An investigation of Korean learners' difficulties in using English intonation to express emotion: perception and production

The present study investigated whether Korean English as a Foreign Language learners experience difficulties in using English intonation particularly to perceive and express emotion. The difficulties are examined in both perception and production of emotional intonations by comparing the differences in the emotional responses of Korean English as Foreign Language learners and native speakers to the presented emotional declarative sentences. Based on Core Affect theory, the construct of emotion was operationalised on a two-dimensional matrix: valence (positive vs. negative) and intensity (strong vs. weak). A combination of the Autosegmental Matrix Model and Halliday’s tone models were adapted to analyse intonation patterns. The study conducted a three-phase data collection process: (a) Phase 1: conducting an emotion word rating survey, (b) Phase 2: conducting a production task, a brief stimulated interview, and a perception task for American undergraduate participants (c) Phase 3: conducting the same production task, stimulated recall task, and perception task for Korean students. The results of the current study provided empirical evidence that Korean English as Foreign language learners experience difficulties in using English intonation to express emotions. The results of this study showed that on the word perception level, Korean participants experienced a lesser degree of emotional valence when reading emotion words compared to the American group. Korean students also were less likely to recognise English prosodic cues as semantic components when they listen to emotional utterances. On the production level, Koreans also used a different parsing pattern and utilised a narrower range of pitch variations, which can contribute to diminishing the pragmatic force of their spoken messages. Korean students also tended to recall contexts that were less personal and specific when producing emotional utterances. All these aspects led to Korean students' pragmatic difficulties in communicating emotion in English. The study, therefore, calls attention to the need for the teaching of intonation patterns to express emotions, which in turn may help learners to take more ownership of using English for internal and emotional use.