An Empirical Study to Rethink the Goals and Components of Teaching Korean Language Pronunciation

Intelligibility has been widely regarded as an appropriate goal for second language pronunciation teaching. Yet there are few empirical studies that focus on the intelligibility of Korean learners` pronunciation. Therefore, this mixed-methods study examined the relationship among native-like pronunciation, intelligible pronunciation, phonological fluency and comprehensibility. Furthermore, this study investigated how native-like pronunciation and intelligible pronunciation are measured differently in terms of actual pronunciation skills. In addition, this study examined how these two pronunciation styles mutually influence each other. The results of this study show that achieving native-like pronunciation is a much more difficult goal than achieving intelligible pronunciation. It further shows that foreign accented pronunciation has little to do with comprehensibility while better intelligibility is needed for clearer comprehensibility. To achieve better intelligibility, this study recommends pronunciation teaching based on segments, suprasegmentals and fluency as the focus on suprasegmentals and fluency teaching are more important to achieve a native-like pronunciation. Besides the focus on phonology, there are other social factors which could influence the evaluation of native-like pronunciation, but are not part of this study. These findings are expected to contribute not only to a better understanding of pronunciation, but also to a more comprehensive reevaluation and informed direction of pronunciation teaching and research. (George Mason University)