Training and evaluating Korean learners’ perception of the English word-initial l/r contrast
Soonhyun Hong · 2010
Korean learners of English have difficulty in the non-native contrast of l/r phones despite a relatively long period of English study. This is because the Korean sound system does not have the l/r contrast. Even university-level Korean students with more than 10 years of English learning still suffer almost the same or similar level of difficulty. This paper tries to demonstrate that a short period of laboratory training can help university-level Korean learners of English improve the perception on l and r phones. Learners were forced to finish a session of training which consists of two blocks of l/r minimal pair identification training with feedback. This less-than- 20-minutes-long session was repeated for five consecutive days. After pointing out a measurement problem occurring with the use of mean accuracy rates for the evaluation of learners’ perception in the literature, it is proposed that the sensitivity index in the Signal Detection Theory be used as a more precise measure of a learner’s identification performance on the novel l/r contrast. The sensitivity measures show that the training group demonstrated a significant perception improvement compared to the control group.