• Korean Journal of Human Ecology
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.699-710
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• 2007

The study purposes to explore the effects of individual characteristics and home environments of children on their bilingual language aquisition, that is, to examine whether their English language competency is different from their Korean language competency depending on those variables. Thus English or Korean language competency of children who had had early exposure in English learning were studied in terms of child's individual characteristics such as age, gender, exposure period to English, intelligence, and experiences of visiting English-speaking countries, and home environments such as parental age, educational level, income level, their perceived English competency, their perceived significance of English and Korean language, and the frequency of using English at home. 72 children who went to English kindergarten were tested with Peabody Pictures Vocabulary Test-Revised (PPVT-R) in Korean version and in English version respectively. The results show that child's intelligence and experiences of visiting English-speaking countries influence their Korean language competency. Also child's age, exposure period to English and experiences of visiting English-speaking countries influence their English language competency. Moreover their mother's educational background, father's English fluency, mothers' English fluency, and the frequency of using English at home influence child's English language competency, whereas any variables did not influence child's Korean language competency. Accordingly, child's English and Korean language competencies are related to each other.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.51-66
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• 2022

This study aims to help Korean English learners to learn English pronunciation by revealing which suprasegmentals affect the implementation of English sentences closer to native English speakers when they read English sentences. To this end, Korean middle school English learners were selected as subjects and research data were gathered through sentence types (declarative, interrogative, imperative, and exclamative), as well as syllables. Speech rate, pause frequency, pause duration, F0 range, and rhythm among suprasegmentals were used for analysis of these English sentence utterances. Mean analysis, correlation analysis, and regression analysis were performed. The results showed that speech rate, pause frequency, pause duration, and F0 range affected the evaluation of fluency levels. In the regression analysis between all suprasegmentals and fluency levels, the suprasegmentals that most affected fluency levels were speech rate and F0 range. Rhythm had no meaningful relation with fluency levels. Therefore, when teaching English pronunciation, it is necessary to teach students to increase their speech rate and F0 range. In addition, students should be trained to reduce both the number and the duration of pauses during utterance to improve their fluency. It is noteworthy that of the four sentence types, exclamative sentences were produced with faster speech rate, fewer pauses, shorter pause duration, and higher rhythm values.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.25-33
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• 2022

This study investigates the relationships between rhythm and fluency indices and listeners' ratings of the rhythm and fluency of Korean college students' English paragraph reading. 17 university students read and recorded a passage from "The North Wind and the Sun" twice before and after three months of English pronunciation instruction. Seven in-service and pre-service English teachers in graduate school assessed the rhythm and fluency of the utterances. In addition, the values of 14 indices of rhythm and fluency were extracted from each speech and the relationships between the indices and the listeners' ratings were analyzed. The rhythm indices of the speakers in this study did not differ significantly from those of native English speakers presented in previous studies in %V, VarcoV, and nPVIV, but were higher in ΔV, ΔC, and VarcoC and lower in speech rate. The level of rhythm and fluency demonstrated by Korean college students was comparable, at least in terms of objective values for certain indices. The fluency indices, such as percentage of pauses, articulation rate, and speech rate, significantly contributed more to predicting both rhythm and fluency ratings than the rhythm indices.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.149-156
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• 2015

We propose a new method for automatic fluency scoring of English speaking tests spoken by nonnative speakers in a free-talking style. The proposed method is different from the previous methods in that it does not require the transcribed texts for spoken utterances. At first, an input utterance is segmented into a phone sequence by using a phone recognizer trained by using native speech databases. For each utterance, a feature vector with 6 features is extracted by processing the segmentation results of the phone recognizer. Then, fluency score is computed by applying support vector regression (SVR) to the feature vector. The parameters of SVR are learned by using the rater scores for the utterances. In computer experiments with 3 tests taken by 48 Korean adults, we show that speech rate, phonation time ratio, and smoothed unfilled pause rate are best for fluency scoring. The correlation of between the rater score and the SVR score is shown to be 0.84, which is higher than the correlation of 0.78 among raters. Although the correlation is slightly lower than the correlation of 0.90 when the transcribed texts are given, it implies that the proposed method can be used as a preprocessing tool for fluency evaluation of speaking tests.

• International journal of advanced smart convergence
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.86-96
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• 2021

This cross-sectional survey research carried out with the inquisitive agenda on satisfaction of the translation outcomes as performed by human translation and (machine translation) post-editing. The survey group consisted of 166 Korean translators primarily working with the English, Chinese, and Japanese languages. They were asked to rate the satisfactory level with accuracy, fluency, idiomatic expression, and terminology in the Richter's scale of four. The result reveals that human translation is more satisfactory than post-editing with respect to accuracy, but it is uneasy to assert that accuracy is unsatisfactory in post-editing. On the other hand, the Korean translators are less satisfied with fluency, idiomatic expression, and terminology than accuracy. It can be assumed that although human translation is more satisfactory than post-editing, the accuracy of post-editing seems to be more acknowledged than fluency, idiomatic expression, and terminology, which lead the translators to take the accuracy of raw machine-translation products and to go on to improve the fluency, idiomatic expression, and terminology. Nevertheless, Korean translators believe Korean idiomatic expressions cannot be satisfactorily produced in post-editing, while fluency and terminology can be improved in post-editing.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.9-20
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• 2014

In this paper, we propose an automatic fluency evaluation algorithm for English speaking tests. In the proposed algorithm, acoustic features are extracted from an input spoken utterance and then fluency score is computed by using support vector regression (SVR). We estimate the parameters of feature modeling and SVR using the speech signals and the corresponding scores by human raters. From the correlation analysis results, it is shown that speech rate, articulation rate, and mean length of runs are best for fluency evaluation. Experimental results show that the correlation between the human score and the SVR score is 0.87 for 3 speaking tests, which suggests the possibility of the proposed algorithm as a secondary fluency evaluation tool.

• International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.165-171
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• 2018

As the artificial intelligence (AI) plays a crucial role in machine translation (MT) which has loomed large as a new translation paradigm, concerns have also arisen if MT can produce a quality product as human translation (HT) can. In fact, several MT experimental studies report cases in which the MT product called post-editing (PE) as equally as HT or often superior ([1],[2],[6]). As motivated from those studies on translation quality between HT and PE, this study set up an experimental situation in which Korean literature was translated into English, comparatively, by 3 translators and 3 post-editors. Afterwards, a group of 3 other Koreans checked for accuracy of HT and PE; a group of 3 English native speakers scored for fluency of HT and PE. The findings are (1) HT took the translation time, at least, twice longer than PE. (2) Both HT and PE produced similar error types, and Mistranslation and Omission were the major errors for accuracy and Grammar for fluency. (3) HT turned to be inferior to PE for both accuracy and fluency.

• MALSORI
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• no.44
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• pp.1-14
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• 2002

Because the accuracy and the fluency are the essence in English speaking, both of them are very important in English trencher training and in-service English training programs. To get the accuracy and the fluency, the causes and the phenomena of the unnatural pronunciation have to be diagnosed. Consequently, the problematic and unnatural pronunciation of Korean elementary and secondary English teachers should be analyzed with using Acoustic Analyzing tools like CSL, Multi-speech and Praat. In addition, an attempt to Pinpoint what the causes of unnatural pronunciation was executed. Next a procedure and steps were proposed for in-service training programs that would cultivate the fluency and the accuracy. In case of elementary teachers, the unnatural pronunciation of segmental features and suprasegmental features were found much. therefore segmental features should be emphasized in the begging of pronunciation training courses and then suprasegmental features have to be emphasized. In case of secondary teachers, the unnatural pronunciation of suprasegmental features were found much. Therefore segmental and suprasegmental features have to be focused at the same time. In other words, features in word level should be focused first for elementary English teacher, and features in word level and beyond word level should be trained at the same time for secondary English teachers.

• International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.71-76
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• 2022

The purpose of this research is to investigate the types of semantic errors made by MT in translating EFL college students' original drafts written in Korean into English. Specifically, this study attempts to find out 1) what types of semantic errors are most frequently committed by MT? and 2) how students feel about the quality of the MT-produced output? The findings from this study indicated that MT produced the errors related to accuracy (47%) the most, followed by the errors related to fluency and ambiguity (14.6% respectively). Students were well aware of the errors with accuracy and fluency but had limited ability to check the errors with ambiguity. Based on the findings, this study suggests pedagogical implications which can be implemented in L2 writing classrooms.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.207-227
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• 2011

This paper investigates how two different modes of feedback (selective vs. comprehensive) affect selected students' writing development in terms of three different types of measurement (accuracy, fluency, and complexity). 139 university students participated in the study, and 278 writing samples were analyzed. The results of the study indicate that participants who received selective feedback wrote more accurately and fluently than their counterparts. However, in terms of complexity, both selective and comprehensive groups showed no sign of improvement in semester-based investigations. The results of this study support Skehan's (2009) theory of trade-off effects, suggesting that 'natural' tension exists between accuracy and complexity when resources are limited. Moreover, this finding contrasts with the theory of Cognition Hypothesis, which proposes that task complexity will be associated with increases in complexity and accuracy. In the study, selected participants (N=21) strongly nominated their error sources as unfamiliarity toward using key words, usage, transition, and sentence types. This study not only contributes to the accumulation of our current knowledge in the related area of theory, but offers educational implications for those who are dealing with intermediate-level students when deciding what particular teaching content should constitute a priority within a limited instructional period.