TEFL Grawn Michigan

The common pronunciation problems of Koreans speaking english The following is a brief examination of the common pronunciation problems that Korean people have when speaking english and some of the reasons for them. They fall into three broad categories, these being: Sounds that do not exist in Korean and thee differentiation of certain sounds Sounds that are pronounced differently in Korean due to their location in the syllable The syllable structure of Korean speech Sounds that do not exist in Korean There are several phonemes used in english that are not part of the Korean language which can present problems to the Korean learner of english, particularly if they have only received english instruction in school where they will be taught to speak english by constructing the words from Korean sounds Th – ? as an initial sound the voiced “th” will be mispronounced as a “d” so “the” will be pronounced “duh”. The unvoiced “ð” sound will be said as an “s” as an initial sound. Both will be pronounced as a “suh” as a closing sound. Z – There is no “z” sound in Korean and this will be pronounced as a hard “J” leading to the slightly perplexing “the jeebra lives in the jew.” V – The “v” sound is usually reproduced as a “b” F – Is replaced by “p” u/er - ? ?? The short “U” sound (fun) and the ur sound (learn) are both replaced with the short “o” sound ? in cot. O – the long “o” sound ?? in coat is replaced with the ?? “or” sound, so coat becomes caught. These sounds need to be taught explicitly and they need constant revision as the incorrect pronunciation is constantly being reinforced Differentiation There are sounds that appear to be correct in certain circumstances but Korean students have a great deal of difficulty distinguishing and producing. a/e æ e The short “a” and “e” sounds are identical in Korean and so students will have a great deal of trouble distinguishing the difference when listening and in making an audible difference between the two sounds. As in bed and bad. E/I i? ? Spoken Korean appears to have both the long e sound (i? feet) and he short I sound (? fit) but Korean english students have great difficulty discerning the difference and in reproducing the sounds themselves. Sounds due to placement l/r The “L” and “R” sounds are both written by the same character in Korean. The Korean pronunciation and tongue position of these sounds is somewhere between the two made by a native english speaker and it will be heard as an “r” as the onset sound and as an “L” as the closing sound. sh/s In Korean the “sh” sound is made by the “s” being followed by a vowel sound beginning with “y-“. In most cases this poses no problems because there are both “y-“ and non “y-“ vowels but there is one case where there is not. The “i” or “ee” sound is following an “s” sound makes a “sh”. This means that for any word with an s followed by a short I or long E sound , Koreans will instinctively pronounce this as a “sh” instead of an “s”. Which leads to an english teacher walking into a class and giving a basic instruction, and then a class of children will all copy the instruction and call out “shit down”. Korean Syllable structure There is another hang over from Korean that affects students of english. In Korean there are fewer acceptable consonant sounds to finish a syllable with. “B” and “P” are both pronounced as “P”, “G” and “K” are both pronounced as “K”, and “D”, “S”, “J”, “CH”, and “T” are all pronounced as “t”. This means that the student will pronounce “bag” as “back” without help. Another consequence of this is that if you must end the word with a sound that is not naturally one of the Korean ending sounds then the students will add another vowel sound after the consonant. To get a “sh” , “j”, or “ch” at the end of the words it will be pronounced with an extra “ee” sound something, ex- president of the usa, Georgie Bushy can attest from his visit to Korea. To get a “b” or “d” ending there is an “uh” sound added to the end. To summarise some of the typical problems the sentence “I Love you” is mis-pronounced “I (same) r(no “L” onset sound)o(no “u” sound”)b(no “v” sound) uh(added to get “b” instead of “p”) you” so it becomes “I robber you” Dropping of ending sounds Another common pronunciation problem is to drop the last consonant sound from a word when the word ends with two consonant sounds. Thus “cold” becomes “coal” and “and” becomes “an”. This has been a list of the pronunciation problems common to most people whose native language is Korean when they speak english. None of the problems are insurmountable with practice and good teaching but they are something that the teacher of english should be aware of and have strategies to address.