The Language Use of a Bilingual Korean Teacher and Bilingual Korean Students in a Korean Heritage Classroom

• In Event: Roundtable Session 42
  In Roundtable Session: Multilingual Pedagogies: Spaces for Flexible Language Use in Bilingual Settings

Abstract

Since many Korean parents in the U. S. send their children to heritage Korean language schools, it is worthwhile to consider the type of curriculum and instruction in the heritage schools to help Korean students to become bilingual and bicultural. The paper investigates that 1) the bilingual Korean first-grade teacher’s language use in book discussions and 2) differences in the two groups of students’ (Korean-immigrant and Korean-American) use of code-switching in their oral and written responses to multicultural children’s literature. The findings show that the teacher can strategically use CS to make her instruction comprehensible and to motivate students’ participation in the target language. Furthermore, the findings imply importance of not making essentialist assumptions about language minority children’s language use.

Authors

• Chaehyun Lee, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Georgia E. Garcia, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign