• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.39-56
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• 2005

This study is a small-scale replication study of Kubota (1998). Kubota discovered that L1 rhetoric was not the main cause of L2 writing problems. The conclusion of Kubota's study was in contrast to that of contrastive rhetoric research that claimed that the use of L1 rhetorical styles in L2 writing negatively affects the quality of L2 writing, in particular, at the organizational level. According to Kubota(1998), the use of Japanese rhetorical styles did not deteriorate the quality of English writing. By investigating Korean ESL learners, this replication study examined whether L1 and L2 writings have the same rhetorical styles and how L1 rhetorical styles affect the L2 writing quality. The study analyzed Korean and English persuasive writings written by 12 Korean ESL learners in terms of organization. The results show that Korean learners of English used different rhetorical styles in their L1 Korean writing and L2 English writing. However, there was a positive relationship between L1 Korean and L2 English organization scores.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.1-6
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• 2018

The current study aimed to investigate the transfer of English word stress rules to the production of Korean trisyllabic words by L1 English learners of Korean. It compared English and Korean speakers' productions of seven Korean words from the corpus L2KSC (Rhee et al., 2005). To this end, it analyzed the syllable duration, intensity, and pitch. The results showed that English and Korean speakers' pronunciations differed markedly in duration and intensity. English learners produced word-initial syllables of greater intensity than Korean speakers, while Korean speakers produced word-final syllables of longer duration than English learners. However, these differences between the two speaker groups were not related to the expected L1 transfer. The tonal patterns produced by English and Korean speakers were similar, reflecting L1 English speakers' learning of the L2 Korean prosodic system.

• 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.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.93-106
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• 2001

The pronunciation of English l and r was a consistent problem in learning English in Korea as well as Japan. This problem occurs from the fact that in Korea and Japan there is only one liquid sound. Substituting the Korean liquid for English l and r was a common error. The pronunciation of the dark l causes a further problem in pronouncing the English l sound. To see the relationship between the English l, r, and the Korean liquid sound, an electropalatographic (EPG) experiment was done. The findings were (1) there were no tongue contacts either on the alveolar ridge or on the palate during the articulation of the dark l. (2) The Korean liquid sound was different in the tongue contact points either from English l or r. The English clear l consistently touched the alveolar ridge in the forty tokens, but the Korean liquid sound in the intervocalic and word-final position touched mainly the alveopalatal area. The English r touched exclusively the velum area. The Korean intervocalic /l/ was similar to English flap in EPG and spectrographic data. There was evidence that the word-final Korean /l/ is a lateral.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.31-41
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• 2012

Recent studies have shown that the stop system of Korean is undergoing a sound change in terms of the two acoustic parameters, voice onset time (VOT) and fundamental frequency (f0). Because of a VOT merger of a consonantal opposition and onset-f0 interaction, the relative importance of the two parameters has been changing in Korean where f0 is a primary cue and VOT is a secondary cue in distinguishing lax from aspirated stops in speech production as well as perception. In English, however, VOT is a primary cue and f0 is a secondary cue in contrasting voiced and voiceless stops. This study examines how Korean English learners use the two acoustic parameters of L1 in producing L2 English stops and whether the sound change of acoustic parameters in L1 affects L2 speech production. The data were collected from six adult Korean English learners. Results show that Korean English learners use not only VOT but also f0 to contrast L2 voiced and voiceless stops. However, unlike VOT variations among speakers, the magnitude effect of onset consonants on f0 in L2 English was steady and robust, indicating that f0 also plays an important role in contrasting the [voice] contrast in L2 English. The results suggest that the important role of f0 in contrasting lax and aspirated stops in L1 Korean is transferred to the contrast of voiced and voiceless stops in L2 English. The results imply that, for Korean English learners, f0 rather than VOT will play an important perceptual cue in contrasting voiced and voiceless stops in L2 English.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.15-22
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• 2016

This study aims to examine whether the fundamental frequency (F0) varies depending on languages or distinguishes between L1 (first language) and L2 (second language) speech and whether the type of materials which vary in control of consonant voicing affects the use of F0-especially, mean F0. For this purpose, we compared productions of two languages produced by Korean L2 learners of English to those of Korean-English bilingual speakers. Twelve Korean L2 speakers of English and twelve Korean-English bilingual speakers participated in this study. The subjects read aloud 22 declarative sentences-balanced and unbalanced-once in English and once in Korean. Mean F0 of Korean was higher than that of English for both speaker groups, and the difference in the value of mean F0 between the Korean and English sentences was different depending on the type of materials that the participants read. With regard to F0 range, the L2 speakers had a larger F0 range in English than in Korean; however, the effect of language on F0 range was not statistically significant for the bilingual speakers. These results indicate that language-specific properties may affect the use of F0, in particular, mean F0.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.99-105
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• 2015

The current study investigates whether Korean-speaking adults show differential sensitivities to the sources of auditory stimuli (L1 Korean and L2 English) in utilizing VOT and f0 in the perceptual mode of L2 stops, and how the L2 proficiency interacts with the learners' low-level phonetic sensitivities in L2 perceptual mode. 48 Korean learners of English participated in the perception experiments where they rated the goodness of English /t/ and /d/ using an analogue scale. Two sets of stimuli (English and Korean sources) were prepared by manipulating VOT (6-steps) and f0 (5-steps) values of productions by an English male (L2 source condition) and a Korean male (L1 source condition). Findings showed that, in judging /t/-likeness, the listeners responded differently to the two auditory stimulus conditions by relying on VOT significantly more in English source condition than in Korean source condition. The listeners' English proficiency did not interact with these differential sensitivities to the auditory stimulus source either along the VOT dimension or the f0 dimension. The results of the current study suggest that low-level contextual information of the auditory source can affect the learners in faithfully being in the L2 perceptual mode.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.3-10
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• 2011

This study examined the production of aspirated stop consonants in Korean and English words to address how the influences differed particularly in terms of proficiency in L2 English. Voice onset times (VOTs) were measured from two American monolinguals and seven Korean speakers. The results showed that VOT patterns for both L1 and L2 stops differed according to their proficiency in L2 English. In L2 English, high proficient speakers produced VOTs that were similar to those of native speakers of English whereas low proficient speakers produced VOTs that were significantly longer than those of proficient speakers. In L1 Korean and L2 English, most of the proficient speakers produced VOTs similarly. Unlike previous findings, Korean VOTs were even shorter than English counterparts. The VOT shortening of aspirated stops in Korean was found for most of the proficient speakers. The findings of the present study suggest that cross language phonetic influences as well as the ongoing VOT shortening in Korean aspirated stops may be correlated with L2 proficiency. Since this is a pilot study with a small number of subjects for each proficiency group, further quantitative study is necessary to generalize.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.11-16
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• 2023

The present study examines how a cognitive attention affects Korean learners of English (L2) in perceiving the English stop voicing distinction (/d/-/t/). This study tested the effect of attentional distractor on primary and non-primary acoustic cues, focusing on the role of Voice Onset Time (VOT) and fundamental frequency (F0). Using the dual-task paradigm, 28 Korean adult learners of English participated in the stop identification task carried with (distractor) and without (no-distractor) arithmetic calculation. Results showed that when distracted, Korean learners' sensitivity to VOT decreased as priorly reported with native English speakers. Furthermore, as F0 is a primary cue for a L1 Korean stop laryngeal contrast, its role in L2 English voicing distinction was also affected by a distractor, without compensating for the reduced VOT sensitivity. These findings suggest that flexible use of multiple cues in L1 is not necessarily beneficial for L2 phonological processing when coping with a adverse listening condition.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.193-206
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• 2011

The purpose of the study is to examine the use of emotion vocabulary by Korean English learners. Three basic emotion fields, pleasure, anger, and fear were selected to elicit the participants' responses. L1 English speakers' data was also collected for comparison. The major results are as follows. First, English learners responded with various inappropriate verb forms like I feel~, I am~ while the majority of English native speaking teachers responded with subjunctive forms like I would feel~. In addition, L2 English learners used mostly simple and coordination sentences. Second, the lexical richness, measured through type/token ratio, was higher in English L1 data than in English L2 data. The proportion of emotion lemmas reflects the lexical richness or the diversity of the emotion words. Lastly, L2 English learners' responses focused on a few typical adjectives like happy, angry and scared. This structural and semantic distinctiveness of Korean English learners' emotion words was discussed from pedagogical perspectives.