earticle

영어

In the field of bilingualism and second language acquisition (SLA), literature has shown extensive research on how first language (L1) influences on second language (L2). The L1-L2 relationship, however, cannot be unidirectional. The present study investigates the influence of English as a second language (L2) on Korean as a first language (L1) at phonetic level. Methodologically, the present study includes tasks that the effects of English or Korean proficiency matter the least (see Sharwood & van Buren, 1991 for their discussion of methodological implications) such as nonword repetition task. The performance of the speech production task was compared among the three groups: 8 Korean-English bilingual (KEB) children, 8 KEB adults, and 18 Korean monolingual (KM) children. The results of the present study showed statistically significant differences on the performance of Korean nonword repetition task among the three groups for the percentage of phonemes correct (PPC), the percentage of consonant correct (PCC), and PPC for 4-syllabic-length nonwords (or 4 PPC). According to the followed post-hoc test, PPC, PCC, and 4 PPC of KEB children were significantly lower than those of KM children. Nonetheless, the performance of KEB adults was not significantly different either from KEB children nor from KM children. These results indicate the acquisition of English as a second language during the childhood may have a significant effect on speech production of Korean speech sounds