 Korean Accented English Pronunciation Simulator |
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Korean Accented English Pronunciation Simulator |
Most (traditional or online) English dictionaries provide only
phoneme-based and word-based pronunciation, which may not be of practical
help to ESL/EFL (English as a Second/Foreign Language) learners who
wish to obtain more accurate information of English pronunciation. For
example,
the differences between aspirated [
] in key vs. unaspirated
[
] in ski and
between light [
] in late
vs. dark [
] in tale
are not displayed in most dictionaries. In addition, many phonological rules
such as palatalization apply not only within words but also across word
boundaries. However, to my knowledge, there has been no dictionary
dealing with the pronunciation of phrases or sentences.
Most adult ESL/EFL learners have accents when speaking English. Such an interlanguage phonology is, in most cases, influenced by their native tongue. That is, they tend to keep the syllable structure of their native language and to transfer the phonological rules of their native language to English. In many cases, they do not recognize the problems of their English pronunciation.
There are two types of KAEPS systems. The first one is a rule-based system. Its initial version was designed for a course project of "Perl Programming" taught by Prof. Catherine N. Ball in the spring of 1997 at Georgetown University. It stimulates three types of English pronunciations in the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) symbols:
The KAEPS system itself is not a CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning) system. However, it may lead to the development of a CALL system and will be useful to Korean learners of English, EFL teachers whose students are Koreans, and Interlanguage phonology researchers.
