Pronunciation problems of Australian students learning Korean

For the majority of Australian students learning Korean the intervocalically placed Korean liquid consonant is one of the most persistent and prevailing pronunciation problems. An auditory phonetic analysis of the spoken data produced by Australian students learning Korean indicates that the pronunciation problem is most likely to be caused by L1 transfer, the sub-phonemic nature of the Korean flapping rule together with the morphophonemic and syllable based characteristics of the Korean orthography. Current teaching practice and students’ learning strategy may also play a crucial role in the non-learning of the pronunciation of the intervoalically placed Korean liquid consonant.