Describe the specific difficulties in English pronunciation met by a group of learners known to you.

The English language has become the most global of languages, the lingua franca of science, business, education, politics and pop music. Out of the 168 airlines in the world, 157 nations have English as the agreed international language of discourse. There are more than 3000 English newspapers in India. The six members of the European Free Trade Association conduct all their business in English, even though not one of them is an English-speaking country. French and Flemish are the two languages of Belgium. However, over fifty billboards and posters at the main airport in Brussels are in English. English then has become the common tongue for non-English speakers everywhere. This being the case, English has been popularly taught as a second language in Korea. Many Koreans these days are learning English for various reasons, such as applying for higher paying jobs, studying and living abroad, or establishing business with western countries. I have noted through my experience of learning and teaching English, that it is easier to master English grammar instead of English pronunciation. Most Korean students tend to write better English than speak it. However, it is still more difficult for Korean students to acquire English at the same rate as perhaps Dutch or Danish students due to the differences in sentence and word structure between Korean and English. It is believed by several Korean academics that the reason why some Koreans cannot pronounce English is because of physical differences. Having a short frenulum, there can be problems when pronouncing some characters because of a disturbance in lateral movements of the tongue. Corrective surgery is more frequently being performed these days especially on young children due to the increasing level of competiveness among Koreans as the need for speaking English is higher. There is no concrete evidence, though, that this really helps as the level of success depends largely on the childs mind and ability to acquire a new language as well as many months of speech therapy after surgery. This helps me conclude that there are no universal difficulties when it comes to pronunciation. Koreans are at an advantage when it comes to learning English due to the long-term American presence in South Korea as they are used to seeing and hearing English daily as well as being exposed to the Latin script, which makes them familiar with the English writing system. They have also borrowed some words directly from English. English and Korean are similar as both have a set of symbols that represent a phoneme. They can be divided into consonants and vowels. The Korean alphabet called Hangul consists of six vowels and fourteen consonants, including diphthongs and the consonant clusters. However, some letters in Korean have a change in sound depending on whether they begin at the beginning or end of a syllable.

Koreans have difficulties in pronunciation because of the reproduction of consonants as some English sounds do not exist in Korean. Friction sounds such as /f/, /ph/, /v/, /s/, /z/, /th/ etc do not have a reciprocal in Korean. Therefore if a Korean were to pronounce /f/ or /ph/, he would sound a /p/ instead. For example, cuff would sound like cup, cough like cop, toffee like toppee, fond like pond, phone like pone, phrase like prase. /v/ is similarly pronounced as the /f/ sound, where viola sounds like biola and voice like boise. When it comes to the /s/ sound, they often pronounce it as // instead, making sip sound like ship and see like she. The /z/ sound is pronounced as a stressed /j/ so that pizza sounds as pijja. // and // which sound in then, thirteen and clothes do not have an equivalent sound in Korean. Consonants /r/ and /l/ seem very impossible for some students to pronounce because in Hangul there is only one character that represents both consonants, having a combined /rl/. Students will therefore make the mistake of constantly mispronouncing those consonants, saying lat for rat. Words like road and load, right and light will sound the same without context. There are some English vowel sounds that are particularly difficult for Koreans to pronounce and do not distinguishably make any difference. These include the //, /e/ and /ae/ sound. Words like bit, bet, and bat will be pronounced the same way by them. Koreans often pronounce the // vowel sound in the words sit, slip and grin more like an /iy/ vowel sound. That makes sit, slip, and grin sound like seat, sleep and green. The /ae/ vowel sound found in the words cat, laugh and sat seem problematic for Koreans because they often pronounce /ae/ like // so that cat, laugh and sat sound like cet, lef and set. English diphthongs would not be too difficult for Koreans to learn because they are similar to those of Hangul. The only problem is that the students may not open their mouths wide enough to make the accurate sounds, thus sometimes when they say /al/, it will sound like /el/. Besides these, the long and short features of English vowels pose a problem when pronouncing English vowels because the Korean language does not have this feature. A learner is often confused over words like ship sheep, men man, fit feet, pet pat, chip cheap, bed bad and so on. Problems also arise due to the differences in syllable structure between the two languages. Korean words never have more than two consonants pronounced in one syllable. For example, masks has three consonants in a row, sks. In English, the word masks has just one syllable, while in Korean it has three. This leads to the addition of a short vowel sound to the end of English words that terminate with a consonant or within words containing consonant clusters. The word masks therefore, would sound as ma-su-kus in Korean. Another pronunciation difficulty is because in Korean, consonants are not released unless they are followed by a vowel in the same syllable. The Korean pronunciation requires a final sound at the end of a consonant

otherwise it would seem incomplete and so they add an extra /u/ or /i/ vowel sound to the end of each English word that ends with a consonant, making light become /lightu/ or pass become /passu/. Good pronunciation depends a lot on the ability to accent the correct words and successfully use intonation to make sure you are understood. Spoken English stress the principal elements in a sentence, the content words, and quickly glide over the less important words, the function words. Nouns, principal verbs, adjectives and adverbs are all content words. Pronouns, articles, auxiliary verbs, prepositions, conjunctions are function words and are pronounced quickly moving towards the more important words. This quality of quickly gliding over less important words is also known as 'connected speech'. Korean English learners would have trouble trying to figure out the stress and intonation of words, and how they relate to each other in the overall pronunciation of sentences. The semantics of the English language allows for weak forms that may sound completely unfamiliar to Koreans but which come naturally to native speakers. A native English speaker may say things such as whadya gonna do, whacha name or im tryna geddit. This poses quite the problem for Koreans to first understand what is being said and then to be able to apply accurately in pronunciation.

References:

The London Teacher Training College (2006) Diploma in TESOL: Module Four course notes

 Classroom handouts/ supplementary materials Brickfields Asia College, Malaysia Harmer, J. (2001). The practice of English Language Teaching. Pearson Education Limited Bill Bryson (1990). The Mother Tongue. English and How it Got That Way. Avon Books http://www.btinternet.com/~ted.power/l1korean.html