• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.10 no.2
• /
• pp.39-44
• /
• 2018

The purpose of this study is to investigate the English pronunciation for high-leveled adult Korean speakers based on pronunciation proficiency test. For this purpose, one native English speaker and eight Korean speakers' suprasegmental features such as sentence F0, standard deviation of vowels and stressed / unstressed vowels' F0, duration and intensity were measured and analyzed. The major results show that (1) high-leveled adult Korean speakers' sentence F0 was similar to that of native English speaker, (2) vowel durations, were less diverse than those of native English speakers, and (3) high-leveled adult Korean speakers utilize vowel duration more actively than F0 to indicate the stress assignment of vowels.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.2 no.2
• /
• pp.69-75
• /
• 2010

We propose an automatic pronunciation diagnosis system to evaluate the pronunciation of a foreign language without the uttered text. We recorded English utterances spoken by native and Korean speakers, and utterances spoken by Koreans are evaluated by native speakers based on three criteria: fluency, accuracy of phones and intonation. The system evaluates the utterances of test Korean speakers based on the differences of log-likelihood given two models: one is trained by English speech uttered by native speakers, and the other is trained by English speech uttered by Korean speakers. We also applied purification algorithm to increase class differentiability. The purification can detect and eliminate the non-speech frames such as short pauses, occlusive silences that do not help to discriminate between utterances. As the results, our proposed system has higher correlation with the human scores than the baseline system.

• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.12 no.3
• /
• pp.185-200
• /
• 2005

The objective of this study is to examine acoustic cues in spoken French for the assessment of pronunciation which is necessary to realization of the multimedia system. The corpus is composed of simple expressions which consist of the French phonological system include all phonemes. This experiment was made on 4 male and female French native speakers and on 20 Korean speakers, university students who had learned the French language more than two years. We analyzed the recorded data by using spectrograph and measured comparative features by the numerical values. First of all, we found the mean and the deviation of all phonemes, and then chose features which had high error frequency and great differences between French and Korean pronunciations. The selected data were simplified and compared among them. After we judged whether the problems of pronunciation in each Korean speaker were either the utterance mistake or the interference of mother tongue, in terms of articulatory and auditory aspects, we tried to find acoustic features as simplified as possible. From this experiment, we could extract acoustic cues for the construction of the French pronunciation training system.

• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.15 no.3
• /
• pp.31-38
• /
• 2008

The aim of this study was to find how English vowels affect the pronunciation of English sibilants /$d_3,\;{_3}$, z/ by Korean learners of English. Fifteen nonsense syllables composed by five vowels /a, e, i, o, u/ were pronounced six times by twelve Korean learners of English. Test scores were measured from the scoreboard made by a speech training software program, which was designed for English pronunciation practice and improvement. Results show that 1) the subjects had the lowest scores in /a_a/ position, and 2) subjects had lower scores in the /i_i/ position than in /e_e/, /o_o/ and /u_u/ positions when they pronounced $/d_3/,\;/{_3}/$, and /z/ in their respective inter-vocalic position. This study found that for the group studied Korean learners of English have more difficulty in pronouncing sibilants in /a_a/ and /i_i/ positions than in the other positions.

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

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
• /
• v.20 no.12
• /
• pp.145-152
• /
• 2015

In this paper, a standardized phonological rule should be embodied for all people who want to use Hangul beyond nationality. This researcher suggested a phonological process protocol in unicode for the purpose of developing a computer system-based program as one of methods to pronounce Hangul correctly. First of all, to solve a problem of standardizing Hangul pronunciation, it is necessary to develop a phonological process system. In other words, when a mobile phone or a keyboard is used, inputted strings should be changed exactly by an automatic device made according to the phonological rule. For this, a phonological process table is the most important and unicode which digitalizes Hangul is the most effective. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to complete a phonological process table, suggest an algorithm by the table, and develop a computer program pursuing correct Hangul pronunciation. For the methodology of this study, the features of unicode was used to solve a problem of coding each syllable by phonemes after strings were inputted from the phonological process program. This study suggested a protocol that sounds of inputted strings were automatically changed via recombination using a phonological process table. The ultimate purpose of the study was to help pronounce Hangul correctly according to the pronunciation rule.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
• /
• 2003.10a
• /
• pp.29-32
• /
• 2003

This paper proposes an automatic pronunciation correction system which provides users with correction guidelines for each pronunciation error. For this purpose, we develop an HMM speech recognizer which automatically classifies pronunciation errors when Korean speaks foreign language. And, we collect speech database of native and nonnative speakers using phonetically balanced word lists. We perform analysis of mispronunciation types from the experiment of automatic mispronunciation detection using speech recognizer.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.18 no.4
• /
• pp.268-278
• /
• 2018

The purpose of this study is to compare and analyze phonetic items such as the phonemic system, phonological rules, and pronunciation descriptions and notations incorporated in the textbooks. Based on our analysis results, we point out the problems related to pronunciation education, and suggest directions for improvement. First, the presentation order of consonants and vowels in the phonological systems sections of each textbook was different. We recommend that a standard for consonant and vowel presentation order should be prepared, but that this standard should take into consideration the specific purpose of the textbook; the learning strategies and goals, as well as the possibility of teaching and learning. Second, similar to phonemic systems, the presentation order of phonological rules was different for each textbook. To create a standard order for phonological rules, we have to standardize the order of presentation of rules and determine which rules should be presented. Furthermore, when describing phonological rules, the content should be described in common and essential terms as much as possible without the use of jargon. Third, in other matters of pronunciation, there were problems such as examples for pronunciation and lack of exercises. Regarding this, we propose to provide sentences or dialogues as examples for pronunciation, and to link these to various activities and other language functions for pronunciation practice.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
• /
• 2007.05a
• /
• pp.183-186
• /
• 2007

This study analyzes Korean high school students' pronunciation errors in word-initial onglides in English. For this study, 24 Korean high school students read 34 English words including glide-vowel sequences in word-initial positions and vowel-initial words in a frame sentence. The results showed 2 different error types: glide deletion and vowel distortion. After the analysis of the first recording, the subjects were taught how to pronounce glide-vowel sequences properly in a 60-minute class. Comparison of the analyses of the first and second recordings showed that the subjects improved on the pronunciation of glide-vowel sequences. After the training, the pronunciation errors of diphthongs unique to English, [$j_I$], decreased substantially. However, most subjects still had difficulties in pronouncing [$w{\mho}$], [wu], and [wo]. There was no significant correlation between English course grade and error reduction.

• Lingua Humanitatis
• /
• v.7
• /
• pp.31-56
• /
• 2005

In most Asian areas Chinese writing and characters had been used as a unique recording device. The way to account for the circumstance related with the writing system could be twofold. Firstly the races inhabited around Sino-territory actually neither used the type of languages as Chinese - not isolating type but agglutinative one - nor established any independent writing letters. Secondly those people who belonged to the races accepted the writing system of China due to the frequent cultural and economical interchange between them and Chinese people. In Korean peninsula the same situation of linguistic phenomenon had been pervasive. The aborigine of the territory who acquired to use Chinese writing applied their knowledge of the second language to record the facts related with the management of the country. But the grammatical structure of Chines writing and native language showed the remarkable contrast; so, the people of the peninsula managed the specific letter system - in other words, the discrepancy between language and writing. This difference carried on the huge influence on the way of using Chinese writing and characters in Korea. Some scholars of historical linguistics of Korean language considered the alternation of Chinese writing system and characters as "the procedure of nativization" - in which the inflow of characters into Korean and the same one continuously used in China illustrated the large gap of the phonological aspects. The method of reading Chinese characters came to be named as Sino-Korean Pronunciation. In the categorization of Chinese characters' pronunciation Sino-Korean Pronunciation was also categorized as the Eastern Pronunciation(東音). It indicates the sound of Chinese characters which has been historically adapted to the phonological system of Korean language. In this paper the main point is to survey the procedure of reception of Chinese writing and characters and that of establishment and alternation of Korean phonetic feature of Chinese writing and characters.