Lately, English Education in Korea has started to put greater emphasis on communication skills and pronunciation has become an important topic as facilitator of conversation in the English language. Therefore, if the pronunciation is inadequate, communication can not take place in an effective manner. As the pronunciation has become important, the pronunciation of English teachers’ is one of the important factors which influence students’ pronunciation.
This study is designed to observe the spontaneous speech in the discourse of two speakers of English teachers and teachers in-training whether there is a breakdown during conversations in English. Then this study moves on to analyze the correlations between segmentals and suprasegmentals by rating the segmental features- consonants and vowels-, and suprasegmental features- stress, rhythm, and intonation-, respectively. The correlations between speech rate and suprasegmentals such as stress, rhythm, and intonation on each utterance are examined in this research.
To achieve these goals, speech samples were recorded in spontaneous conversation in pairs: ten subjects were divided into five groups, twelve utterances (total of sixty utterances) were chosen from each conversation to be evaluated. The segmental features are rated by a researcher and the suprasegmental features are conducted by one native speaker on a 5-point scale. The findings are as follows:
First, with regards to the communication, it appears that there are relatively few communication breakdowns arising from mispronunciation between Korean speakers. It supports Jenkins'(2002) concept of 'convergence' in same L1 background which reinforces the fossilization of pronunciation.
Second, in the case of segmental features, Korean speakers get better scores on the consonant than on the vowels. This results display that vowels are much more difficult to distinguish the articulatory position than consonants, especially in the context of the vowel system in Korean phonology. In addition, it is even harder to distinguish /e/ and /æ/ since for many Koreans, it is difficult to distinguish /ㅔ/ and /ㅐ/, the vowels in Korean language.
Third, the scores are higher in the suprasegmental features than in the segmental features. Due to the fact that lower is better, it means segmental features are pronounced better than suprasegmental features. The scores of suprasegmentals range from lowest to highest in the following order: stress, intonation, and rhythm. Therefore, the appropriateness of stress is higher than that of rhythm.
Fourth, there seems to be a strong correlation between vowels and suprasegmental features. Consequently, in the two-way ANOVA, it is possible to assume that the vowels have a main effect on the suprasegmental features such as stress, rhythm, and intonation respectively. Accordingly, these results reflect that accurate aquisition of vowels make it easier to achieve suprasegmental features.
Last, in the course of measuring speech rate, which is an important element that influences pronunciations and listening skills, the mean value is 2.47 wps(words per second). This value means that correlation with suprasegmentals(stress, rhythm, intonation) is statistically significant. It proves that speech rate can affect the suprasegmentals of pronunciation, thus contributing fluency.
The results of this study suggest that, even though recent trend in English education in Korea is much more focused on teaching the ‘communicative language skills’ and is very much fluency-oriented rather than accuracy-oriented, inaccurate pronunciation does affect suprasegmental features and decrease fluency. For this reason, Korean teachers of English should pay more attention to improve their own pronunciation competence in order to become a better model for students. Once acquired, by nature, it is hard to modulate and adjust pronunciation in Languages. Hence, it must be emphasized that English teachers in Korea have a considerable influence on the first experiences of students and could set the course for students' pronunciation for the rest of their learning process of the English Language. This research has significance in studying about the pronunciation of Korean teachers of English in the context of spontaneous conversation.
，韩语毕业论文，韩语论文 |
