Korean II

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Korean Community in New Zealand Overview

- Current population: 30,792 (2006 Census: Statistics New Zealand, 2007)
—         1991: 930
—         1996: 12,753
—         2001: 19,026
- First generation community
—         Majority were born in Korea.
—         More than 2/3 have lived in NZ for less than 10 years (2006 Census).
—         More than 25,000 stated they were able to have conversation in Korean (2006 Census).
- A number of characteristics favourable to maintenance of Korean
- Signs of language shift

Proficiency

“How well an individual can speak language”
—         Key construct in language maintenance/shift research
—         Most research in this discipline use ‘self-report’ data.
—         Self-rating
—         Can-do scales
         E.g., I can talk about anything I want to. 

              Strongly disagree|_____|______|______|______|Strongly agree
                                              

A study on Korean families in Auckland

J. Kim (2001)
—         6 families
—         Self-reported proficiency in Korean and English
- Korean proficiency > English proficiency (overall)
—         Inter-generation differences
- Parents
- Children
—         Gender difference
- No noticeable difference (J. Kim & Starks, 2005)

Tests for proficiency

—         Experimental test
- E.g., Cloze test
        Vocabulary test
—         Analysis of language samples
- Naturally-occurring samples (e.g., dinner-table talk; telephone talk; letters; diaries)
- Elicited speech/written samples (e.g., interview; story (re-)telling; group discussion; essay) 

Studies investigating Korean proficiency

- Park (2000)
—         Primary and secondary school and university students in NZ
—         Self-reported proficiency
—         Survey and interview
- Cho (2000)
—         Korean second-generation students in US universities
—         Self-reported proficiency
—         Survey and interview
- S.H.O. Kim (2007)
—         Korean adolescents and young adults in New Zealand
—         Proficiency tests
—         Language samples
—         Self-reports
—         Comparison with monolinguals

My Study

- Vocabulary test
—         Picture-naming test (Korean and English)
- Story-retelling task
—         Simplified versions of Aesop’s fables (Korean and English)
- Self-reports
—         Questionnaire and interview

Findings

—         Story-retelling task: Some attrition in Korean
—         Vocabulary test: Increase in Korean vocabulary
—         Self-reported proficiency: “Slightly increased since the time of their immigration”
—         Many participants seem to perceive their Korean proficiency as lower than their actual proficiency.

Han

- One of the lowest performers in Korean
—         25 years old
—         Male
—         13 year’s residence
—         University graduate
—         Works full-time
- At intermediate school: Han reports that he did not talk much either in Korean or in English at school.
- At college: Han started to socialise with Korean students who were late comers. He reports that he tried  to learn Korean from them “because he was a Korean”.
- After university: Han visited Korea
- Current language use: Near-exclusive Korean use in family and friend domains. High Korean use elsewhere.

Han (Continued)

- Disfluency (stuttering; repetitions; long pause)
—         e.g. ku (.5)  koki  ‘ that meat’
—         Han’s comment :
            “sometimes English words come to mind more often and quickly.…some words, … for example, koki is koki, but, in my mind, it comes as meat automatically…. other times it is yewu [that I intended to say], but it has been fixed as fox in my mind.…so I get confused ....”                     
- Simpler structures/general terms
—         e.g., koki instead of kokistengeli (koki ‘meat’ + s + tengeli             ‘lump’—’a piece of meat’)
- Wrong selection of a word
—         e.g., chac ‘find’ instead of chaciha ‘take possession of (something)’

Korean maintenance and English proficiency

- Positive transfer of Korean to English
—         Many participants with high proficiency in Korean are proficient in English.
- Maintenance/promotion of Korean proficiency is important
—         To promote L2 [English] learning.
—         For cognitive development.
—         In its own right (for a child to become a true bilingual).
-Korean maintenance efforts should start as soon as the immigrant family arrives in the host country