초록 열기/닫기 버튼

The writer conducted an experiment to see what cause Korean students of English to experience difficulty in understanding spoken English. The experiment centers on some phonological phenomena such as assimilation, dissimilation, elision, contraction, and blending, etc.. For the experiment 20 English college students were given two kinds of listening tests−Test A and Test B−each of which consists of the two tests that were the same, but they were pronounced and recorded in different ways by a native speaker of English. That is, the 20 English sentences of Test A were pronounced excluding the phonological phenomena of sound changes, while Test B included them. The result of the experiment is that the 20 students understood only 9.25 percent average of the 20 English sentences of test A, while they understood 37.5 percent average of Test B. It was brought out that Korean students experiences much more trouble in listening to natural English with the phonological phenomena of sound changes than in listening to unnatural English without them. This research implies that Korean interpreting schools need to offer prospective interpreters English phonetics courses.