Lexical and Post-lexical Phenomena in the Utterances Spoken by Korean English Teachers

Lexical and Post-lexical Phenomena in the Utterances Spoken by Korean English Teachers

  Korean English teachers are facing difficulties in speaking English accurately and naturally, and they are hesitating to pronounce English in the class, because of non-authentic and unnatural pronunciations. Teacher"s pronunciation is very important in the class, because students generally imitate their teacher"s pronunciations. The unnatural pronunciations of Korean English teachers make it difficult to provide students with good models.   This article will survey the problematic and unnatural pronunciation of Korean English teachers in elementary and secondary schools using CSL 4400B, Multi-speech and Praat. And also try to pinpoint the causes of unnatural pronunciations.   Through this research, a variety of problems of Korean English teachers" pronunciation were be identified. First, the VOT of Korean English teachers appeared longer than those of native speakers. Second, some Korean English teachers inserted [i] after /d/. Third, many Korean English teaches seemed not to understand English stress rules. Fourth, teachers appeared to understand the concept of devoicing, deletion, reduction, contraction, palatalization and flapping.