Earticle

The study investigated language anxiety of Korean college students when they spoke with NSs and FSs in an English clinic center. The research questions were constructed as follows; 1) How much were those students anxious when they spoke with NSs and FSs in the center? 2) In terms of students’ English proficiency, were there any differences? 3) What were the characteristics of those students’ language anxiety in the center? Seventy-eight college students participated in the survey, and six of them volunteered for the in-depth interview. Independent sample t-tests and ANOVA were used to analyze data, and McCracken’s (1988) analytic process was used for analysis of qualitative data. Results of data analysis showed that Korean college students in the center did not show differences in language anxiety when they communicated with NSs and FSs and no difference either towards both groups by the participants’ English proficiency levels. The participants’ language anxiety and their English proficiency and self-perceived English proficiency showed negative relation. Participants’ language anxiety was due to the individual differences not because of the differences toward native speakers or foreign students. Suggestions for further study and implications are presented as well.

The previous studies explain that revision should be performed bilingually by a person who has the same qualifications with the translator: revisers should be bilingual and have translation experience. However, it is hard to find a reviser who satisfies the requirements for translations from Korean into foreign languages. Therefore, monolingual revision by a native speaker, who cannot read the Korean source text, has become an established process in translation production in Korea. Therefore, this study analyzed how revisers’ profile influenced revision quality. It found native speakers who have both Korean reading capability and translation experience generally recorded high quality scores for their revisions. However, quality scores varied among native speakers without translation experience, regardless of their SL capability. Given the difficulty in finding qualified bilingual revisers for translations from Korean into foreign languages, LSPs need to implement measures designed to improve the quality of monolingual revision, such as regular verification of revision quality, and training and instructions for revisers on effective strategies.

The present study attempts to reveal how computerized corpus-based contrastive analysis using learner corpora may shed light on a better understanding of the nature and scope of the Korean EFL learners’ use of so in English spoken monologue. So in the study is multifunctional not only in the spoken monologue of the NS but also in the Korean EFL learners’ monologue. There are four functions of so that have all three groups, NS, intermediate learners, and beginner learners, have in common. First they all use so as a resultative marker indicating a cause-result relationship. Second, so as an elaboration marker marks an utterance that says more about the prior utterance. The third function of so found in all three groups is serving as a boundary marker. It marks the opening and the end of the monologue. An additional function of so as a boundary marker in the study is to signpost the main idea of the speech. Another function of so found in all three groups is marking continuation of speech. This kind of so does not signal any particular relations between the utterances but just add one idea to another to continue the speech. Indicating hesitation is the last function of so found in the study. This function is found only in the Korean EFL learners’ spoken monologue. According to the result of the comparison between the English connective so and the Korean connective kulenikka, there is reasonable possibility that the hesitation function of kulenikka might have transferred while the learners are producing the speech.

This study investigates Taiwanese university student attitudes toward native English speaking teachers (NESTs) and non-native English speaking teachers (NNESTs) and examines the fallacy of native speaking from a student perspective. In total, 206 university students from Northern Taiwan responded to the questionnaire. The results suggest that (a) language skills, (b) purposes, and (c) levels of learning affect student selection of language teachers. More important, NNESTs were believed to be better at various aspects of learning, especially test preparation. This study examines NESTs and NNESTs from a student perspective and reminds English educators and parents that they should re-examine the role and influence of NESTs, especially in English as a foreign language contexts.

In many Asian contexts, issues of who teaches and educates teachers in English Language Teaching remain challenging with status accorded to socalled ‘native speakers’. Issues still remain after two decades of research calling for deconstruction of the native speaker fallacy. Drawing on critiques of the concept, as well as teacher education research, this paper suggests ways to deconstruct the maze of native speakerism. Recent Malaysian inservice training research shows that positioning and modeling can override the origin of the teacher educator, namely a so-called native speaker background. Descriptions of techniques to help deconstruct native speakerism at the interactional level are derived from teacher educator reflection on data. Possibilities for countering native speakerism are suggested through descriptions of how teacher educators may model and use humour to address perceptions of hierarchy. With the growing use of English as an additional language, research into who teaches or educates teachers could also address the challenges of hidden professional racism sustained by factors such as so-called Standard English. Practical approaches from teacher educator reflections on their interaction with Malaysian teachers suggest ways to reconstruct aspects of native speakerism.

As English has been rapidly spreading to non-Western communities, we have had numerous varieties of English. In the Outer Circle, English gained an official status, which resulted in nonnative varieties of English. In the Expanding Circle, English achieved the status of the first foreign language. With a range of English varieties, educators and administrators have been faced with controversial questions such as: (1) how to define native speakers of English? and (2) which varieties to teach? This qualitative study investigates four Korean EFL teachers’ perception of speakers of English and the issue of target varieties. Using data from semi-structured interviews and personal conversations collected for one academic semester, the researcher found that the participants considered various features when identifying an individual as a native or nonnative speaker of English. They used to consider ethnicity and nationality important in the past, which have been replaced by language precedence, cultural attachment, native speaker’s intuition, and mutual intelligibility. The findings of this study also demonstrate that American English is regarded as the most preferred variety as an educational target in Korean ELT because of the power that its speakers have.

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Contradictory findings of SLA researchers have motivated a variety of opposite viewpoints concerning the availability of UG in L2 acquisition. Moreover, there is a recent, renewed interest in the claims made by the proponents of the Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) according to which UG’s active role in L2 acquisition is likely to decline after puberty. The present study sought to scrutinize the role of UG and age of onset in L2 acquisition. In fact, the study was specifically aimed at determining whether there was any significant difference between native speakers of English and Iranian near-native speakers of the language in terms of their access to Binding Conditions A and B. It was also an attempt to probe into the pervasive ‘the younger, the better’ myth concerning the relevance of UG to L2 acquisition. The participants in the study were mainly 30 male and female native speakers of English and 60 male and female Iranian near-native speakers of the language among whom 30 had first been exposed to English before puberty and 30 after puberty. The required data were basically obtained through the administration of two tests, one on general English syntax and the other on Binding Principles A and B. The data were analysed through analyses of covariance (ANCOVA) and two-way analyses of variance (Two-Way ANOVA). In short, the findings of the study provided empirical evidence in favor of UG’s mediation in L2 acquisition and against the position held by the proponents of the CPH according to which UG is likely to lose its active role in L2 acquisition after puberty. Moreover, the flexibilities inherent in the Persian language concerning the Binding Conditions as proposed in the GB framework tend to minimize, if not totally rule out, the possibility that the subjects’ access to Binding Theory as a subsystem of UG might have been affected by their underlying knowledge of Persian.

Metadiscourse refers to “aspects of a text which explicitly organize a discourse or the writer’s stance towards either its content or the reader” (Hyland, 2005, p. 14). It is an indication of whether the writer has had a particular reader in mind while developing the text. This study aimed to metadiscoursally analyze the articles in two Iranian EFL journals, i.e., Roshd and TELL which are apparently addressed to different audiences and see how the authors in these journals pay attention to the expected readers. Moreover, to have a clearer picture of the metadiscourse use in academic texts, some articles written by English language native speakers were analyzed both in terms of the metadiscourse use per Tunit and per 100 words. The results indicate that the articles written by native speakers which are mainly addressed to TESOL professionals and researchers include more metadiscourse signals than the articles in the two Iranian journals. Comparing Roshd and TELL, it appears that Roshd authors use more metadicourse in the abstract sections of their articles, but in the introduction and results and discussion sections, the TELL authors used more metadiscourse. The findings of the study imply that Iranian authors in general and Roshd authors in particular should pay more attention to their expected readers through more metadiscourse use.

This study investigates how adult native speakers of Korean interpret the sentences containing Korean extrinsic plural marker -tul. This morpheme has been known as a distributive marker, by which the element it is attached to is distributed over the agent denoted by a subject nominal. Despite its unique function and disparity in judgments by Korean adult speakers, there has little research to provide a evidence of how it operates in sentence interpretations. In a picture truth value judgement task, participants were asked to compare a target sentence with a picture that either matches or mismatches it, the results showed that adult native speakers of Korean were able to licence the distributive reading when the extrinsic -tul is attached to direct objects or verbs. In addition, the copied -tul attached to a verb was found to be able to restrict its scope only to the verb rather than the verb phrase as a whole. It indicates that the extrinsic -tul plays a role of focus operator to which the element is distributed.

Idioms tend to present difficulties for L2 learners because their meaning is often not transparent, and the choice of vocabulary seems to be unsystematic. Recent studies in cognitive linguistics, however, suggest that although the words in idiomatic phrases frequently do not retain their original meaning, idiomatic usage is semantically motivated. Idioms can be viewed as instances of conceptual metaphors (CM) which are grounded in physical and social experience. The present study explored whether raising the learners’ awareness of the underlying CMs would help them retain the meaning and the form of the idiomatic expressions. Four different learning conditions were compared: 1) idioms grouped by CM with definitions and example sentences provided in English; 2) idioms grouped by CM with definitions and example sentences translated into Japanese, the students’ L1; 3) semantically unrelated idioms with definitions and example sentences provided in English); and 4) semantically unrelated idioms with definitions and example sentences translated into Japanese. The results of the study suggest that the conceptual grouping of idiomatic expressions facilitates understanding, and that students are more likely to benefit from CMmotivated instruction when underlying concepts are introduced in their first language. In order to help learners develop a productive knowledge of L2 idiomatic expressions, form-focused activities may be necessary.

This study examines the role of F0 in marking the English voicing contrast and different stress types in the speech by native speakers and Korean learners of English. F0 is found as an important acoustic correlate in the Korean laryngeal contrast, suggested as tonogenesis, and thus distinct use of F0 is predicted in the specification of English segmental and suprasegmental features by Korean speakers. Voice Onset Time, voicing duration, and F0 were measured from the speech of 20 native speakers and 55 Korean speakers to measure the acoustic variation. The results confirm the distinctive use of F0 by Korean speakers in comparison to the native English speakers though it is not very systematic. The Korean speakers with deviation from the native speakers tend to use F0 more consistently as an acoustic correlate of the English voicing contrast and lexical stress. The stress difference between compounds and noun phrases is marked mainly by F0 in the group of native speakers whereas the nonnative speakers mark the phrasal accent with higher F0 and longer duration. Finally the Korean subjects tend to mark the sentence stress with different pitch values, but the native speakers seem to specify the focal accent with larger pitch changes in the focused syllable.

This paper investigates the phonetic implementation of contrastive stress in English compounds and noun phrases produced by Korean learners of English and native speakers. The data was collected from 20 speakers (13 Korean learners at an intermediate level and 7 native speakers of North American English). The three most reliable phonetic correlates of English stress, namely pitch, duration, and intensity were measured across the production of the first words and second words for 10 pairs of compounds and phrases in carefully controlled statement sentences. The results showed that native speakers and Korean speakers differ in their use of acoustic patterns. The native speakers of English implement pitch and intensity as reliable cues to distinguish compounds from their phrasal counterpart whereas Korean learners do not exhibit any acoustical differentiation in compounds and phrases. These results suggest that Korean learners of English fail to achieve English-like stress in compounds and phrasal nouns in their real utterances.

본 논문은 비음도가 언어학 분야의 방언 연구에 사용되고 있는 점에 착안하여, Nasometer라는 객관적인 측정 장치를 이용하여 한국인 영어 학습자와 원어민 화자의 비음도를 측정하여 비교함으로써 그 차이점을 조사·분석하는 것을 목적으로 한다. 이를 통해 한국인 영어 학습자들이 그동안 귀로만 듣고 훈련해왔던 영어 발음 교육의 한계를 벗어나, 정량적이고 시각적인 발음 피드백 훈련을 할 수 있도록 영어 교육 현장에서 활용 할 수 있는 자료를 제공하는 것을 첫 번째 목표로 한다. 최근 디지털 음성 분석 장비의 개발과 언어 이론이 발전하면서 북미학자들을 중심으로 분절음 중심의 외국어 듣기·말하기 교육의 효과에 대해 많은 의문점이 제기되면서, 초분절음 중심의 외국어 교육에 대한 관심이 높아지고 있다. 또한, 컴퓨터 공학의 발달로 비음도를 시각화하여 정밀하게 측정하는 음성분석 컴퓨터 시스템이 개발되어, 영어 교육 및 컴퓨터 공학과의 학제간 연구를 통해 영어 발음 교육 방법에 새로운 전기를 마련하게 되었다. 따라서, 이 연구에서는 비음측정기를 이용하여 원어민 화자의 비음도를 객관적으로 측정하고, 한국인 영어 학습자와 원어민 화자의 유사점 및 차이점을 시각적으로 비교·분석한다. 이처럼, 원어민 화자와 한국 영어 학습자들의 비음도를 계량적으로 측정함으로써, 한국인 영어 학습자들에게 영어 발음 학습에 필요한 자료를 제시할 수 있다. 이를 위해 구강음 문장과 비강음 문장의 비음도에서 한국인 영어 학습자와 원어민 화자의 차이를 객관적으로 분석하고자 했다. 이에 대해, 원어민 영어 화자의 비음도를 기준으로 삼아, 한국 영어 학습자들의 구강음과 비강음 문장에서 원어민과의 차이를 살펴 보았다. 이를 토대로, 한국인 영어 학습자의 비음도 상에서 나타나는 오류를 발음의 문제와 함께 찾아 그 결과를 시각적으로 제시함으로써, 우리나라 현행 영어 교욱 방식인 듣기중심의 발음 교육에서 시각화하는 발음 교육으로의 전환을 모색한다. 이는 향후 비음도 데이터의 표준화에 참고가 되는 예비연구(pilot study)로 활용될 수 있다. 후속연구로 우리가 자주 접하는 영어 교과서 등에 나오는 문장을 기반으로 한 한국 실정을 고려한 영어표준 문형에서, 보다 다양한 음성 환경에서 비음도를 비교할 수 있는 영어 발음 교육에 필요한 문형을 개발할 수 있다.

The acoustic energy measured by the Nasometer is termed ‘nasalance,’ which is used to evaluate velopharyngeal function in clinical diagnosis. The purpose of this study is to compare native English speakers and Korean English learners by measuring their nasalance of Oral and Nasal sentences, and to suggest the use of nasalance in English pronunciation. The results are as follows: (1) the nasalance of females was significantly higher than that of males in Oral sentences and Nasal sentences for both native speakers and Korean English learners. (2) The rank of nasalance for native speakers in four Oral sentences was sentence 4> sentence 2 and sentence 3> sentence 1. (3) The nasalance of /s/ was highest and /p/ was lowest for the native speakers when the segments /p, t, k, s/ appearing Oral sentences were evaluated. (4) The rank of nasalance for Korean English learn-ers in five Nasal sentences was sentence 2 > sentence 3 > sentence 5 > sentence 1 > sentence 4. (5) The nasalance patterns of Korean English majors were more similar to those of native speakers than those of Korean non-English majors.

This study explores text-setting phenomena in English and Korean children’s songs, asserting that the constraints that regulate the alignment of a specific language to music differ according to the typological and phonological difference of the language. Within the Optimality Theory framework, the two representative constraints that pertain to text-setting are tested with children’s songs in English and Korean. As a result, the metrical constraint critically operates for universal text-setting patterns in English verses, whereas the grouping constraint ranks high for Korean verses. These reversed rankings represent that English follows a stress-to-beat mapping system while Korean versification works at a syllable-to-note mapping system. Based on this difference, this study attempts to observe the text-setting patterns in English children’s songs by native Korean speakers. Through the analysis, it is observed that English versification by native Korean speakers shows different text-setting patterns from the universal patterns by native English speakers. The Korean participants prefer to fulfill the grouping constraint rather than the metrical constraint in English text-setting. In addition, the native phonological grammar also affects English syllabification since vowel epenthesis occurs after an obstruent coda in English lyrics. This nativization process of English verse causes idiosyncratic text-setting form by native Korean speakers. Through the analyses, it is suggested that the relative importance of constraints depends on a specific language, and that the native phonology can affect the versification of a foreign language.

It has been controversial whether phonetic-fine details of the lexical items are encoded and accessed in L1 or L2 speakers’ lexicon and how the variants of the reduced word forms are recognized. To address these issues, in this study we carried out the perceptual word recognition experiment, i.e., AB identification test with English native speakers and Korean nonnative English speakers. Two types of synthesized listening stimuli were created from two types of the original word forms by shortening or lengthening the durations of the reduced vowels: words containing the reduced vowels and words without them in the first syllables. First, the results show that a wider variety of tokens of the variants of reduced word forms differing only in the durations of the reduced vowels were recognized with substantially high rates as those with the reduced vowels for English L1 speakers than for Korean L2 English speakers. These findings indicate that phonetic-fine detail information of the reduced word forms with respect to the vowel durations is represented and reconstructed in the lexicon for L1 and L2 speakers’ lexicon although their representational robustness varies depending on L1 or L2 status. Furthermore, we show that the degrees of vowel reduction exert the differential effects on the reconstruction or identification of English words according to the word-initial C(V)C types and L1 or L2 status. It also turns out that depending on the presence/absence of the reduced vowels in the words, Korean L2 English speakers are less sensitive or oversensitive to the vowel duration when they recognize the words.

본 연구의 목적은 모국어에는 존재하지 않는 다른 나라 언어에만 존재하는 음소적 대조를 어떻게 인지하고 있는가를 알아보고 모국어에 존재하지 않는 다른 나라 언어에만 존재하는 음소의 대조를 인지하는데 중요한 음성적 실마리가 무엇인가를 알아보는 것이다. 특히 이 연구에서는 영어를 모국어로 사용하고 있는 사람들이 한국어에서만 특징적으로 나타나고 있는 세 가지 무성 파열음들의 음성적 차이점을 인지할 수 있는가를 소리인식 방법인 AX 변별 방법을 사용해서 알아보았다. 이 연구 결과 영어 모국어 화자들은 한국어의 세 가지 무성 파열음의 음성적 차이점을 대체로 잘 구별하였지만, 한국어 평소리 파열음(/p,t,k/)과 유기음 파열음(/p^h, t^h, k^h/)을 구별하는데 상당한 어려움을 보이는 반면에 된소리 파열음(/p^*, t^*, k^*/)을 다른 파열음과 구별하는데는 아무런 문제를 보이지 않았다. 또한 한국어와 영어의 VOT 범위를 비교한 결과 한국어의 평소리 파열음과 유기음 파열음은 영어의 유기음 파열음의 범위속에 포함되고, 한국어의 된소리 파열음은 영어의 유성 파열음과 비슷한 범주에 포함된다는 사실은 왜 영어 모국어 화자들이 한국어 무성자음들 중 평소리 파열음과 유기음 파열음을 식별하는데 어려움을 보였는가를 설명해 줄 수 있다. 그러므로 이 실험은 VOT가 모국어에는 존재하지 않는 소리들을 음성적으로 구별하는데 중요한 실마리를 제공한다는 또 다른 중요한 증거를 제공한다고 할 수 있다.