Gradient of learnability in teaching English pronunciation to Korean learners

This paper aims to propose a gradient of learnability as a criterion for setting priorities in pronunciation teaching. A total of 40 Korean subjects (mostly aged 12 year) were tested on their discrimination ability of English sounds before and after participating in a high variability phonetic training (HVPT) program for 4 weeks. This study shows highly promising results for pronunciation teaching with the HVPT method. First, lower level learners show greater improvements in phoneme discrimination ability compared to upper level learners. Second, consonants are better discriminated than vowels and greater improvements are seen with consonant contrasts than with vowels that have a lower functional load. Third, many of the sounds with high functional load have a high learnability. Fourth, greater improvements are seen with sounds that are poorly identified before the training than sounds that are well-identified. Fifth, young learners also benefit from the HVPT, much like highly motivated adult learners. A learnability gradient was established on the basis of the phoneme learnability index and the pairwise learnability index. On the basis of the constructed gradient of learnability and the concept of functional load, a set of priorities was provided for teaching English pronunciation to young Korean learners.