This study describes inter-cultural impeding factors of Korean-accented English consonants in various English communication settings. The findings exhibit the difference in intelligibility levels of liquids and voiced consonants, depending on word positions. In this talk, we will present which features should receive priority in teaching English pronunciation in Korea.
As listed in Lingua Franca Core (Jenkins, 2000), most English consonants should remain intelligible to help ensure more effective communication between speakers from diverging backgrounds. With the aim to identify priorities in English pronunciation teaching for Korean-speaking learners of English (KSLs), we formulated our research question as follows: for KSLs, what phonological features would be critically impeding communication in English with Japanese, or English native speakers? The total of eighty listeners with four different first language backgrounds - Korean, Japanese, and native English speakers in the US, and residing in Korea - participated in a dictation task. They were asked to complete blanks after listening to prerecorded sentences in Korean-accented English (KoE) accent. The findings show that the intelligibility of /l, r/ vary across word positions. Thus, we will present in which position is likely to reduce intelligibility for each sound in various language settings, in order to establish KoE specific features which should receive higher priority efforts in teaching English pronunciation for KSLs.
