The advancement in technology and availability of Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) technology and the Internet made meaningful interaction possible in both on and offline environments, which is referred to as blended learning. Blended learning has recently begun to gain popularity in ELT, and appropriate models of blended learning need to be developed for EFL classrooms. However, there have not been many attempts to investigate its application and development of appropriate teaching and learning models of blended learning in the field of ELT, especially in relation to English language skills and subskills. Therefore, the purposes of this study are to investigate the students’ perspectives and effectiveness of blended learning in English pronunciation skills, and to explore gender differences in blended learning. The subjects of this study consist of 173 Korean university students, and quantitative data including questionnaire and pre-experiment were collected. The major findings of the study are as follows. First, students’ perspectives in blended learning, its components, and tools were very positive. Second, blended learning was found to be effective in the development of segmental and suprasegmental pronunciation skills. Third, there were few significant gender differences found regarding social aspects of online interaction. Implications and suggestions based on the findings and discussion are provided.

Since the introduction of the 6th National Curriculum, English pronunciation teaching in Korea has geared toward fluency, less focusing on accuracy. Since then the two technical terms, accuracy and fluency, have been widely used in the EFL literature in Korea, but in a rather confusing way. This paper is an endeavor to clarify these two concepts in terms of the viewpoints of Phonetics and English Education. From the phonetic standpoint, I argued that accuracy is more closely related to 'clear speech,' whereas fluency is applicable to either 'clear speech' or 'casual speech'. I also suggested two methods for the evaluation of English speaking fluency: one is the evaluation of weak form pronunciation: the other, sentence stresses. From a viewpoint of English Education, I reviewed some relevant literature and found that (1) accuracy and fluency are related to language usage and language use, respectively; (2) accuracy and fluency have been used as terms applicable to all four language skills in language learning, rather than speaking skill only: (3) a definition of fluency needs to be modified for its flexible use in ESL/EFL classroom setting; (4) a number of recent textbooks on pronunciation teaching include lots of useful fluency enhancing practices. As a conclusion, I summed up afore-mentioned discussions and presented some suggestions for the National Curriculum in the future.

This paper discusses what the basic principle of Korean consonantal assimilation and tensification is and how to teach the two processes to learners. Since some of the Korean phonological changes including these two processes are complicated and cannot easily be seen in other languages, students may face difficulty in learning such processes. It has been claimed that these processes are due to the "principle of economy" in pronunciation. That is, certain consonant clusters or consonantal sequences that are difficult to produce undergo changes in a way to make them easy to pronounce. In this paper I argue against such a claim by adopting the principle of English, which has two different types of consonant clusters, namely "word-initial and word-final clusters". The phonotactic constraints of the word-final clusters in this language, which are opposite to the case of word-initial clusters, have the ascending structure in the consonantal strength between the two consonants. We see that the two consonants in sequence in Korean have almost the same structure. Unlike English, these constraints must be obeyed whether words are simple or complex in Korean. The two consonants that are not kept up to these constraints by the morphological process undergo phonological process. This is the principle of consonantal assimilation and tensification in Korean, and thus, teachers (and also possibly learners) of Korean should recognize the principle to understand the processes correctly.

As the International Maritime English Organization (IMO) model course for Maritime English has been recently revised and updated, the requirements of current changes to both the 2010 STCW Manila Amendments and English education have been actively reviewed. In order to provide practical guidelines for language teaching, a wide range of new pedagogical approaches and their theoretical backgrounds are also suggested. However, considering the current spread of Business English as a Lingua Franca (BELF) and its critical importance in maritime communication, the pedagogical approaches need to be re-evaluated, specifically in terms of teaching pronunciation in order to emphasize clear and effective communication among international interlocutors. Therefore, the core pedagogical elements of pronunciation should be clearly set and provided with consideration for Lingua Franca Core (LFC), which places importance on mutual intelligibility rather than following the rules of native speakers. In this paper, the current trends of BELF in the maritime industry will thus be introduced. Following this, the importance of LFC in maritime communication will be outlined, and its key features will be discussed in terms of effectiveness and clarity of international maritime communications. Finally, a close comparison between LFC and the pronunciation guidelines suggested by the IMO Maritime English model course 3.17 will be conducted, and pedagogical implications for future teaching pronunciation in cross-cultural global maritime industry will be suggested.