• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.37-54
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• 2002

Some Korean speakers have trouble in learning the correct pronunciation of many complex English words which have clusters in their onset and coda position. This study shows that the difficulties Korean students have acquiring English pronunciation partly come from syllable structure differences between English and Korean. We provide an analysis based on Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993) of the syllable structure difference and suggest that Korean speakers learn the different constraint ranking between English and Korean. This will offer Korean speakers with some helpful methods which will facilitate their learning.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2000.07a
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• pp.7-16
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• 2000

It is a great honour for me to speak to you today on the Korean's problems in learning English pronunciation. First of all I would like to thank Prof. H. B. Lee, President of the Phonetic Society of Korea for calling upon me to make a keynote speech at this International Conference on Phonetic Sciences. The year before last when the 1 st Joint Summit on English Phonetics was held at Aichi Gakuin University in Japan, the warm hospitality given to me and my colleagues by the English Phonetic Society of Japan was so great that I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude to the members of the English Phonetic Society of Japan and especially to Prof. Masaki Tsuzuki, President of the Society. Korean learners of English have a lot of problems in learning English pronunciation. Some vowel problems seem to be shared by Japanese learners but other problems, especially in consonants, are peculiar to Koreans owing to the nature of phonological rules peculiar to the Korean language. Of course, there are other important problems like speech rhythm and intonation besides vowels and consonants. But they will not be included here because of limited time.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.33-52
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• 2001

A bilingual sound dictionary in Korean and English has been created for a broad range of sound reference to cross-linguistic, dialectal, native language (L1)-transferred biological and allophonic variations. The paper demonstrates that the pronunciation dictionary of the lexicon is inadequate for sound reference due to the preponderance of unmarked sounds. The audio registry consists of the three-way comparison of 1) English speech from native English speakers, 2) Korean speech from Korean speakers, and 3) English speech from Korean speakers. Several sub-dictionaries have been created as the foundation research for independent development. They are 1) a pronunciation dictionary of the Korean lexicon in a keyboard-compatible phonetic transcription, 2) a sound dictionary of L1-interfered language, and 3) an audible dictionary of Korean sounds. The dictionary was designed to facilitate the exchange of the speech signal and its corresponding text data on various media particularly on CD-ROM. The methodology and findings of the construction are discussed.

• MALSORI
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• no.41
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• pp.61-71
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• 2001

How to teach intelligible, communicative pronunciation is a continuous question in the English education. Without good input, we can not expect good output. However, in EFL situation, it is very difficult to input the good English pronunciation, therefore, we have to find out the efficient and effective material for teaching pronunciation. One of the materials is song, because songs contain the linguistic and cultural traits of the language. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the reason why songs are good for teaching pronunciation. Koreans, who are syllable timed language users, have difficulties in English pronunciation of stress, rhythm, consonants cluster, linking or blending in connected speech. The 134 songs from wee sing are analyzed for how these traits show in songs. The result shows that we can acquire the traits easily and naturally through songs. And a lesson plan is offered as an example for teaching songs.

• MALSORI
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• no.41
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• pp.49-59
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• 2001

The aim of this paper is to suggest possible methods of integrating the teaching of Pronunciation into a typical communicative classroom and consequently on English teaming web courseware. It is hoped that this paper will prompt teachers to understand the current role of pronunciation in communicative English programs and that the web technology can help students improve their pronunciation, which will develop their speaking and listening skills. It also suggests the need for a database of visualized communicative expressions.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2000.07a
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• pp.271-282
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• 2000

The aim of this presentation is to suggest a method of integrating the teaching of pronunciation into a typical communicative classroom and on the web. This presentation seeks the way by analyzing useful communicative expressions with a speech analyzer for English learners to see the sound pattern of those expressions and say them right. It is hoped that this presentation will prompt teachers to understand the current role of pronunciation in communicative English programs and that the WWW can help students improve their pronunciation to develop their speaking and listening skills. It also suggests the need for a database of visualized communicative expressions.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2000.07a
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• pp.36-43
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• 2000

Koreans' interest in and concern with learning English are at the peak as more actions and transactions in our daily life are carried out in English. Even though we are experiencing a big transition from a conventional grammar-translation method to communicative language teaching, little efforts have been made to set the new goals and objectives, norms and standards, and to develop new instructional methods for teaching pronunciation for international communication. This lecture will introduce a new approach of teaching English pronunciation for international communication, suggesting how to implement it to Korean ELT classrooms. It will also address the necessity of research on Korean learners of English, focusing on their perception and production of English sounds for international intelligibility and identity,

• Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.43-50
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• 2006

The aim of this study was to identify pronunciation difficulties of Korean learners of English in their articulation of English sibilants /dg, g, z/. Forty-five syllables were produced five times by twelve college students. Test scores were measured from the score board made by FluSpeak, a speech training software program, which was designed for English pronunciation practice and improvement. Results show that 1) the subjects had lower scores in producing /g/ than /dg/ and /z/ from all positions, and 2) subjects had lower scores in inter-vocalic position than in pre-vocalic position and in post-vocalic position when they produced /dg/, /g/, and /z/. The results suggest that on the whole Korean learners have much difficulty in producing /g/, and they also have more auditory and articulatory problems in intervocalic than in the other positions when they produce these sibilants.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.87-93
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• 2009

The purpose of this experimental study is to investigate and compare the vowel lengths of English diphthongs and low vowels among native-English-speaking Americans and Korean college exchange students. To do this eight words and sixteen sentences were uttered and recorded by nine subjects, five Korean subjects and four American subjects. Results showed that the vowel lengths of English low vowels between American subjects and Korean subjects were different, which may lead to foreign accent of Korean speakers. Comparing the average length of English low vowels of Korean subjects with those of American subjects, we can see that American subjects tend to pronounce the English low vowels longer than Korean subjects do. In the pronunciation of diphthongs /eI/ and /ou/, Korean subjects pronounced longer than American subjects did. However, in the pronunciation of diphthongs /au/, /aI/, and /ɔI/, American subjects pronounced longer than Korean subjects did.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.43-50
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• 2017

These days voice models of speech recognition software are sophisticated enough to process the natural speech of people without any previous training. However, not much research has reported on the use of speech recognition tools in the field of pronunciation education. This paper examined Google speech recognition of a short English paragraph produced by Korean college students in clear and casual speech styles in order to diagnose and resolve students' pronunciation problems. Thirty three Korean college students participated in the recording of the English paragraph. The Google soundwriter was employed to collect data on the word recognition rates of the paragraph. Results showed that the total word recognition rate was 73% with a standard deviation of 11.5%. The word recognition rate of clear speech was around 77.3% while that of casual speech amounted to 68.7%. The reasons for the low recognition rate of casual speech were attributed to both individual pronunciation errors and the software itself as shown in its fricative recognition. Various distributions of unrecognized words were observed depending on each participant and proficiency groups. From the results, the author concludes that the speech recognition software is useful to diagnose each individual or group's pronunciation problems. Further studies on progressive improvements of learners' erroneous pronunciations would be desirable.