Non-native speakers misperceptions of English vowels and consonants: Evidence from Korean adults in UK

• Published in: International review of applied linguistics in language teaching, IRAL Vol. 41; no. 2; pp. 145 - 173
• Main Author: Tench, Paul
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin, Germany Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG 21.07.2003; De Gruyter; Walter de Gruyter GmbH
• Subjects: Adults. Performance, acquisition; Communication; Communication (Thought Transfer); English as a Second Language Learning; Evidence; Experiments; Grammar; Higher education; Instructional Materials; Interlanguage; Korean; Language; Linguistics; Native Speakers; Perceptions; Phonemes; Phonological Processing; Phonology; Pragmatics; Production and comprehension processes; Psycholinguistics; Psychology of language; Receptive Language; Vocabulary; Vowels; Word Lists; United Kingdom > UK; Error analysis; Competence; Mental processing; Interlanguage; Auditory perception; Phonemic system; Korean as mother tongue; English as foreign language; Phonetics; Experimentation; Phonology; Psycholinguistics; Linguistic difficulty; Second language acquisition
• ISSN: 0019-042X; 1613-4141
• DOI: 10.1515/iral.2003.006

[...]individual and group phonological profiles are provided, against which published pronunciation materials are measured - and shown to be inadequate in many cases. [...]they prove to be very useful to the analyst, e.g., the unattested 'English' spellings *vite, *vait in response to bite (the lack of perceptual clarity between /b/ and /v/ for two participants) and *weaset for waste (the possible perception of an epenthetic vowel between /s/ and /t/), etc. The detailed analysis proceeded as follows: the record of perceptions for each vowel and consonant (in both initial and final positions) was inspected in order to produce an analysis of the proportions of correct and incorrect perceptions, and a breakdown of the substitutions in the latter cases; this was done in two ways: (i) taking into account all instances of a particular segment in whatever word they appear (the undifferentiated calculation) and (ii) taking into account only those instances which are critical, because of their potential for contrast (the critical calculation). [...]the items reed, sheet and seep are critical for the distinction /i: ~ I/ because of the potential contrast with minimal pairs; but /i:/ is also represented in breathe (selected to test final /ð/, zeal (selected to test initial /z/ before the vowel /i:/, yeast (selected to test recognition of initial /j/ before the vowel /i:/, and breezy (selected to test recognition of final unstressed /-zi/. [...]in real live conversation, context will often help, but learners - and teachers - would be well advised to seek to establish an adequate phonological competence, both receptively and productively.