Learning a foreign language differs from one person to another depending on a variety of criteria and elements that facilitate or inhibit its efficiency and successfulness(e.g. age, disparity in linguistic features between the mother language and the ...
Learning a foreign language differs from one person to another depending on a variety of criteria and elements that facilitate or inhibit its efficiency and successfulness(e.g. age, disparity in linguistic features between the mother language and the foreign language, the way as well as the amount of exposure to a foreign language, etc). These differences could reflect positively or negatively in the learning process. However, learning a new language for adults usually accompanies negative transfer from their mother language deliberately, through misconception, or unconsciously due to their acquired system since childhood. For this concern, we built our study made about Arab learners of Korean language, specifically the pronunciation of Korean stops. Indeed, This study examines the Arab speakers’ perception and production of Korean stops acoustically and phonetically, compared with Korean native speakers.
The objective of the current study is to find out the problems that Arab speakers face when learning Korean stops, as well as the difficulty to distinguish between them in various cases which will be discussed for this purpose.
Based on the contrastive analysis theory, this study predicted that Arabs would face difficulties in mastery of stops pronunciation as well as probable interference of their mother language’ s phonetic features in the learning process of Korean stops, due to the big disparities between the two languages phonetic characteristics of stops, as well as the absence of some stops that do not have any equivalents in the Arabic phonetic system (IPA) such as (/ㅃ, ㅍ/ ; /ㄲ, ㅋ/, and /ㄸ, ㅌ/). For this concern, we built our study on two experiments that involved 30 Arab learners who were in the intermediate level of Korean language proficiency:
the first one was the Listening Test. It was managed by 3 Korean native teachers who were supposed to listen to the recorded pronunciation of Korean stops / p, p ͪ, p', k ͪ, k', t ͪ, t'/ made by Arabic speakers independently and evaluate them through giving marks (0~5) according to their performance.
The second experiment was an acoustic comparison of the Korean stops produced by both Korean native speakers (15 participants) and Arab speakers (30 participants) of Korean language. The experiment was managed through the measuring of the Voice Onset Time (VOT) of closure and frication and Pitch Value of the following vowels separately(바, 파, 빠, 다, 타, 따, 가, 카, 까) and Closure Duration Time of the produced stops (아바, 아파, 아빠, 아다, 아타, 아따, 아가, 아카, 아까). the pronounced stops by both participants have been recorded and analyzed with (Praat), and then, we examined the results’ significance through T-test. The three most reliable speech perception models (Native Language Magnet Mode, Perceptual Assimilation Model, and Speech Learning Model) were also implied as bases for the analysis of the experiments’ obtained results.
The listening test results showed that Arabs pronunciation of all aspirated stops whether bilabial /p ͪ / alveolar /t ͪ / or velar /k ͪ / got the highest average marks compared to the rest of stops whose marks were lower and close to each other conforming with Flege’ s Speech Learning Model theory applied in the study. However, according to the obtained average marks in the study we could assume that Arabs are facing difficulties in mastering these stops. Complying, thus, with the hypothesis proposed for the study.
The acoustic experiment came out with various results from one stop to another according to the Voice Onset Time, Pitch Value, and the Closure Duration Time measurements. As for the VOT of stops, most of the results showed significant differences between Arabs and Korean in the three stops. In contrast, the Pitch Value contrasting showed insignificant t value scores. The Closure Duration Time results various results, in fact, the bilabial stops showed no significant difference in the t value scores. The Alveolar stops, except the tense stop /k’/’s Closure Duration, showed considerable difference in the t value scores. Finally, the velar stops results, also, showed significant scores excepting the aspirated stop /k ͪ/ ’s which was insignificant.
According to the results obtained in the two experiments, we can conclude that Arabic speakers face some difficulties in learning Korean stops, which could mainly be understood as a due to the native language(Arabic) interference in the course of learning.
This is important in that it is based on an objective analysis data through experimental phonetics. it provides evidence about the way Arabs produce and recognize korean stops according to a scientific measurement that maybe unprecedentedly undertaken, which could be useful for korean phonetics teaching and learning alike.
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