• 대한음성학회:학술대회논문집
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• 대한음성학회 2006년도 춘계 학술대회 발표논문집
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• pp.77-81
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• 2006

This paper presents a technique of imposing the prosodic features of a native speaker's utterance onto the same sentence uttered by a non-native speaker. Three acoustic aspects of the prosodic features were considered: the fundamental frequency (F0) contour, segmental durations, and the intensity contour. The fundamental frequency contour and the segmental durations of the native speaker's utterance were imposed on the non-native speaker's utterance by using the PSOLA (pitch-synchronous overlap and add) algorithm [1] implemented in Praat[2]. The intensity contour transfer was also done in Praat. The technique of transferring one or more of these prosodic features was elaborated and its implications in the area of language education were discussed.

• 한국융합학회논문지
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• 제5권1호
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• pp.35-41
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• 2014

An automatic speech recognition system is one of the popular research problems. There are many research groups working in this field for different language including Japanese. Japanese vowel recognition is one of important parts in the Japanese speech recognition system. The vowel classification system with the Mamdani fuzzy inference system was developed in this research. We tested our system on the blind test data set collected from one male native Japanese speaker and four male non-native Japanese speakers. All subjects in the blind test data set were not the same subjects in the training data set. We found out that the classification rate from the training data set is 95.0 %. In the speaker-independent experiments, the classification rate from the native speaker is around 70.0 %, whereas that from the non-native speakers is around 80.5 %.

• 영어어문교육
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• 제18권3호
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• pp.53-75
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• 2012

The present study examined the role of language proficiency in dyadic discourse in the organization of repairs and the distribution of linguistic features contained in repairs. One native speaker of English and five non-native speakers participated and formed three dyads: one same-proficiency NNS-NNS (non-native speaker), one different-proficiency NNS-NNS, and one NS (native speaker)-NNS dyads. Results showed that overall repair patterns in this type of interaction were more conversational than didactic, and that the degree of difference in proficiency between the participants in the dyad influenced repair patterns and the distribution of linguistic features in relation to repair patterns. Also, discussed in the present paper are some implications of the results and other issues related to language learning.

• 영어어문교육
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• 제15권3호
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• pp.33-57
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• 2009

Taking the issues of inequity and power between NES and NNES teachers as a starting point, this qualitative study explores the way the widespread belief of the native speaker fallacy manifests itself in one NNES teacher's teaching life and is linked to the teacher's understanding of herself as an English teacher. Guided by critical applied linguistics (Pennycook, 2001) and using Bourdieu's (1991) theorization of symbolic violence, I conducted an instrumental case study (Stake, 1995) in an ESL writing class at a US university. I collected data through classroom observations and interviews over a nine-month period and analyzed the data using the constant comparison method (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). The findings illustrate the ways the dominant ideology of the native speaker fallacy works to maintain and reproduce the status quo unequal relation between NES and NNES teachers by making all parties involved believe in the artificial sociocultural arrangements that favor NES teachers as legitimate. The findings direct our attention to the importance of critical teacher education that will enable future TESOL professionals to engage in critical reflection on diverse issues and envision transformative change. The findings, in particular, point to the need for language support for NNES teachers in TESOL teacher education.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제5권4호
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• pp.129-136
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• 2013

This study investigated how acoustic characteristics (i.e., duration, F1, F2) of English high front vowels /i, ɪ/ are modulated by boundary- and prominence-induced strengthening in native vs. non-native (Korean) speech production. The study also examined how the durational difference in vowels due to the voicing of a following consonant (i.e., voiced vs. voiceless) is modified by prosodic strengthening in two different (native vs. non-native) speaker groups. Five native speakers of Canadian English and eight Korean learners of English (intermediate-advanced level) produced 8 minimal pairs with the CVC sequence (e.g., 'beat'-'bit') in varying prosodic contexts. Native speakers distinguished the two vowels in terms of duration, F1, and F2, whereas non-native speakers only showed durational differences. The two groups were similar in that they maximally distinguished the two vowels when the vowels were accented (F2, duration), while neither group showed boundary-induced strengthening in any of the three measurements. The durational differences due to the voicing of the following consonant were also maximized when accented. The results are discussed further in terms of phonetics-prosody interface in L2 production.

• 음성과학
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• 제11권1호
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• pp.87-103
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• 2004

This study investigates Korean listeners' perception of the English stop epenthesis between the sonorant and fricative segments. Specifically this study investigates 1) how often English epenthetic stops are perceived by native Korean listeners, given the fact that Korean does not allow consonant clusters in codas; and 2) whether perception of the epenthetic stops, which are optional phonetic variations, not phonemes, could be improved without any explicit training. 120 English non-words with a mono-syllable structure of CVC1C2, where C1=/m, n, $\eta$, 1/, and C2=/s, $\theta$, $\int$/, were given to two groups of native Korean listeners, and they were asked to detect the target stops such as [p], [t], and [k]. The number of their responses were computed to determine how often listeners succeed in recovering the string of segments produced by the native English speaker. The results of the present study show that English epenthetic stops are poorly identified by native Korean listeners with low English proficiency, even in the case where stimuli with strong acoustic cues are provided with, but perception of epenthetic stops is closely related with listeners' English proficiency, showing the possibility of the improvement of perception. It further shows that perception of epenthetic stops shows asymmetry between coronal and non-coronal consonants.

• 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.

• 한국콘텐츠학회논문지
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• 제14권3호
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• pp.482-489
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• 2014

본 연구는 중국인 학습자의 한국어 파열음 (/ㄲㄱㅋㄸㄷㅌㅃㅂㅍ/) 발음의 VOT값이 (1) 한국에 거주하며 한국어를 배운 기간에 따라 어떻게 달라지는지 (2) 유의미 단어와 무의미 단어에 따라 달라지는지 (3) 한국인의 이해도와 연관이 있는지를 알아보는 것을 목적으로 한다, 본 연구를 위하여 18명의 중국인 화자들의 한국어 파열음 발음은 음성프로그램으로 분석되었고, 이후 중국인 화자가 발화한 파열음을 한국인 화자가 인지 가능한지 평가하여 이 결과와 VOT값을 비교하여 보았다. 본 실험에 참여한 중국인 화자들의 한국어 VOT값의 평균을 보면, 경음은 한국인 화자들의 VOT값과 큰 차이가 없었으나, 모국어의 영향으로 평음은 한국인 보다 더 짧아, 경음에 가깝게 발음한다는 것을 알 수 있었고, 격음의 VOT도 한국인 보다 더 짧다는 것을 알 수 있었다. 한국에 거주한 시기와 중국어 화자의 한국어 파열음 VOT값의 관계에서는, 중국인 화자의 한국어 발음은 거주 기간이 길어지고 한국어 학습양이 많아져도 쉽게 수정되지 않는 것으로 나타났으며 유의미 단어와 무의미 단어의 차이도 유의미하지 않는 것으로 나타났다.

• ETRI Journal
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• 제46권1호
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• pp.48-58
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• 2024

This paper presents the development of language tutoring systems for nonnative speakers by leveraging advanced end-to-end automatic speech recognition (ASR) and proficiency evaluation. Given the frequent errors in non-native speech, high-performance spontaneous speech recognition must be applied. Our systems accurately evaluate pronunciation and speaking fluency and provide feedback on errors by relying on precise transcriptions. End-to-end ASR is implemented and enhanced by using diverse non-native speaker speech data for model training. For performance enhancement, we combine semisupervised and transfer learning techniques using labeled and unlabeled speech data. Automatic proficiency evaluation is performed by a model trained to maximize the statistical correlation between the fluency score manually determined by a human expert and a calculated fluency score. We developed an English tutoring system for Korean elementary students called EBS AI Peng-Talk and a Korean tutoring system for foreigners called KSI Korean AI Tutor. Both systems were deployed by South Korean government agencies.

• 대한음성학회지:말소리
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• 제46호
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• pp.87-102
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• 2003

In this paper, we present an English pronunciation correction system for Korean speakers and show some of experimental results on it. The aim of the system is to detect mispronounced phonemes in spoken words and to give appropriate correction comments to users. There are several English pronunciation correction systems adopting speech recognition technology, however, most of them use conventional speech recognition engines. From this reason, they could not give phoneme based correction comments to users. In our system, we build two kinds of phoneme models: standard native speaker models and Korean's error models. We also design recognition network based on phonemes to detect Koreans' common mispronunciations. We get 90% detection rate in insertion/deletion/replacement of phonemes, but we cannot get high detection rate in diphthong split and accents.