THE IMPACT OF MISINTERPRETED PHONICS CONCEPTS ON THE FORMATION OF KOREAN PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS: AN ANALYSIS OF BEGINNER KOREAN LEARNERS IN UZBEKISTAN

Abstract

This study examines how the misinterpretation of phonics concepts influences the formation of phonological awareness among beginner learners of Korean in Uzbekistan. While phonics is originally designed as a grapheme–phoneme correspondence strategy to support word recognition in alphabetic languages such as English, it has increasingly been adapted to Korean pronunciation instruction. However, Korean is a syllable-based language in terms of perceptual organization, and consonants are not independently realized outside syllabic structures. Through qualitative case analysis of classroom instruction and learner speech data, this study identifies structural mismatches between phonics-based instructional explanations and the phonological system of Korean. Findings reveal that consonant syllabification, unnecessary vowel insertion, instability in syllable perception, and failure to distinguish minimal pairs are not merely articulatory errors but reflect deeper misalignment in phonological unit setting. The study argues that phonics itself is not problematic; rather, its reinterpretation as a pronunciation production rule—detached from its original word-recognition purpose—leads to distortions in phonological awareness formation. The paper concludes by emphasizing the necessity of a syllable-centered approach in early-stage Korean pronunciation instruction.