As English pronunciation is more emphasized in the society as well as school in Korea, teaching English pronunciation can not be ignored any more . Under this circumstance, English pronunciation of elementary school , middle school , and undergradua... As English pronunciation is more emphasized in the society as well as school in Korea, teaching English pronunciation can not be ignored any more . Under this circumstance, English pronunciation of elementary school , middle school , and undergraduate students' was studied a lot by many researchers. but there were relatively not that many studies about 'high school students' pronunciation. The purpose of the thesis investigates the high schoolers' pronunciation, focusing on high vowels. To do this, ten-first year high school students were chosen as the subjects of the experiment. The school they attend is located in Sung Nam district, one of metropolitan areas in Korea. Their English proficiency score is in the top 20 percent but they have no experience of living abroad or studying English in the English speaking countries. They have never had a private tutoring by an English native speaker. The school was the only place they could learn English. The subjects are chosen because they are expected to have native like pronunciation. They started learning English since they had been in the third grade in elementary school, age of ten. It means that they have started learning English before the critical period of the second language learning. And students succeed in finishing English curriculums of their middle school, in addition students have strong desire and motivation learning English. But based on Contrastive analysis hypothesis, it is considered the concept that learning English as a second language could strongly be influenced by their mother tongue. Therefore the aim of this thesis is to find out how English high vowels /i, ɪ, u, ʋ/ would be affected by Korean high vowels /이, 우/, which don't have the same quality of tenseness and laxness as English does, through the experiment of acoustic analysis. In chapter 2, spectrum and spectrogram, and formant is explained in order to employ the use of the acoustic phonetics analysis for the phenomenon transferring the quality of mother tongue to that of target language, acoustic relative information such as pure sound and compound sound. Moreover Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis, The Critical Period Hypothesis, and Neurological Considerations are added in order to help understand the knowledge of the learning of the second language. Furthermore, it is explained that the subjects' perception and their articulation of English high vowels as well as the English native speaker's perception about the subjects' pronunciation of English high vowels. In chapter 3, this thesis explained the subjects, experiment sources, and the experiment hypotheses. Hypothesis one is that Korean English learners will have difficulty in perceiving and pronouncing English lax high vowel words, because Korean language doesn't have laxness. Hypothesis two is that English native speakers will have difficulty in perceiving English lax high vowel words pronounced by Korean English learners. In chapter 4, After making the subjects pronounce the five groups of English high vowels(every group has two minimal pairs, one of which consists of front tense and lax high vowels, and the other of which consists of back tense and lax high vowels), their utterances were recorded, and then analyzed in the spectrogram, and F1 and F2 of English vowel words were extracted and then the five charts of English four high vowels for each of them were drawn. Each of four vowel charts was compared with that of Ladefoged's. and each of their uttering English high vowels was compared with F1, F2 of Korean /이, 우/ represented by Kim Peong Won as well. In chapter 5, The result of the experiment's analysis was described. These subjects perceived English front high vowel words better than English back high vowel words in the experiment of perceiving English high vowels pronounced by an American native speaker. The American native speaker perceived tense high vowel words much better than lax high vowel words in the experiment of perceiving English high vowels pronounced by these subjects. This shows that they have much more trouble when they pronounced lax high vowel words than tense high vowel words. In the four high vowel chart, compared with Ladefoged's, their charts display that very strange shapes with tense and lax vowel position changed from high to low vs from low to high and from front to back vs from back to front. And also these subjects pronounce English front high vowels much lower and frontier than Korean front high vowel /이/ and pronounce English back high vowels almost as high as Korean back high vowel /우/ but pronounced frontier than Korean back high vowel /우/. This show that they pronounced English high vowels as in almost same range of articulation as Korean high vowels. These facts prove that the fifth stage split of Contrastive analysis hypothesis can arise in the articulation of English high vowels pronounced by Korean learners of English language, and it also confirm the quality of the high vowels of their mother tongue, /ㅣ/, /ㅜ/ transferred to English high vowels and it could be the major cause to interfere their pronunciation of English high vowels. In order to improve the pronunciation of English high vowels, one effective way is that teachers can get students to practice the minimal pairs contained English high vowels in the sentences repeatedly and consciously until students are used to pronouncing the minimal pairs of English high vowels. Another effective way is that students are educated how to use the acoustic analysis program called Praat so that they get trained to compare their pronunciation with Ladefged's the four high vowel chart and correct errors by using spectrogram by themselves. ，韩语论文题目，韩语毕业论文 |
