Korean Learners' Long-Term Individual Networks of Practice

Abstract

This dissertation examines investment in language learning, especially how that investment looks over the entirety of a learner’s target language-related journey. It investigates investment, in terms of positive and negative relationships and experiences, both at one point in time and over time, as well as how investment may be linked to a measure of acquisition of the target language. Two groups of Korean learners, Korean as a foreign language learners and Korean as a heritage language learners, were the focus populations. These research questions were approached from both quantitative and qualitative angles. Two quantitative studies measured both groups of Korean learners’ production and comprehension of subject and object Korean externally-headed relative clauses. The initial study found that both groups performed equally as well as each other on both tasks, and the follow-up study used participants’ test scores to correlate linguistic performance with a measure of investment (discussed below). Two qualitative studies focused on investigating both groups of Korean learners’ investment in learning the target language via interviews and diagrams of the participants’ individual networks of practice. These diagrams were extended to show measures of how much time was spent with each node by the focal participant, how much of the relationship with each node was in Korean, as well as what material resources were used (such as books and other media; as opposed to only showing relationships with other people). The results showed the breadth of types of relationships, material resources, group memberships, activities, and other Korean-related exposures both groups experienced. Participants also shared their perspectives on which parts of their networks helped and hurt their language learning progress and their sustained motivation to learn. The initial study focused on networks at one point in time, and a follow-up study asked participants to share their networks and how they looked over the duration of their Korean language learning journeys. Finally, data from the follow-up Korean relative clause test and the follow-up long-term individual network of practice study were combined to investigate a possible connection between language acquisition and long term investment. Participants’ descriptions of their long-term individual networks of practice were assigned numerical scores based on the number of positive and negative reported experiences. The results of a linear regression showed a positive correlation between more positive experiences and a higher test score, indicating that emotional valency in long-term language learning investment may be related to target language acquisition.