• Journal of Korean language education
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.197-225
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to compare the difference in the interactions between beginning language learners and heritage learners on their forms based on the interaction hypothesis. In this study, three types of information gap activities were used to analyze Language Related Episodes (LREs) while investigating the interaction patterns in language use between four pairs (eight learners) of foreign learners and four pairs (eight learners) of English-speaking heritage learners. The result indicated that foreign learners had a high focus on form during interaction. In particular, they had a tendency to focus on vocabulary rather than grammar, and they conducted self-repair by examining and mostly adjusting their speech to postposition and tense. However, in the problem-solving process, they showed a limited ability in interaction, and thus directly asked others to settle the problem or resorted to using English due to their lack of ability to employ various communication strategies. However, heritage learners had a relatively low focus on form compared to foreign learners. Yet, they also focused more on vocabulary rather than grammar and conducted self-repair in interaction, especially for vocabulary. In addition, they were skillful at using various communication strategies such as indirect expressions, use of alternative words, evasion, and delaying, to expand speech and prevent communication breakdown. They focused less on grammar and mostly did not provide negative feedback in interaction.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.91-115
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• 2006

English immersion has emerged in Korea only recently as an innovative approach to learning and teaching English. Lack of real life experience of using English has been one of the biggest obstacles for Korean learners of English and has resulted in an increasing number of children being sent to English-speaking countries and a huge amount of dollar outflow. This recent innovation is expected to be the magic wand to resolve all these problems. However, setting up an immersion program in a typical EFL context like Korea has brought in another set of issues and challenges. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of a short-term immersion English program in Korea and provide some empirical data to develop programs that can better cater to the needs of EFL learners. A two-week English immersion program was developed and implemented with 57 Korean and Japanese students whose grade level ranged from 4 to 12. The study results show that the program was successful in terms of changing the participants' attitude toward learning English, improving their English skills, enhancing intercultural understanding and competence, and motivating them for further studies of English and other foreign languages and cultures.

• Journal of Korean language education
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.1-23
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• 2018

This paper investigates how adult Mandarin- and English- speaking learners of Korean perceive Korean vowels, with focus on the effect of the first language (L1) and the second language (L2) acoustic relationship, as well as the influence of Korean language experience. For this study, native Mandarin and Canadian English speakers who have learned Korean as a foreign language, as well as a control group of native Korean speakers, participated in two experiments. Experiment 1 was designed to examine acoustic similarities between Korean and English vowels, as well as Korean and Mandarin vowels to predict which Korean vowels are relatively easy, or difficult for L2 learners to perceive. The linear discriminant analysis (Klecka, 1980) based on their L1-L2 acoustic similarity predicted that L2 Mandarin learners would have perceptual difficulty rankings for Korean vowels as follows: (the easiest) /i, a, e/ >> /ɨ, ʌ, o, u/ (most difficult), whereas L2 English learners would have perceptual difficulty rankings for Korean vowels as follows: (the easiest) /i, a, e, ɨ, ʌ/ >> /o, u/ (most difficult). The goal of Experiment 2 was to test how accurately L2 Mandarin and English learners perceive Korean vowels /ɨ, ʌ, o, u/ which are considered to be difficult for L2 learners. The results of a mixed-effects logistic model revealed that English listeners showed higher identification accuracy for Korean vowels than Mandarin listeners, indicating that having a larger L1 vowel inventory than the L2 facilitates L2 vowel perception. However, both groups have the same ranking of Korean vowel perceptual difficulty: ɨ > ʌ > u > o. This finding indicates that adult learners of Korean can perceive the new vowel /ɨ/, which does not exist in their L1, more accurately than the vowel /o/, which is acoustically similar to vowels in their L1, suggesting that L2 learners are more likely to establish additional phonetic categories for new vowels. In terms of the influence of experience with L2, it was found that identification accuracy increases as Korean language experience rises. In other words, the more experienced English and Mandarin learners of Korean are, the more likely they are to have better identification accuracy in Korean vowels than less experienced learners of Korean. Moreover, there is no interaction between L1 background and L2 experience, showing that identification accuracy of Korean vowels is higher as Korean language experience increases regardless of their L1 background. Overall, these findings of the two experiments demonstrated that acoustic similarity between L1 and L2 sounds using the LDA model can partially predict perceptual difficulty in L2 acquisition, indicating that other factors such as perceptual similarity between L1 and L2, the merge of Korean /o/ and /u/ may also influence their Korean vowel perception.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.7 no.5
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• pp.36-46
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• 2007

This paper presents an automated English scoring system designed to help non-native speakers of English, Korean-speaking learners in particular. The system is developed to help the 3rd grade students in junior high school improve their English grammar skills. Without human's efforts, the system identifies grammar errors in English sentences, provides feedback on the detected errors, and scores the sentences. Detecting grammar errors in the system requires implementing a special type of rules in addition to the rules to parse grammatical sentences. Error production rules are implemented to analyze ungrammatical sentences and recognize syntactic errors. The rules are collected from the junior high school textbooks and real student test data. By firing those rules, the errors are detected followed by setting corresponding error flags, and the system continues the parsing process without a failure. As the final step of the process, the system scores the student sentences based on the errors detected. The system is evaluated with real English test data produced by the students and the answers provided by human teachers.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.48
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• pp.223-252
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• 2017

This study explores effects of two types of chatbots - voice-based and text-based - on Korean EFL learners' speaking competence and learner perception. Participants were 80 freshmen students taking an English-speaking class at a university in Korea. They were divided into two experimental groups at random. During the sixteen-week experimental period, participants engaged in 10 chat sessions with the two different types of chatbots. To take a close examination of effects on the improvement of speaking competence, they took the TOEIC speaking test as pre- and post-tests. Structured questionnaire-based surveys were conducted before and after treatment to determine if there are changes in perception. Findings reveal two chatbots effectively contribute to improvement of speaking competence among EFL learners. Particularly, the voice-based chatbot was as effective as the text-based chatbot. An analysis of survey results indicates perception of chatbot-assisted language learning changed positively over time. In particular, most participants preferred voice-based chatbot over text-based chatbot. This study provides insight on the use of chatbots in EFL learning, suggesting that EFL teachers should integrate chatbot technology in their classrooms.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.9-16
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• 2023

The current study investigated the influence of age of L2 acquisition (AOA) and length of residence (LOR) in the L2 setting country on the production of voicing-conditioned vowel duration and spectral qualities in English by Korean learners. The primary aim was to explore the ways in which the language-specific phonetic features are acquired by the age of onset and L2 experience. Analyses of the archived corpus data produced by 45 native speakers of Korean showed that, regardless of AOA or LOR, absolute vowel duration was used as a salient correlate of voicing contrast in English for Korean learners. The accuracy of relative vowel duration was influenced more by onset age than by L2 experience, suggesting that being exposed to English at an early age may benefit the acquisition of temporal dimension. On the other hand, the spectral characteristics of English vowels were more consistently influenced by L2 experience, indicating that immersive experience in the L2 speaking environment are likely to improve the accurate production of vowel quality. The distinct influence of the onset age and L2 experience on the specific phonetic cues in L2 vowel production provides insight into the intricate relationship between the two factors on the manifestation of L2 phonological knowledge.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.11-17
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• 2018

This study reports on a production experiment designed to investigate how Korean speaking learners of English produce English forms ending in stops. In a repetition experiment, Korean participants listened to English nonce words ending in a stop and repeated what they heard. English speakers were recruited for the same task as a control group. The experimental result indicated that the transcriptions of the Korean productions by English native speakers showed vowel insertion in only 3% of productions although the pronunciation of English final stops showed that noise intervals after the closure of final stops were significantly longer for Korean speakers than for English speakers. This finding is inconsistent with the loanword data where 49% of words showed vowel insertion. It is also not compatible with the perceptual similarity approach, which predicts that because Korean speakers accurately perceive an English final stop as a final consonant, they will insert a vowel to make the English sound more similar to the Korean sound.

• Journal of Korean language education
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.199-222
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• 2018

This study attempts to apply process drama in teaching Korean speaking. For that goal, the first part of the study introduces the main features of process drama exploring the possible use of teaching Korean speaking, and the second part presents a concrete example of developing a unit of the Sejong intermediate Korean conversation coursebook which was designed using a process drama method. Process drama is a process-oriented drama activity which progresses only with the teacher and students' spontaneous participation. With its unique meaning-oriented interaction paradigm, it has been suggested as an effective way of teaching and learning a foreign language. Since it emphasizes students' spontaneity, cooperation, and authentic communication, it commonly provides plenty of opportunities for students to interact in a meaningful context. Despite its effectiveness in teaching speaking, it has rarely been used in KFL contexts. Considering the limited opportunities to practice speaking in KFL classrooms, using a communication-rich activity such as process drama would be an optimal solution. This study, therefore, examines possible application of process drama in teaching Korean speaking, and introduces sample speaking materials designed for KFL intermediate learners.

• 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.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.111-135
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• 2002

An annotation model of a non-native speech database has been devised, wherein English is the target language and Korean is the native language. The proposed annotation model features overt transcription of predictable linguistic information in native speech by the dictionary entry and several predefined types of error specification found in native language transfer. The proposed model is, in that sense, different from other previously explored annotation models in the literature, most of which are based on native speech. The validity of the newly proposed model is revealed in its consistent annotation of 1) salient linguistic features of English, 2) contrastive linguistic features of English and Korean, 3) actual errors reported in the literature, and 4) the newly collected data in this study. The annotation method in this model adopts the widely accepted conventions, Speech Assessment Methods Phonetic Alphabet (SAMPA) and the TOnes and Break Indices (ToBI). In the proposed annotation model, SAMPA is exclusively employed for segmental transcription and ToBI for prosodic transcription. The annotation of non-native speech is used to assess speaking ability for English as Foreign Language (EFL) learners.