• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.53-76
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• 2004

This paper introduces a class model based on a course, Internet English, offered by an English department at a university. The course has dual purposes of developing students I English skills and Internet using skills at the same time. In support of using the Internet for language learning, the advantages of project-based language learning and constructivist learning in relation to CALL are explored. The activities in this course, which are basically project-based under the paradigm of constructivist learning perspective, are explained in detail to show the relationship between second language learning theory and teaching application. The way how the four language skills - speaking, listening, reading, and writing - are integrated in this class is described as well. Finally, judgmental evaluation of the course by the students is noted. The results show that a project-based CALL class could be a promising class model to realize an integrative, constructivist, and authentic learning.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.59-73
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• 2012

This study attempts to investigate the contribution of prosody to the foreign accent in Chinese speakers' English production by examining the synthesized speech of crossing native and non-native talkers' prosody and segments. For the stimuli of the foreign accent ratings, we transplanted gender-matched native speakers' prosody onto non-native talkers' segments and vice versa, utilizing the TD-PSOLA algorithm. Eight English native listeners participated in judging foreign accent and comprehensibility of the transplanted stimuli. Results showed that the synthesized stimuli were perceived as stronger foreign accent regardless of speakers' proficiency when English speakers' prosody was crossed with Chinese speakers' segments. This suggests that segments contribute more than prosody to native listeners' evaluation of foreign accent. When transplanted with English speakers' segments, Chinese speakers' prosody showed a difference in duration rather than pitch between high and low proficiency such that stronger foreign accent was detected when low proficient Chinese speakers' duration was crossed with English speakers' segments. This indicated that prosody, more specifically duration, plays a role though the prosodic role is not overall as significant as segments. According to the post acoustic analysis, the temporal features contributing to making the duration parameter prominent as opposed to pitch were found out to be speaking rate, pause duration and pause frequency. Finally, foreign accent and comprehensibility showed no significant correlation such that native listeners had no difficulty listening to highly foreign accented speech.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.46 no.1
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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.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.77-89
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• 2007

This paper examined the intonation contours of English sentences produced by the Korean students. Thirty students participated in the speaking tasks made up of three parts: an oral interview, picture description and a conversational text reading. Their pronunciations in the parts were recorded on a minidisk. Then, two native instructors evaluated their proficiency level focusing on general intelligibility and suprasegmental aspects of the speech. Based on the results of evaluation they were divided into two groups: high and low proficiency groups. The pitch contours of three sentences produced by both the Korean students and a native speaker were compared to find any similarities and differences in the students' intonation patterns using Praat. Results showed that there was a moderate correlation in the proficiency scores of the students by the two native speakers. Secondly, students who earned high scores in the proficiency level matched better the native model. Thirdly, the high group students knew more on the pitch contour and tried to carefully realize them while fewer students in the low group answered positively on the questionnaire. In conclusion, English learners need to know the proper intonation patterns and to practice them consciously and sufficiently to realize correct intonation contours. Further studies would be desirable on the students' pronunciation focused on discourse structure.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.557-571
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• 2014

This study examined the evaluation of Mongolian cashmere products by foreign tourists visiting Mongolia, purchase motivation, and purchase intention by nationality as well as analyzed factors that affected purchase intentions. Questionnaires were distributed in Ulaanbaatar from July $25^{th}$ to September $3^{rd}$, 2012. We collected 626 questionnaires and used 616 copies in the final analysis (149 from Koreans, 128 from Japanese, 119 from Russians and 220 from English-speaking countries). Awareness about Mongolian cashmere products and purchase intentions differed significantly by nationality. Purchase motivations were divided into 3 factors-usefulness, mood shift, gifts and souvenir. Evaluation of cashmere products consisted of 5 factors-product excellence, uniqueness, ostentation, economic value and fashionableness. Purchase motivation and evaluation differed significantly by nationality. Purchase intention was significantly related to awareness prior to visit, product excellence, usefulness, gift/souvenir motivation factors, and nationality.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2000.07a
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• pp.241-254
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• 2000

The past decade has witnessed the abundant use of computer in testing language skills such as listening and reading. Compared with these language skills, we have experienced little use of computer in testing a speaking skill including pronunciation. This is largely due to limitations of the current computer technology. One of such limitations for testing pronunciation is to store and automatically evaluate what the learner utters. Due to this limitation, the computer simply stores what the learner utters and raters evaluate it afterward on a certain rating continuum. With the advent of voice recognition technology, however, the computer has been able to test pronunciation in a systematic way. This technology enables the computer to identify, visually show, and evaluate the learner's intonation pattern by means of autocorrection. The evaluation is expressed in terms of the degree in which the learner's intonation pattern overlaps with that of the native speaker of the target language. In particular, the degree is numerically displayed on the screen, and this numeral is considered as the score of the learner's utterance under our testing framework.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.339-345
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• 2023

Pre-service teachers have established and developed their own teaching strategies and professional language teaching skills based on their pedagogical and learning experiences. In this regard, it is conceivable that pre-service teachers' feedback may have distinct viewpoints and focuses. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to analyze pre-service teachers' feedback to microteaching demonstrations. Participants in the study were 40 prospective elementary school teachers. They were invited to offer feedback on microteachings video-recorded by their peers. According to the findings, we identified a total of 708 comments. The majority of feedback was categorized as teacher talk(40.1%) , followed by teaching and learning activity (20.9%), interaction (12.6%), teaching materials (11.4%), classroom atmosphere and learning environment (8.9%), lesson flow (3.7%), review and evaluation (1.3%), and introduction and objectives (1.1%). The most frequent types of feedback were the teacher's use of appropriate speaking rate, tone, and intonation. This finding reflects the fact that English teachers realize the importance of the teacher's English proficiency, therefore we suggest that teacher education institutions need raise awareness not just of teachers' English skills but also of their diverse perspectives.

• Journal of Korea Entertainment Industry Association
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.75-88
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• 2021

The film won the Golden Palm Award at the Cannes Film Festival, and received the Academy Award for a non-English-speaking film in February 2020, respectively. It has received a monumental evaluation in the world film history. Overall, this film is about class conflict, and critics evaluate the theme of the film as "badly twisted class gap" and "anger from class." The film expresses an intrinsic conflict embodied in culture as a "tragedy in which no bad person appears," rather than the dichotomous composition of the classical class struggle from Marxism. In other words, this can be seen as expressing the substrated class relationship of the modern society that Pierre Bourdieu had argued. This film has been focused as a controversial target under Korea society with excess of ideology. Politics used to adopt the keyword, 'parasite', for political disputes not only in culture contents world. Paradoxically socialism China did not allow to release film 'Parasite.' On the other hand, Lee O-Yong argues that the movie "Parasite" does not look at social phenomena through a dichotomous perspective, but is viewed through a "double perspective" and evaluates that it does not lose eyes looking at humans through tension. This view is based upon 'Vital Capitalism'. Lee. O-Yong looks at the movie "Parasite" from the perspective of "Vital Capitalism". The theory of Vital Capitalism does not seek to find the root of historical development in class struggle conflicts, but rather figuring out history and society pays attention onto the intrinsic characteristics of life, Topophilia, Neophilia, and Biophilia. Lee Eo-ryeong argues that the development of civilization theory evolved from the stage of Hobbes' Darwinism or predatism to the stage of host vs. parasite of Michel Serres, and onto the stage of Margulis's 'Win-Win (inter-dependence)'. In this paper, after overview of vital capital concept and preceeding research, re-interpretations were tried onto scenes based upon fields from habitus, culture capital. This exploration looks for a alternative for excess of ideology in Korea society.