Your accent is not what lowers the score
Speaking tests measure how easily a listener understands you, not how native you sound. A clear Korean accent is compatible with the top bands. Swallowed word endings are not.
The main issue: release your final consonants
In Korean, a consonant at the end of a syllable is held but not released — the mouth closes and stops. English releases it: there is a small burst of air you can hear.
When an unreleased Korean ending is carried into English, the final consonant becomes almost inaudible, and to a listener the word sounds unfinished or like a different word.
- back, bat, bad all collapse towards the same unfinished sound
- like → lai, good → gu
This matters more in English than it does in Korean, because English keeps grammar at the ends of words. A swallowed -s or -ed reads to the examiner as a grammar mistake, not just a pronunciation one:
- She works here → She work here (lost the third-person -s)
- I walked home → I walk home (lost the past tense -ed)
- two books → two book (lost the plural)
Extra vowels in clusters
Korean syllables do not stack consonants the way English does, so a vowel tends to get inserted to make the cluster sayable.
- stress → seu-teu-re-seu
- strike → seu-teu-ra-ik
- milk → mil-keu
A one-syllable word arriving as four syllables is not heard as an accent — it is heard as a different word, and the listener loses the rest of the sentence catching up. Practise saying the consonants with no vowel between them, slowly at first.
The sound contrasts worth fixing
| Sound | Why it's hard | What a listener may hear |
|---|---|---|
| /r/ vs /l/ | Korean has one liquid; /r/ and /l/ are positional variants of it. | rice / lice, collect / correct |
| /f/ and /v/ | Neither exists in Korean; they become /p/ and /b/. | coffee → coppee, very → berry |
| /z/ | Not in Korean; becomes /j/ or /s/. | zoo → jyu, is → iss |
| /θ/ and /ð/ (th) | Not in Korean; become /s/ or /d/. | think → sink, they → dey |
| /i:/ vs /ɪ/ | The tense/lax distinction does not map cleanly. | sheep / ship, beat / bit |
| /æ/ vs /e/ | Both map onto a similar Korean vowel. | bad / bed, man / men |
What is not on the list: your intonation, your rhythm, or the general sound of your accent. Those mark you as Korean and do not stop anyone understanding you.
Word stress
Korean gives syllables fairly even weight. English leans hard on one syllable per word and reduces the rest. Wrong stress can make a word unrecognisable even when every sound in it is correct.
- PHO-to-graph · pho-TOG-ra-pher — same root, different stress.
- Content words are stressed; a, the, of, to, is are said quickly and quietly.
How to practise
- Record yourself. While speaking you hear what you meant to say, not what you said.
- Start with final consonants. Read aloud and release every word ending, especially -s and -ed. This changes two scores at once.
- Then take one contrast from the table for a week — /r/–/l/ or /f/–/p/ first, since those change real words. Practise in sentences, not single words.
- Check, do not guess. Get an external read on which sounds a listener actually missed.
Aflo scores your speech sound by sound and shows you which sounds were hardest to catch.
For the test, and for real life
For the exam: finish your words, drop the extra vowels, and fix the few contrasts that change meaning. That is the whole list.
Outside the exam you may want to sound more American or more British, for work or for yourself. That is a legitimate goal and there are good books for it, but it is a different goal from scoring well. Clarity is what the test pays for; the accent can stay.
Frequently asked questions
Will my Korean accent lower my speaking score?
No. These tests score intelligibility rather than native-likeness, and Aflo's pronunciation scoring has a floor so that differences which are only accent stop affecting the score. What lowers a score is unreleased word endings, inserted vowels, and the contrasts that turn one word into another.
What should I fix first?
Releasing final consonants. Korean holds a final consonant without releasing it, so English endings become almost inaudible. Because English carries grammar at the ends of words, a swallowed -s or -ed is heard as a grammar mistake as well, which means the habit lowers two scores at once.
Is /r/ versus /l/ worth working on?
Yes, because English has many real word pairs that depend on it — rice and lice, correct and collect. Korean uses one liquid sound, so the contrast has to be learned deliberately. It is worth doing, but after you have fixed word endings and extra vowels.
How do I know which sounds to work on?
Record yourself and get an external check — you cannot judge your own pronunciation while producing it. Aflo compares your speech with the expected pronunciation one sound at a time and reports the sounds a listener was most likely to miss.