earticle

영어

When Koreans learn English sounds that do not correspond to Korean sounds, they typically learn them from an English teacher in an English conversation class. Another way to learn them is to use an audio tape or a CD where a native speaker of English recorded words that contain those sounds. In this study, I investigated these two pronunciation correction methods using the voiced alveopalatal fricative, which is not found in Korean. Two separate groups of Koreans participated in a production experiment. One group was corrected by a native English professor, and the other group repeated the words recorded by the English professor. Acoustic measurements for fricative noise durations were done to check the effects of both methods. The majority of errors found in their pronunciation was the substitution of the voiced alveopalatal affricate for the voiced alveopalatal fricative. The Korean language’s phonological contrast affected their pronunciations. The results show that the correction by the English professor enhances the accuracy of the pronunciation. It is also found that when the voiced alveopalatal fricative is placed between vowels, it is much easier for Koreans to produce, thus it is enough to just repeat those words recorded by an English speaker. However, when it is followed by another English sound that does not correspond to a Korean sound, Koreans had difficulty pronouncing those words. In this case both methods do not work well.