The purpose of this dissertation is to develop a model by which Korean learners can more effectively understand the mechanisms involved in the acquisition and production of English vowels. It is this author's contention that the ability to acquire, pr...
The purpose of this dissertation is to develop a model by which Korean learners can more effectively understand the mechanisms involved in the acquisition and production of English vowels. It is this author's contention that the ability to acquire, produce and differentiate various vowel sounds is a crucial factor in learning English and, thus, improving one's communication and conversation skills.
For these reasons, it was hypothesized that it would be a valuable experience for Korean students to be provided with the opportunity to engage in a program of the learning English vowels. Thus, we developed such a program that involved training in listening to, differentiating among and the vocal production of vowels.
The experimental methodology first involved the selection of 45 subjects who had had no residency in an English speaking country. They were subsequently divided into 3 groups of 15 students each. The first group was composed of elementary level students and the second and third groups consisted of first and second year junior high school students.
The experimental condition consisted of a training program in the recognition, differentiation and production of various vowel sounds. The training program spanned an eight-week period with 50 minute sessions per week. The material for the protocol was composed of audio recordings professionally designed at a recording studio by acoustic engineers. The audio material consisted of 12 English vowels produced in isolation, in words and in sentences. Each vowel, within a word or a sentence was read once by an English native speaker. The vowels were then manipulated by transposing them higher and lower in intervals of one, two and three octaves. Such a manipulation enabled Korean students of English to be exposed to a variety of different acoustic environments of a particular vowel sound. It was hypothesized that such an exposure to a variety of environments would enable the subjects to recognize, differentiate and produce the vowel sounds more efficiently.
The data produced in this experiment consisted of pre and post experimental data generated by means of a real time vowel chart. Using this method, subjects were evaluated on their ability to recognize, differentiate and produce vowels. The pre and post protocol data were then analyzed by comparing them and determining any differences between pre protocol baseline data and post protocol data.
The results of this study may be divided into two basic segments: those results related to subjects' recognition and differentiation abilities and those results related to the ability to more or less reproduce the precise sound of the vowel. First, the results, related to the recognition and differentiation of vowels, indicate there was an enormous improvement in students' abilities. In a comparison of the pre and post protocol data, the first group, in particular, demonstrated a higher level of recognition and differentiation related to the vowels / ? / and / ? /. However, there seemed to be little change in their skills related to the vowel / ? /. The second group, consisting or junior high students, demonstrated a high degree of progress in their recognition and differentiation skills in relation to the vowels / æ /, / o / and / ? / and somewhat less improvement in the / e /, / i / and / u /. As in the first group, there were no changes in their ability level with the vowel / ? /. The third group, composed of junior high students, showed a considerable improvement in the vowels / ? /, / e /, and / ? / and a moderate improvement in the vowels / i /, / ? /, / æ / and / u /.
In contrast to the results related to recognition and differentiation, the results related to vowel production seem to be somewhat more mixed in their nature. Overall, the results indicated that few or moderate changes occurred between pre and post protocol testing. The first group of students, however, did show a moderate change in their ability to produce the vowels / e / and / ? / as compared to those of the native speaker. The second group demonstrated a significant improvement in their ability to produce the vowels / æ / and / u /, The third group mainly demonstrated an improvement in the production of the vowels / ? / and / e /. This seems to indicate that their was a moderate level of improvement in their pronunciation skills.
This study has indicated that there is some merit in a program of phonetic training based on an audio protocol, such as was developed in this research. However, some interesting questions have been left unanswered such as: Why did some of the subjects improve somewhat more dramatically than others?; Why did subjects exhibit a reduced rate of improvement in some of the sounds?
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