The purpose of this study was to evaluate the acquisition of non-contrastive phonetic details of a second language. Reduced vowels in English are realized as a schwa or barred-i depending on their phonological contexts, but Korean has no reduced vowels. Two groups of Korean learners of English who differed according to the experience of residence in English-speaking countries and a group of English native speakers were asked to produce English reduced vowels in wordinitial, word-internal and word-final positions. The mean duration ratios, and the mean values and distribution patterns of F1/F2 of the reduced vowels were compared between the three groups, which revealed that Korean learners without residence experience tended to produce each variant of English reduced vowels as the corresponding full vowels, whereas those with experience displayed similar patterns to the natives. The present results suggest that it is possible for second language (L2) learners to learn the statistical properties in L2.
KeywordsEnglish reduced vowels, acquisition of phonetic details, L2 production
I IntroductionThe present study examines the acquisition of phonetic details in English by native Korean learners. Most previous studies of second language speech have focused on the acquisition of phonetic contrasts based on the similarities and differences between the sound systems of the native language (L1) and the second/foreign language (L2) (see Best, 1995). These studies assume or argue that having acquired the phonology of one
The present study examines Korean adult English learners' perceptions about English as a lingua franca (ELF) and the common grammatical features of ELF. 276 university students participated in this study through an online survey portal. The survey consists of two parts: part one asks participants' attitudes and perceptions about ELF statements, and part two is an acceptability judgement task for common grammatical features of ELF. Overall, the participants showed moderately positive attitude toward most ELF statements despite they manifested stronger preference for native speaker-oriented English learning on a few aspects. The results from the acceptability judgement task for 19 grammatical items consistently remained between neutral and slightly positive ranges. These results indicate that the participants already possess the concept of ELF, at least beyond a non-negative stance, and admit the features of ELF as acceptable forms of English for global communication. Participants' major, study abroad experiences, and experiences of communicating with foreign people did not cause consistent and significant difference in their attitude toward ELF, nor in their acceptability judgements. For timely and effective incorporation of ELF into English classrooms in Korea, further research need to be conducted with various learner groups regarding the perception about ELF, the development of teaching activities and materials, and the empirical data from on-site applications.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.