서강대학교

초록/요약

This study examines the effects of audio-visual information from articulatory movements as shown during the production of the four English consonants, /b/, /v/, /p/, and /f/, on the perception of Korean-speaking learners of English as a second language (L2). This study was interested, in particular, to find out how the differences of the four phonemes in Korean and English would be perceived by the learners of English as an L2. For the purpose of this thesis, Korean participants learning English as an L2 were recruited and grouped into low and high proficiency learners, respectively, by proficiency levels of English. Both auditory-only and audio-visual articulatory movement models of the four phonemes were taped by two American English speakers, a male and a female, who speak American English. Six sets of minimal pairs were taped, in which the four phonemes occurred at the initial position of each pair. Participants were required to identify the consonant they were hearing in the two experimental conditions, provided with audio-only stimuli on one hand and audio-visual information on the other, and each set of minimal pairs were presented twice; one by a female and the other by a male speaker. Reaction times were measured in each task in order to examine how long it would take each participant to come to a decision on identifying the consonants from the moment when they were played up to the moment when a response was made. It was found that, while the high proficiency group statistically performed significantly better in identifying the consonants than the low proficiency group, there was no difference in the two different experimental sessions, audio-only vs. audio-visual condition. Importantly, on the other hand, there was an interaction effect between proficiency and sensitivity to visual information. Based on this finding, it is proposed that sensitivity to visual information is likely to be related to proficiency level in Korean-speaking learners’ perception of English labial stops and labiodental fricatives.