영어 학습 수준에 따른 한국어 화자의 /v/와 /b/ 발음 비교

Abstract

In 2000s, English has become one of the common language in the world to use internet. So most of the students in Korea start studying English very early age with many ways. But there are still a lot of arguments about what the proper age is for English learning. Though there is no consensus about the proper age, many researchers agree that L2 learners can have fluent pronunciation when they are exposed to L2 in their early lives. This study aims to analyze the pronunciation of /b/ and /v/ sound that are pronounced by different age groups who are their 20’s and 30’s. Participants in one group (20’s) started to learn English before school and they have high proficiency of English. The other group had participants who started English at elementary school or middle school. They have low proficiency of English. The two groups read the sentences including target words containing /b/ or /v/ and the recorded sounds were analyzed auditorily and acoustically. The results showed that the higher proficiency group pronounced /v/ more accurately both auditorily and acoustically. In addition, the group pronounced the words correctly no matter where /v/ and /b/ were located in the words. In contrast, the lower group pronounced /v/ incorrectly and the rate of correctness was the lowest when /v/ was in the middle of words. This suggests that the lower group was affected by the phonetics and phonology of Korean, which is their mother tongue. The results overall supports that there is certain period like CPH(Critical Period Hypothesis). But this should be restricted to the pronunciation of L2.