Teach English in Gongling Zhen - Anqing Shi

Pronunciation problems with Korean english learnersKorean is the native language of about 80 million people in North and South Korea and other communities across the world. It is a language whose classification is in dispute. Some linguists believe it exists in a family of its own; others place it in the Altaic language family and claim that it is related to japanese. Korean has been heavily influenced by chinese. A large proportion of Korean words were either coined in Korean using chinese characters or borrowed directly. The significant differences between Korean and english, in sentence structure, morphology and phonetics, make it sometimes hard for many Korean EFL students to acquire english quickly and smoothly. The Korean alphabet is called Hangul. It was introduced in the 15th century by King Sejong to replace the existing chinese script (called hanja), which few Koreans could read. Hangul consists of 14 simple consonants and 6 simple vowels. Hangul can be written horizontally or vertically, with the horizontal, Latin style much more favored. Koreans are exposed in their daily lives to the Latin script and therefore have no particular difficulties with the english writing system, unlike with pronunciation. Phonology is the study of sound as the human vocal apparatus produces it. The sound system of english is so different from the sound system of Korean that native Koreans learning english encounter numerous phonological difficulties. One of the most baffling difficulties Korean learners of english experience comes from ?the complexity of english words in spelling and sound correspondences? (Kim, 1988:l36). Unlike the orthography of Korean language where we can see that each letter corresponds to a sound unit (phoneme), an english letter or grapheme does not have one sound or phoneme, but is pronounced in several different ways, depending on the word. Differences in consonants and vowels between the two languages cause additional problems. Differences in Consonants ? All Korean consonant stops, fricatives, and affricates are voiceless, whereas english has pairs of voiced and voiceless stops, fricatives and affricates. Many Korean students have difficulty in pronouncing voiced consonants such as /b, d, g, v, ð, z, /. ? Koreans have to make extra efforts to pronounce english labiodental consonants such as /f, v/, because the Korean language does not have them. There are many english words where the only difference is the initial sound, for example, "for" & "pour," "feel," and "peel" etc. Pronouncing "F" as "P" and vice versa is extremely confusing to english speakers! An innocent Korean could say ?I?m pine, thank you? without even noticing a funny meaning of the sentence. ? Since Korean has one liquid sound /?/ for the english /l/ and /r/, Korean students have problems distinguishing /l/ from /r/ when pronouncing or listening. "I want lice, please"? would be a typical Korean mistake. ? Korean students have difficulty distinguishing these pairs of voiced and voiceless sounds from each other, as in the case of /f/ & /v/; /p/ & /b/; /?/ & /ð/; /t/ & /d/; /z/, /j/ & /dz/, and /r/ & /l/. The problem occurs when Korean speakers pronounce the letter "z" like a "j." The same problem applies to "tz" and "ts" sounds. A word like "pizza" ends up pronounced as "peach-eu," The problem of mispronouncing "s" as "sh" is also widespread. Usually this happens with an ?i? class vowel following the ?s?. That would change significantly the meaning of some words: sip -> ship. ? Korean syllabic form normally follows CVC, with a consonant in the initial position followed by a vowel, whereas in english three consecutive consonants often come in the initial position. In that case, Korean students follow the pattern of Korean syllabic structure and insert an extra vowel between the consonants. Thus, ?plight? is often pronounced ?polite.? ? Consonant clusters (like glimpsed, as the ?e? is silent) are also problematic, as Korean phonotactic rules don?t allow for some consonants to stay together. That is why Korean learners of english are likely to insert superfluous vowels, for example pronouncing the ?e? in ?published?. Besides, Koteans tend to insert extra "eu" and "ee" sounds at the end of a word ending in a consonant - "church" is called "church-ee", which makes it different and somewhat negative in the meaning. Differences in vowels ? An english vowel that Korean students have difficulty pronouncing is /?/, which does not exist in Korean. Some tend to substitute the Korean /o/ for it. ? Koreans use full strong stress for vowel sounds. Since there is no word stress, there are no weak forms. Some students feel uncomfortable when pronouncing unstressed english vowels such as schwa /?/. ? Most Korean students have learned American english rather than British english and tend to pronounce r-coloured vowels, often overstressing them. Differences in Stress In contrast to english, a stress-timed language, Korean is a syllable-timed language. Since Korean is not a rhythmic language, it has neither word stress nor sentence stress. Unlike in Korean, english tends not to give vowels equal length or stress. Rhythm and stress are more important in english than in many languages. Also, voice inflection in english, like body language, carries a great deal of meaning. Look at the following examples: I am eating rice. I am eating rice. I am eating rice. I am eating rice. These all answer different questions or exclamations: Who is eating rice? You're not eating rice! Are you cooking rice? What are you eating? With no distinction in pronunciation between function words and content words, the same interval is maintained between syllables, thus creating a very monotonous sound. One of the major tasks for Korean students is to gain familiarity with english stress and rhythm. Because they are actually hurting their ability to communicate. First, monotony is boring. Second, as we just saw, intonation carries a good deal of meaning in english. As we see, Korean native speakers learning english might have quite a huge number of possible problems with pronunciation. That is why this is extremely important to pay attention to it at initial stages of the learning process. Teachers should stimulate their students to put more effort in learning the right pronunciation. Intonation, rhythm, and stress are best taught and learned orally. So we, as teachers, need to be a good example of the right pronunciation patterns. Teaching of pronunciation is important, but sometimes somewhat neglected by teachers. However, students learning english find pronunciation one of the most difficult parts of the language. They need additional training in it. Thus, it?s crucial to give the students some basic knowledge not only about separate sounds, but general rules about sounds and sentence patterns, word stress, word linking, because pronunciation in the english language sometimes has great influence on the meaning and students need to be aware of the general guidelines for english pronunciation. An effective teacher considers teaching of pronunciation an integral part of the whole learning and teaching process. So we should never neglect it.