A STUDY ON THE VOWEL SYSTEMS OF ENGLISH AND THEIR PEDAGOGICAL FEASIBILITIES

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to contrast the English vowels with those of Korean in order to find the differences between the two vowel systems and the difficult spots for Korean students in learning English. I have presented discussions on four different systems of English vowels. That is, I have dealt with Daniel Jones', Kenyon's, Lado-Fries', and Trager-Smith's vowel systems. Daniel Jones and John Kenyon analyzed English vowels on the phonetic basis and they described the phonetic details for each vowel. On the other hand, Lado, Fries, Trager and Smith analyzed English vowels on the phonemic basis. For the contrastive analysis of English and Korean vowels I have chosen Trager-Smith system for English among the four systems. Practically T-S system is rather simple and, at the same time, it is easier for Korean students to learn. Theoretically, it is phonemic in principle, while Jones' and Kenyon's are more or less phonetically oriented. For the description of Korean vowels, I have followed Huh, Woong's system. English /i, □, □, □, u/ constitute major phonemic problems to the Korean students. I have come to a conclusion that we should treat them as being absent in Korean from the pedagogical point of view. All English diphthongs are falling, whereas, Korean diphthongs are rising. Thus, all English diphthongs constitute problems for Korean students. English /iy, ow, uw, ah, □h, oh/ are apt to be pronounced as simple vowels /i, o, u, a, □/ by Korean students. Korean students tend to pronounce each of the next group of English diphthongs, /ey, ay, oy, aw, ih, eh, uh/, as sequences of two syllabic peaks : that is, two syllables. This is due to the different distributions of stress between English and Korean.