An Acoustic Study on the Pronunciation of English [kwJ Sequences by Korean EFL Students

The aim of this study is to find out how the labiovelar onglide /w/ in English kwV sequences that have minimal pairs with kV sequences is pronounced differently among Korean EFL learners based on acoustic evidence. This study tries to identify /w/ sound in English kwV sequences through spectrograms and to examine the duration ratios of each segment in kwV words to compare the patterns of an English native speaker with those of Korean speakers of English. In spectrographic analyses, the complete deletion of /w/ and partial pronunciation of /w/ dubbed [$k^{w}$] were identified as well as the targetappropriate production of /w/. The general production patterns with respect to the duration ratios in English [kw] sequence words showed that the subjects who produced /w/ had similar ratio patterns that the native speaker had in that the vowel duration ratio in kwV sequences was shorter than that in kV sequences. By contrast, the subjects who deleted [w] had a long ratio of the onset [$k^{h}$] while the speaker with a partial pronunciation of /w/ had a long ratio of the following vowel.