영어 운율읽기와 영어 듣기 능력과의 상관관계 조사

Abstract

The understanding of prosodic features is very important for the development of listening competence in a language as rhythmic as English. Competent at prosodic features, a fluent listener can organize a speaker’s sentence into meaningful units, and then selectively pay attention to the units—more attention to more important units, thus achieving listening fluency. Despite this importance, English teachers in Korea appear inclined to employ the segmental approach to teaching listening skills. Their inclination might be rooted in the skepticism that the competence of English prosodic features has no effect on listening competence. Thus, it seems urgent that more studies should be conducted to promote the use of the prosodic approach among them by reducing their skepticism. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between the understanding of English prosodic features and English listening competence. The participants’ levels of understanding English prosodic features were measured by their performances of English prosodic reading, and their levels of English listening competence were assessed by the TOEIC test. The data analysis indicated that there was a moderate and significant correlation (r = .493, p < .01) between the two variables. At the end of this study, implications for English education for listening skills were discussed.