Comparison between read and spontaneous speech assessment of L2 Korean

This paper describes two experiments aimed at exploring the relationship between linguistic aspects and perceived proficiency in read and spontaneous speech. 5,000 utterances of read speech by 50 non-native speakers of Korean in Experiment 1, and of 6,000 spontaneous speech utterances in Experiment 2 were scored for proficiency by native human raters and were analyzed by factors known to be related to perceived proficiency. The results show that the factors investigated in this study can be employed to predict proficiency ratings, and the predictive power of fluency and pitch and accent accuracy is strong for both read and spontaneous speech. We also observe that while proficiency ratings of read speech are mainly related to segmental accuracy, those of spontaneous speech appear to be more related to pitch and accent accuracy. Moreover, proficiency in read speech does not always equate to the proficiency in spontaneous speech, and vice versa, with Pearson’s per-speaker correlation score of 0.535.