Exploring the Motivations and Identities of Immigrant Adolescents Pursuing Korean Heritage Language Learning: Navigating Across Contexts

• In Event: 31.091 - Roundtable Session 10
  In Roundtable Session: 31.091-23 - Exploring Identities of Adolescent Bilingual Students in U.S. Schools

Abstract

This study investigated nine Korean immigrant adolescents’ motivational experiences while learning and maintaining Korean as a heritage language (HL) in the United States. Constant comparative analyses of data showed that, although all students experienced heritage motivation and expressed self-determined and autonomous reasons for learning the HL at some point in their lived experience, the students’ reasons for learning Korean varied within and across contexts according to their identity experiences, showing at least three meaningful patterns emerged. These adolescents’ various ranges and types of constructed reasons for learning Korean were informed by their identities as Korean HL learners, which were allowed or constrained in several sociocultural contexts (e.g., home, American school, and Korean HL school).

Author

• Jung-In Kim, University of Colorado - Denver