earticle

영어

The current study is about the English vowel(diphthongs) perception of South Kyungsang Korean English learners. These Korean English learners are tested by writing the English words using the Korean alphabet, which they heard from a recording of a native English speaker. The results were expected that the Korean English learners may not have perception problems when they listen to the English dipthong vowels. However, the result seems quite interesting that these Korean English learners are not good at listening to an English diphthong, /oʊ/ especially, among five English dipthongs(/aɪ/, /eɪ/, /oʊ/, /aʊ/, /ɔɪ/). Actually, many Korean English learners pronounce this specific English dipthong as a monopthong, 오 [o], in the English words like go, so, no, ... etc in Korean. We assumed that this may be caused by problems of English (vowel) education in Korea. However, the results of the current study may argue that this monopthongization phenomenon of an English dipthong among Koreans may be caused from perception problems.