Doctoral Dissertation Research: Native-Language and Native-Dialect Effects in Learning to Perceive a Difficult Phonetic Contrast in Korean

当人们学习外语时，经常会有一些成对的声音很难区分。例如，许多日本英语学习者很难听到和发音“r”和“l”之间的区别，因为只有一个日语声音接近这两个英语声音。 这个项目研究的是学习外语的人如何发展辨别难发音的能力。具体来说，它着眼于在首尔参加强化语言课程的母语为汉语、日语和英语的人如何学习韩语中两个困难的“s”音之间的区别。它探讨了这两种韩语语音的线索（区分物理特征）与不同第一语言中最相似语音的线索之间的关系。 在这个探索中使用的一个主要方法是一系列的感知实验，朝鲜语的学生将在他们的第一年的广泛的韩国语学习的6个月的时间间隔。这些实验的结果将进行统计分析，以跟踪不同的学习者在不同阶段使用的线索。同样的实验也将用于测试来自三个不同方言区的韩语母语者使用哪些线索，这些“s”样声音的线索是不一样的。这项研究的结果将增加我们对为什么学习第二语言与学习一种新的方言如此不同的理解。 这将改善第二语言教学方法，如韩语，阿拉伯语和汉语等困难的语言。

When people learn foreign languages, there are often pairs of sounds that are difficult to differentiate. For example, many Japanese learners of English have difficulty hearing and pronouncing the difference between "r" and "l" because there is only one Japanese sound that is close to both of these English sounds. This project studies how people who are learning a foreign language might develop the ability to differentiate difficult sounds. Specifically, it looks at how native speakers of Chinese, Japanese, and English who are enrolled in intensive language courses in Seoul learn the difference between two difficult "s"-like sounds of Korean. It explores the relationship between the cues (the differentiating physical characteristics) for these two Korean sounds and the cues for the most similar sounds in the different first languages. A primary method used in this exploration is a series of perception experiments that the Korean-language students will do at 6-month intervals over their first year of extensive study of Korean. Results from these experiments will be analyzed statistically to track which cues different learners use at different stages. The same experiments will also be used to test which cues are used by native speakers of Korean from three different dialect areas, where the cues to these "s"-like sounds are not the same. The results of the study will increase our understanding of why learning a second language is so different from learning a new dialect. This should improve second language teaching methods for difficult languages such as Korean, Arabic, and Chinese.