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1 df 한국교육문제연구제 25 호 pp An Analysis of English Sound Recognition in Secondary Schools based on Korean High School Students' Vowel Pronunciation Kim, Soo-Jung * Koo, Hee-San ** ABSTRACT The purpose of this analysis is to identify the problems of discriminating and writing down English vowels in a secondary English education. The first-year high school students were selected at random and tested on their listening, discriminating pronunciation and writing down the phonetic transcriptions. The results showed that more than half the students have good listening abilities. I n the discriminating pronunciation test, most students correctly discriminated the following vowels:/ɑ, ʌ, e, æ, ɔ, ou/. However, they incorrectly discriminated the following vowels:/u, ʋ, i, ɪ/. In writing down the pronunciation test, most of them were good at writing down the vowels of /ʋ/ and /ɪ/, but they were not good at writing down the vowels of /ʌ, ɔ, ou/. The thesis makes three proposals for more efficient teaching of English pronunciations. First, teachers need to teach students more of the lax vowels than the tense vowels. Second, the education of phonetic transcription is needed. Third, students need to practice on the dictation. Key words: listening, discriminating pronunciation, phonetic transcriptions, lax vowels, dictation * 중앙대학교교육대학원영어교육과전공 ** 중앙대학교사범대학영어교육과교수

2 한국교육문제연구제 25 호 Ⅰ. I ntroduction Learning a foreign language means to study its phonemic system. A learner of a language cannot understand what a native speaker is saying unless he or she can discriminate its sound. By the same token, when a Korean is speaking English and the native speaker cannot understand it, no communication is taking place. As a result, in learning a foreign language, speaking and listening education should come first followed by the phonemic system based on that. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to observe and analyze errors which Korean students make when pronouncing or discriminating English segments, through listening test and pronunciation test. This study is especially focused in the ability of discriminating English vowel pronunciation, and to find out the discrimination ability through dictation. Ⅱ. A comparison between Korean and English v owels The marking of English vowel differs from a scholar to scholar. According to D. Jones (1960), it's possible to suggest the basic vowel system and to indicate English vowel marking which is related to this. By doing this, one can compare it with the vowel of another language, and thus solve the various pronunciation problems on English vowel. A. C. Gimson (1980), however, places the purpose of the phoneme mark on orthography, language education and many kinds of English pronunciation remarks; emphasizing phonetics more than Jones. Since this study focuses on American English, the phonemic system is based on Kenyon & Knott. The following shows the comparison between Korean and English vowels

3 An Analysis of English Sound Recognition in Secondary Schools based on Korean High School Students' Vowel Pronunciation <Graph 1> A comparison between Korean and English Vowels Front vowel Central vowel Back vowel i 으 u High 우이 U I e o Mid 에어 ə 오 ɛ ɔ 애 ʌ Low 아 (ʋ) æ a ɑ As shown above, when comparing Korean and English vowels elaborately, there is almost no resemblance between the two. First of all, the biggest difference is that there is no corresponding English sound for / 으 /. Another difference is that Korean / 이 /, is lower than English /i/, and pronounced little above /ɪ /. I n addition, / 우 / is pronounced between /u/ and /ʋ/. outh more for pronouncing /a/ and the sound is coming from the back. /ʌ/ English /a/ is different with Korean / 아 /, because one needs to open the mis pronounced between / 아 / and / 어 /. Lastly, when pronouncing /ɔ/, the tongue is further back than pronouncing / 오 /. One can find many differences in the phonemic system of two languages. These differences cause language transition problems, when studying both languages

4 한국교육문제연구제 25 호 Ⅲ. D ictation In general, dictation is used in language education, to check out the pronunciation and spelling rules. The following is to find out the role of dictation in learning English. 1. T he definition of dictation In general, dictation means: students constructing an idea through auditory image and draw mental image in the head and then write, by listening to the recorded materials or utterances which teachers provide. Riley (1975) asserted that dictation is one closely controlled use of language... one that aims at improving aural comprehension and achieving accurate written representation of the words and phrases used. 2. T he usefulness of dictation According to Valette (1977), beginner level dictation provides opportunities to students to practice relating the sounds of a new language with its letters. Moreover, it plays the role of connecting the four language skills which are listening, speaking, reading and writing. Also, dictation can be an evaluation tool in measuring intermediate and post-intermediate students' overall language abilities. Dictation activities help students understand the structure of a language. For teachers, they help them to teach students clearly of the difficult vocabularies, so that they can get a good grasp of details on those. 3. T he adv antages and disadv antages of dictation Dictation has following advantages. First, dictation can be done anytime and anywhere, without reference to the learning abilities and grades of the students. Also, it

5 An Analysis of English Sound Recognition in Secondary Schools based on Korean High School Students' Vowel Pronunciation is easy to grade and make corrections. In addition, it helps in writing training which students can know immediately what they have written wrong or confused. However, dictation has disadvantages as well. First, it's easy to make test questions, but it's hard to grade them. Moreover, it requires teachers' enough preparations and interests, to test the specific parts which they want to know, such as easily misunderstood or confused parts. Furthermore, it can only be simple and meaningless spelling test, if the procedures are not taken care of. 4. T he typ es of dictation There are many types of dictation. Phoneme dictation, spelling dictation, word dictation, phrase dictation, sentence dictation and etc. Among these, two different dictations were used which are word and sentence dictations. For former, students are to write two words with different vowels by listening to each sentence, and for latter, they were to listen to words which native speakers spoke and write them down. Ⅳ. A study of M ethods The purpose of this study is to find out how secondary school students' abilities of discriminating vowels affect on dictation abilities. 1. Study m aterials The questions that were used in this study are made based on 10 different vowels as follows. /i/-/ɪ/, /u/-/ʋ/, /e/-/æ/, /ɑ/-/ʌ/ /ɔ/-/ou/

6 한국교육문제연구제 25 호 2. Study p rocedures The students were to choose right answers after listening to a male and a female Americans reading the chosen words as study materials. First, I read the questions in Korean, and then those two Americans read the same words and sentences one time respectively and twice for the dictation questions. For example, when the words least and list were provided in item Ⅰ, the students were to choose one of the words which they think is right, after the native speaker reads the word. There were 3 seconds intervals between a word and a word and 5 seconds intervals between a question and a question, to give students time to think. For the dictation questions 10 seconds of intervals were given to give them time to write. 3. Study objects The study objects were 34 male and female 10th grade Korean students living in Gyeonggi province. These students were all in the same class and the study was to find out their abilities of discriminating vowels through three different types of questions which are listening, discriminating phonetic symbols by reading spellings, and writing down phonetic symbols

7 An Analysis of English Sound Recognition in Secondary Schools based on Korean High School Students' Vowel Pronunciation Ⅴ. An analysis of the test results The following is the result of the analysis on 10 vowels. <Graph 2> The Comparisons of Vowel Discriminations tense vowel /i/ lax vowel /I/ tense vowel /u/ lax vowel /ʋ/ mid vowel /e/ low vowel /æ/ central vowel /æ/ /ʌ/ back vowel /ɑ/ monophthong /ɔ/ diphthong /ou / 1) /i/ - /ɪ/ :It can be said that students are better at discriminating tense vowel /i/, than lax vowel /ɪ/. Most of the discriminations were from dictation questions. 2) /u/ - /ʋ/ :These two pronunciations showed similar rate differences with the previous one. However, this happened not only in dictation questions, but also in listening questions as well. 3) /e/ - /æ/ :The students made low discriminations on both of these pronunciations. It turned out that they are a little more good at discriminating low vowel /æ/, than mid vowel /e/. 4) /ʌ/ - /ɑ/ :It can be said that students are a little more good at discriminating back vowel /ɑ/, than central vowel /ʌ/. Here, they were confused /ɑ/ with /ou/. 5) /ɔ/ - /ou/ :The percentage of discriminating diphthong was higher than monophthong. This was highest in dictation questions

8 한국교육문제연구제 25 호 In general, it may be easily inferred that students need more practice on lax vowels than tense vowels. Also, they need practice on monophthong than diphthong. Moreover, they need teachers' guidance on phonetic symbols as well as dictation. In phonetic symbols, they need guidance on /ʌ/ and /ɔ/ pronunciations. In dictation, they need discriminating guidance on /ʌ/ and /ɑ/ pronunciations. Ⅵ. C onclusion The purpose of this analysis is to identify the problems of discriminating and writing down English vowels in a secondary English education. The most difficult thing of recognition in the process of learning English is the pronunciation. So, in order for the students to acquire English pronunciation more easily, English teachers should first have a knowledge of a correct phonetic system. The results showed that more than half the students have good listening abilities. Fifty three percent of them circled the correct response on the listening test. In the discriminating pronunciation test, most students correctly discriminated the following vowels:/ɑ, ʌ, e, æ, ɔ, ou/. However, they incorrectly discriminated the following vowels:/u, ɒ, i, ɪ/. In writing down the pronunciation test, while most of them were good at writing down the vowels of /ɒ/ and /ɪ/, they were not good at writing down the vowels of /ʌ, ɔ, ou/. In conclusion, teachers need to teach students more of the lax vowels than the tense vowels. Second, the education of phonetic transcription is needed in order to practice, correct and improve their pronunciation on their own. Third, students need to practice on the dictation, so that they could learn phonological rules, the ability of discriminating continuing sounds, and spelling correctly by dividing the sound and the spelling which will be very effective in enhancing their listening abilities

9 An Analysis of English Sound Recognition in Secondary Schools based on Korean High School Students' Vowel Pronunciation 참고문헌 구희산. (2000). 영어음성학. 한국문화사. 이진숙. (1995). 받아쓰기의듣기학습효과연구. 미출간석사학위논문. 연세대학교. 이충원. (2001). 음성알파벳을이용한발음지도방안. 미출간석사학위논문. 중앙대학교. 장미자. (2004) 고등학생의영어모음삼입에관한연구. 미출간석사학위논문. 인하대학교. 황석봉. (1998). 한국고등학생의발음지도에관한연구. 석사학위논문. 중앙대학교. 황혜정. (2005). 영어 /ɛ, æ/ 모음과우리말 / 에, 애 / 모음에대한음성학적연구. 미출간석사학위논문. 아주대학교. Gimson, A. C. (1980). An introduction to the pronunciation of English. London: Edward Arnold. Jones, D. ( 196 0). An outline of English phonetics. Cambridge: Heffer & Sons. Keynon, J. S., & Knott, T. A. ( 19 53). A pronouncing dictionary of American English. Springfield, M.A.: G & C Merriam Co. Riley, P. M. (1975). The art of TESOL. N ew York : T ower Press. T ench, P. ( 200 3). N on-nativ e sp eakers' m isp ercep tions of English v owels and consonants: Evidence from Korean adults in U.K. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching. Valette, R. M. (1977). Modern Language Testing. New York: Harcourt Brace J ov anovich

10 한국교육문제연구제 25 호 요약 고등학교영어학습자의영어발음문제분석 : 모음발음을중심으로 김수정구희산 본논문은영어발음중에서도모음발음을중심으로하여한국고등학교학생들의청취능력과발음능력을알아보고문제점을발견하는데그목적이있다. 본논문에서실시한실험은듣기문항, 철자보고발음기호구별, 그리고발음기호쓰기로나눌수있다. 듣기문항실험결과는반이조금넘는학생들 (53%) 이모음을올바르게식별해내는것으로나타났다. 철자보고발음기호구별실험에서는학생들이잘식별하는모음이 /a, ʌ, e, æ, ɔ, ou/ 이고, 발음을잘식별하지못하는모음이 /u, ʋ, i, ɪ/ 라는것을알수있었다. 발음기호쓰기실험에서는학생들이잘쓰는모음이 /ʋ/ 와 /ɪ/ 였고잘쓰지못하는모음이 /ʌ, ɔ, ou/ 였다. 따라서교사는이완모음을더지도할필요가있고학습자들은발음기호교육과받아쓰기연습이필요하다. 그리하여교사는영어발음교육에대한지속적인탐구및충분한지식을가지고학생들을지도해야만한다. 또한수업시간에간단히받아쓰기를실시하는등의학습을통하여듣기의이해능력향상을도모해야할것이다. 주제어 : 모음발음, 청취능력, 발음기호, 식별, 받아쓰기

영어교육연구제 22 권 4 호 2010 년겨울 대학생들의영어모음발음과지각 ( ) Yang, Byunggon. (2010). College students production and perception of English vowels. English Language Te

영어교육연구제 22 권 4 호 2010 년겨울 대학생들의영어모음발음과지각 ( ) Yang, Byunggon. (2010). College students production and perception of English vowels. English Language Teaching, 22(4), 165-184. Correct production and perception