• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 1996.10a
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• pp.37-42
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• 1996

This study aims to see some prosodic features of English spoken by Japanese learners of English. It focuses on speech rates, pauses, and intonation when the learners read an English passage. Three Japanese learners of English, who are all male university students, were asked to read the speech material, an English passage of 110 word length, at their normal reading speed. Then a native speaker of English, a male American English teacher. was asked to read the same passage. The Japanese speakers were also asked to read a Japanese passage of 286 letters (Japanese Kana) to compare the reading of English with that of japanese. Their speech was analyzed on a computerized system (KAY Computerized Speech Lab). Wave forms, spectrograms, and F0 contours were shown on the screen to measure the duration of pauses, phrases and sentences and to observe intonation contours. One finding of the experiment was that the movement of the low speakers' speech rates showed a similar tendency in their reading of the English passage. Reading of the Japanese passage by the three learners also had a similar tendency in the movement of speech rates. Another finding was that the frequency of pauses in the learners speech was greater than that in the speech of the native speaker, but that the ration of the total pause length to the whole utterance length was about tile same in both the learners' and the native speaker's speech. A similar tendency was observed about the learners' reading of the Japanese passage except that they used shorter pauses in the mid-sentence position. As to intonation contours, we found that the learners used a narrower pitch range than the native speaker in their reading of the English passage while they used a wider pitch range as they read the Japanese passage. It was found that the learners tended to use falling intonation before pauses whereas the native speaker used different intonation patterns. These findings are applicable to the teaching of English pronunciation at the passage level in the sense that they can show the learners. Japanese here, what their problems are and how they could be solved.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2000.07a
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• pp.88-95
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• 2000

This paper attempts to investigate characteristic features of Japanese EFL learners' English intonation and how their Japanese accents are affecting their English intonation, focusing on a comparison between the accent patterns of Japanese compounds and the stress patterns of English compounds. It is based on research dedicated to helping to improve the teaching and learning of English intonation (prosody) for Japanese EFL learners. It examines the Fundamental Frequency (henceforth Fx) contours of two EFL college students, one specializing in English and the other in Japanese. Both of them may be considered upper intermediate EFL students with their TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) scores ranging between 500 and 550.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.9-14
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• 2018

This study compared the relative contributions of intensity, F0, duration and vowel spectra of L2 English lexical stress by Japanese and Korean learners of English. Recordings of Japanese, Korean and native English speakers reading eighteen 2 to 4 syllable words in a carrier sentence were analyzed using multiple regression to investigate the influence of each acoustic correlate in determining whether a vowel was stressed. The relative contribution of each correlate was calculated by converting the coefficients to percentages. The Japanese learner group showed phonological transfer of L1 phonology to L2 lexical prosody and relied mostly on F0 and duration in manifesting L2 English stress. This is consistent with the results of the previous studies. However, advanced Japanese speakers in the group showed less reliance on F0, and more use of intensity, which is another parameter used in native English stress accents. On the other hand, there was little influence of F0 on L2 English stress by the Korean learners, probably due to the transfer of the Korean intonation pattern to L2 English prosody. Hence, this study shows that L1 transfer happens at the prosodic level for Japanese learners of English and at the intonational level for Korean learners.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.135-148
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• 2005

This paper investigated the effect of audio and visual cues on Korean and Japanese EFL learners' perception of the lateral/retroflex contrast in English. In a perception experiment, the two English consonants /l/ and /r/ were embedded in initial and medial position in nonsense words in the context of the vowels /i, a, u/. Singletons and clusters were included in the speech material. Audio and video recordings were made using a total of 108 items. The items were presented to Korean and Japanese learners of English in three conditions: audio-alone (A), visual-alone (V) and audio-visual presentation (AV). The results showed that there was no evidence of AV benefit for the perception of the /l/-/r/ contrast for either Korean or Japanese learners of English. Korean listeners showed much better identification rates of the /l/-/r/ contrast than Japanese listeners when presented in audio or audio-visual conditions.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.91-112
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• 1998

This paper aimed at examining the influence of L1 (native language) phonology when speakers of L1 perceive L2 (foreign language) sounds. Korean and Japanese learners of English took a perception test of Australian English words 'work', 'walk' and 'wok'. Based on Korean and Japanese phonology, it was predicted that Korean subjects would face more difficulties than Japanese subjects. The results of the experiment substantiated the influence of L1 phonology in L2 learners' L2 sound perception.

• MALSORI
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• no.60
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• pp.1-11
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• 2006

This paper investigated AV benefit of Korean and Japanese EFL learners' perception of the liquid contrast in English. In a perception experiment, the two English consonants /l/ and /r/ were embedded in initial and medial position in nonsense words in the context of the vowels /i, a, u/. Singletons and clusters were included in the speech material. Audio and video recordings were made using a total of 108 items. The items were presented to Korean and Japanese learners of English in three conditions: audio-alone (A), visual-alone (V) and audio-visual presentation (AV). The results showed that there was no evidence of AV benefit for the perception of the /l/-/r/ contrast for either Korean or Japanese learners of English. The results suggest that increasing auditory proficiency in identifying a non-native contrast is linked with an increasing proficiency in using visual cues to the contrast.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.213-235
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• 2011

The aim of this study is to present preliminary results from an ongoing large-scale study of English-language future goal orientations held by Japanese university students. The work here involves an investigation of learners in multiple disciplines, from five universities, both public and private, in the Kanto-region of Japan, and their perspective on their future use of English. The results summarize written essays on L2-goal orientations. Preliminary results indicate Japanese learners (n = 629) as a whole have disparate L2-learning goals; however, these can be summarized into four broad categories: career, personal life, study, and general; and early findings indicate that most learners (63.56%) are oriented to career or personal goal orientations, while others are oriented to study and general. These early results help us to gain a better understanding of the future goals of Japanese university learners and their views of English usage in the future.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.37-51
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• 2008

The main goal of this study is to examine if there is a difference in the utilization of a vowel length cue between Korean and Japanese L2 learners of English in their perception and production of postvocalic coda contrast in English. Given that Japanese subjects' performances on the identification and production tasks were much better than Korean subjects' performance, we may support the prediction based on the Feature Hypothesis which maintains that L1 phonological features can facilitate the perception of L2 acoustic cue. Since vowel length contrast is a phonological feature in Japanese but not in Korean, the tasks, which assess L2 leaners' ability to discriminate vowel length contrast in English, are much easier for the Japanese group than for the Korean group. Although the Japanese subjects demonstrated a better performance than the Korean subjects, the performance of the Japanese group was worse than that of the English control group. This finding implies that L2 learners, even Japanese learners, should be taught that the durational difference of the preceding vowels is the most important cue to differentiate postvocalic contrastive codas in English.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.37-43
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• 2012

This study investigates an independent evaluation of prosody and segmentals with reference to the difference in the foreign accent of Korean, Chinese, and Japanese learners of English. For this study, a set of stimuli were made of English sentences read by male and female Korean, Chinese, and Japanese learners of English by prosody swapping technique. Two groups of American and Korean subjects evaluated the difference in the prosody and segmentals of the stimuli by pairwise difference rating. The results showed that there was no significant difference in the evaluation scores of prosody and segmentals across accents for either subject group. The results also showed that both subject groups indicated a greater score with segmentals than with prosody. The results of the present study are significant in that they are opposite to the claim of some previous studies that prosodic factors could have a greater influence on the foreign accent and intelligibility than segmentals.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.63-68
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• 2011

This study investigates how Korean students employ acoustic-phonetic cues in perceiving word boundaries of near-homophonous English phrases. For this study, 60 Korean college students participated in the experiment of discriminating word boundaries for 42 pairs of stimuli comprising the allophonic cues of aspiration and glottal stop. Results were analysed in terms of the correctness of responses and the correlation between correctness and confidence. Results showed that stimuli pairs of the glottal stop cue give a higher correctness but those of aspiration a relatively lower correctness. Comparison of the results of this study with those of the previous studies of English and Japanese speakers showed that Korean and Japanese speakers of English give a substantially lower correctness than native speakers of English, while Korean learners of English as a foreign language provide a lower correctness than Japanese speakers of English as a second language.