초록 열기/닫기 버튼
A learner’s first language background surely dictates the second language acquisition process. The extent of influence that negative transfer exerts may differ from students to students and variations in performance accuracy among learners. The purpose of this study was to investigate the perception of English vowel epenthesis and consonant clusters by Korean students of English. The instrument consisted of 24 relatively well-known words, involving 12 word-initial consonant clusters and 12 word-final consonant clusters. The participants (25 low-, 25 intermediate-, and 25 advanced-level ESL students from Korea and 9 natives) were asked to fill out a background questionnaire, which was composed of questions regarding personal information. This study has yielded three key findings as follows: First, the Korean speakers of English perceived English vowel epenthesis significantly worse than Native speakers, which suggests that Korean speakers of English have perception problems in English vowel epenthesis, that is native language transfer plays a role in a learner's acquisition of the sounds of the second language.; Second, the vowel insertion error is more frequent in word-initial consonant clusters than in word-intial ones, which suggests that Korean students tend to transfer Korean phonology to their English more strongly in word-final clusters. Third, the vowel insertion error of word-initial consonant clusters and word-final ones decreases as the ESL students’ English proficiency increases from low level to intermediate level, which seems to suggest that vowel epenthesis error still remains a problem for the two levels. Pedagogical implications and suggestions for further study are also discussed to teach English more effectively.
