This study examines whether English users at a U.S. university apply avoidance strategy in using English articles. All participants had learned English for at least 10 years and had used English for at least 15 years at the time of the data collection, so they made an ideal sample to examine the differences between native speakers of English and non-native speakers of English, in terms of avoidance strategy usage of English articles. To examine whether non-native speakers avoid using a certain feature when unsure of the correct usage, the mean differences of each article usage between NS and NNS groups were calculated and compared. On the basis of results showing that there are no statistically significant differences in terms of article usage between the groups, it is concluded that the highly advanced level participants did not use avoidance strategy in English articles, and that the type of English article and the task type did not affect learners' avoidance strategy usage. This research is expected to provide teachers and researchers with information about highly advanced level L2 language speakers' usage patterns with regards to avoidance strategy.

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Production of English Alphabets by Koreans

  • Yun, Yung-Do;Lee, Hyun-Gu
    • 영어어문교육
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    • 제11권4호
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    • pp.97-120
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    • 2005
  • Production and perception of second language sounds are typically influenced by second language learners' native language sounds. In this study we investigate how the Korean language influences Korean speakers' production of English alphabets. In the experiment conducted to prepare for this study 16 native speakers of Korean pronounced English alphabets. Then three native speakers of English evaluated the Korean subjects' pronunciation of them. The results show that the Korean subjects' native language (i.e., Korean) influences their production of the English alphabets. When Korean has sounds corresponding to English alphabets, the English subjects rate the Korean subjects' production of them good. For instance, Korean has voiceless stop phonemes, hence their production of English alphabets was rated good by the English subjects. The Korean subjects' production of English alphabets containing the sounds that do not exist in Korean was rated poor by the English subjects. For instance, Korean does not have voiced fricative phonemes, hence their production of English alphabets was rated poor.

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Phonetic Aspects of English Stress Produced by South Kyungsang Korean Speakers

  • Yi, Do-Kyong
    • 음성과학
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    • 제13권1호
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    • pp.55-66
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    • 2006
  • A purpose of this study is to investigate the acoustic characteristics of English stress produced by the two groups of South Kyungsang (henceforth, SK) Korean speakers: high-proficiency and low-proficiency with reference to English native speakers. Another purpose is to compare results from the high- and low-proficiency SK Korean subjects with those of the native speakers, and to provide an analytical account of how approximate the high-proficiency SK Korean subjects' production is to the native speakers' and how different the low-proficiency SK Korean subjects' is from the native speakers'. Results indicated that the native speakers' main strategy used in producing stressed syllables was duration while the high-proficiency SK Korean subjects' was predominantly pitch-oriented. The low-proficiency SK Korean subjects' pitch patterns showed regularity, emphasizing the penultimate syllable with pitch. In comparing duration among the three groups, both groups of the SK Korean subjects became more even in their duration values for each syllable as the structure of the word or the sentence became more complex.

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영어 가부 의문문 초점 발화와 지각 (The Production and Perception of Focus in English Yes- No Questions)

  • 전윤실;오세풍;김기호
    • 음성과학
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    • 제11권3호
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    • pp.111-128
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    • 2004
  • In English, a focused word with new information receives a pitch accent. This paper examines how English native speakers and Korean speakers produce and perceive focus in English yes-no questions. The production experiments show that native speakers realize an appropriate intonation of yes-no questions, in which a focused word has a low pitch accent followed by a high phrasal accent and a high boundary tone. However, Korean speakers usually give a high tone to a focused word. In a like manner, the perception experiments show that English native speakers judge a word with a low tone to be focused, while Korean speakers have difficulty in comprehending a focused word realized as a low tone. And it is found that Korean speakers tend to perceive low tones on sentence initial and final focused words better than those on sentence medial focused words, and they often perceive a word with a relatively high fundamental frequency or a sharp rise of fundamental frequency as a focused word. This paper shows that Korean speakers have trouble to produce and perceive an appropriate tonal pattern of a focused yes-no question, and that can cause confusion in a conversation with native speakers.

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교실 상황에서 영어 명사구의 초점 실현 양상 (Focus Realization of English Noun Phrases in the Classroom Situation)

  • 전지현;송재영;이동화;김기호
    • 음성과학
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    • 제9권2호
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    • pp.109-132
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    • 2002
  • The purpose of this study is to examine the focus realization of [Adjective+Noun] phrases which are used in English classroom situations. In order to examine this, two production and one perception experiments were designed. The noun phrases in the first two production experiments are divided into three patterns according to the location of focus. The difference between the two production experiments is that in the first experiment the focused words are contextually given in the classroom situation, but in the second experiment they are presented in written form. We compare the native English teachers' focus realization of noun phrases with that of Korean teachers from the point of view of intonational phonology. In the perception test, we examine how the uttered sentences are perceived by English native speakers and Korean native speakers. The results from the three experiments show that native English teachers' focus realization is quite consistent with informational structure. Also, there is a significant difference in pitch range of adjectives and nouns when the native speakers give pitch accents on the two content words, and the uttered sentences are mostly perceived as well as the speakers' intentions. As for Korean speakers, however, they usually focus only on the adjective or they focus on both the adjective and the noun, regardless of the relative informativeness of these words. From these findings, we can conclude that focus realization of Korean teachers is rather inconsistent with respect to informational structure when compared to that of native English teachers.

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A Corpus-Based Analysis of Crosslinguistic Influence on the Acquisition of Concessive Conditionals in L2 English

  • Newbery-Payton, Laurence
    • 아시아태평양코퍼스연구
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    • 제3권1호
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    • pp.35-49
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    • 2022
  • This study examines crosslinguistic influence on the use of concessive conditionals by Japanese EFL learners. Contrastive analysis suggests that Japanese native speakers may overuse the concessive conditional even if due to partial similarities to Japanese concessive conditionals, whose formal and semantic restrictions are fewer than those of English concessive conditionals. This hypothesis is tested using data from the written module of the International Corpus Network of Asian Learners of English (ICNALE). Comparison of Japanese native speakers with English native speakers and Chinese native speakers reveals the following trends. First, Japanese native speakers tend to overuse concessive conditionals compared to native speakers, while similar overuse is not observed in Chinese native speaker data. Second, non-nativelike uses of even if appear in contexts allowing the use of concessive conditionals in Japanese. Third, while overuse and infelicitous use of even if is observed at all proficiency levels, formal errors are restricted to learners at lower proficiency levels. These findings suggest that crosslinguistic influence does occur in the use of concessive conditionals, and that its particular realization is affected by L2 proficiency, with formal crosslinguistic influence mediated at an earlier stage than semantic cross-linguistic influence.

발음 숙련도 상위 성인 학습자들의 영어 발음에 대한 분석 (An analysis of English pronunciation for high-level proficiency adult learners)

  • 김지은
    • 말소리와 음성과학
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    • 제10권2호
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    • pp.39-44
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    • 2018
  • The purpose of this study is to investigate the English pronunciation for high-leveled adult Korean speakers based on pronunciation proficiency test. For this purpose, one native English speaker and eight Korean speakers' suprasegmental features such as sentence F0, standard deviation of vowels and stressed / unstressed vowels' F0, duration and intensity were measured and analyzed. The major results show that (1) high-leveled adult Korean speakers' sentence F0 was similar to that of native English speaker, (2) vowel durations, were less diverse than those of native English speakers, and (3) high-leveled adult Korean speakers utilize vowel duration more actively than F0 to indicate the stress assignment of vowels.

The Interlanguage Speech Intelligibility Benefit (ISIB) of English Prosody: The Case of Focal Prominence for Korean Learners of English and Natives

  • Lee, Joo-Kyeong;Han, Jeong-Im;Choi, Tae-Hwan;Lim, Injae
    • 말소리와 음성과학
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    • 제4권4호
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    • pp.53-68
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    • 2012
  • This study investigated the speech intelligibility of Korean-accented and native English focus speech for Korean and native English listeners. Three different types of focus in English, broad, narrow and contrastive, were naturally induced in semantically optimal dialogues. Seven high and seven low proficiency Korean speakers and seven native speakers participated in recording the stimuli with another native speaker. Fifteen listeners from each of Korean high & low proficiency and native groups judged audio signals of focus sentences. Results showed that Korean listeners were more accurate at identifying the focal prominence for Korean speakers' narrow focus speech than that of native speakers, and this suggests that the interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit-talker (ISIB-T) held true for narrow focus regardless of Korean speakers' and listeners' proficiency. However, Korean listeners did not outperform native listeners for Korean speakers' production of narrow focus, which did not support for the ISIB-listener (L). Broad and contrastive focus speech did not provide evidence for either the ISIB-T or ISIB-L. These findings are explained by the interlanguage shared by Korean speakers and listeners where they have established more L1-like common phonetic features and phonological representations. Once semantically and syntactically interpreted in a higher level processing in Korean narrow focus speech, the narrow focus was phonetically realized in a more intelligible way to Korean listeners due to the interlanguage. This may elicit ISIB. However, Korean speakers did not appear to make complete semantic/syntactic access to either broad or contrastive focus, which might lead to detrimental effects on lower level phonetic outputs in top-down processing. This is, therefore, attributed to the fact that Korean listeners did not take advantage over native listeners for Korean talkers and vice versa.