Case Studies of Seven Korean-Canadian Students' Identity and Use of Heritage Language in a Korean Heritage Saturday School in Montreal

Download or read book Case Studies of Seven Korean-Canadian Students' Identity and Use of Heritage Language in a Korean Heritage Saturday School in Montreal written by Jayoung Kim and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In this qualitative inquiry, I explore seven Korean-Canadian youth's perceptions of their identities and lived experiences of learning Korean in a Korean heritage Saturday school in Montreal. I use Bakhtin's dialogic theory of language, Vygotsky's sociocultural theory of development, and Bourdieu's concept of different forms of capital to frame this inquiry. I use a case study methodology to understand the diverse ways that these seven Korean-Canadian youth represent their sociocultural worlds as heritage language learners in a Korean heritage Saturday school. Data includes individual interviews and group conversations with these youth over four months I observed at the Korean heritage Saturday school. Rather than making essentialized generalizations about their behaviors, values, or beliefs, data analysis indicates that although these participants appear to be similar as Korean heritage language learners, they expressed, voiced, and differently represented, negotiated, socially constructed their identities in their social interactions with others within different languages and ideological social environments such as home, school, and Korean heritage Saturday school. Understanding their dynamic identity construction in learning Korean as a heritage language or first language is an important consideration to understand their diverse positionings, values, and beliefs as they negotiate their multiple social worlds. More qualitative inquiries of heritage language learners and their voices are needed to better understand how heritage language learners perceive, negotiate, and construct their identity construction in multiple social spaces and places." --