A study of Accent Generation by Korean Learners of Japanese

The Relationship among the Reading-Aloud, Repetition, and Self-Evaluation Scores

Abstract

This study investigated the relationship among the abilities to produce the Japanese accent, repeat model pronunciation, and evaluate the repetition accuracy by Korean learners of Japanese. Phonetic features that influence the aforementioned abilities were also analyzed. The participants were asked to undertake a reading-aloud, repetition, and a self-evaluation tasks, and the correlations among the scores of these tasks were analyzed. Results showed a moderate correlation between the production and repetition abilities for the three- and four- morae words, but not for the five- and six-morae words. In addition, a qualitative analysis of phonetic features of the stimuli confirmed the findings in the quantitative analysis. Not only L1 transfer was observed in production, but there were cases in which correct production was not evaluated accurately by the learners. It suggests that their internal pitch model can interfere with their perception, repetition, and self-evaluation.