Comprehensibility of Advanced Korean High School Students’ English Pronunciation

Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate how advanced Korean high school learners of English can be helped to acquire more comprehensible pronunciation and establish valid priorities in, and suggest a new direction of, the learning and teaching pronunciation. For this purpose, this study examined the interrelationship between segmental features, suprasegmental features, and perceived comprehensibility of English native speakers in the speech of advanced Korean high school learners. The analysis of those students’ English speech samples clarified that both segmentals and suprasegmentals are positively correlated with comprehensibility of English native speakers. Suprasegmentals, however, have a greater influence on the comprehensibility than do segmentals. In addition, the analysis showed there is no great difference in the students’ pronunciation ability between segmentals and suprasegmentals. It is also found that for segmentals advanced Korean high school learners of English have more difficulties in pronouncing /?/, /m/, /s/, /n/, /?/, /d/, /ŋ/, /w/ than the other consonants and /?/, /ae/, /??/, /e?/, /a?/ than the other vowels. As for suprasegmentals, intonation is proved to be the hardiest one to tackle among others. (Kangwon National University)