A Study on the Correlation between English Word-final Stop and Vowel Duration Produced by Speakers of Korean

한국인 영어 학습자의 어말 폐쇄음과 선행 모음 길이의 상관관계 연구

The purposes of this study are (1) to investigate the correlation between English word-final stop and the duration of vowels before word-final stop and (2) to suggest a way to detect pronunciation errors and teach the pronunciation of English word-final stops. For these purposes, 18 Korean speakers' production was recorded and analysed using Speech Analyzer and their production was compared with that of native English speakers. In addition, two native English speakers evaluated the subjects' pronunciation. The major findings are the voicing dependent effect of the English vowels produced by native Korean speakers is lower than that of native English speakers; Korean speakers release English word-final stops less than native English speakers; and the pronunciation of English word-final stops and the duration of adjacent vowels are closely related in that the pronunciation score of final stops and the ratio of vowels between the vowels before voiced stops and voiceless stops are correlated. In addition, this study concludes with pedagogical suggestions that may be useful for English pronunciation teaching.