한국 초등학생들의 영어 자음군 발음 습득에 나타나는 유표적 특성 연구

The relationship between markedness and L2 learners’ pronunciation errors on English consonant clusters

This study, utilizing Pearson’s χ²’ test statistics, examines the plausibility of the markedness hypotheses with respect to the pronunciation errors of second language (L2) learners on English consonant clusters. To this aim, a total of 792 units of consonant clusters were given to 12 six grade elementary school students, and their pronunciation data were analyzed by a digital audio analyzer called GoldWave v5.58 and IBM SPSS Statistics 20.0. The findings are as follows: 1) Korean EFL elementary school learners make more errors at coda positions than onsets; 2) They make more vowel insertion errors at onsets, while they make consonant deletion errors at codas; 3) More errors are made in long consonant clusters than short ones; and 4) They show more errors with sentence lists than word lists. These findings support the plausibility for the markedness theory: less marked structures are easier to acquire than more marked structures. The results of this study also suggest that the position of consonant clusters is the best predictor of L2 learners’ pronunciation errors on English consonant clusters. Some limitations of this study and some suggestions for the further studies will also be discussed.