The forms and demands of language learning are changing in the pandemic era. Learners no longer rely solely on a formal language curriculum. Instead, they are using various informal language learning (ILL) channels. Although informal language learning has been in the spotlight and is growing, more research on ILL is needed. In this study, ILL taking place through an online community was analyzed. Articles from the Korean learning community (r/Korean in Reddit) were collected, and the topic modeling technique, Latent Dirichlet Allocation, was conducted on the collected data. As a result, seven major topics were selected. The most common topics in all posts were issues faced by beginner learners, followed by vocabulary and sentence meanings, interest in Chinese characters and applications of Korean language skills, culture and daily life, translation, online learning materials, and Korean phonics. Through this, the interests of ILL learners and the characteristics of learners could be identified. Due to the nature of ILL, in which a formal curriculum does not exist, it was found that questions about general strategies for learning and questions that could not be solved in formal language education were most prominent. In addition, the characteristics of ILL learners who actively sought learning content and materials were also found.

This study attempts to examine the distributions and characteristics of language forms and learning activities necessary for communication used in the middle school textbooks based on the 2015 revised national curriculum. To this end, 12 textbooks were analyzed and compared by grades and 4 textbooks by different publishers. The results are as follows: 1) Of the 38 language forms required for communication in middle school textbooks, 23 forms were commonly addressed in all the textbooks, while 12 forms were optional or missing, which may cause problems in articulated learning. 2) Even in the same language form, the level of difficulty increases as the grade goes up, which follows spiral curriculum. 3) Some language forms were omitted in the list presented in the 2015 revised curriculum, where only examples were presented without explanation. Explicit explanations need adding with elaborately classified examples. 4) Although the activities in the textbooks focus more on language acquisition than language use, they are well-organized to practice core language forms focusing on meaning in a controlled manner and gradually apply them to real life situations.

The studies on Speech Acts of Directives (and the traditional study of Imperative Sentences) of local scholars have achieved some valuable results, including the definition and the inner classification of Speech Acts of Directives based on the speaker’s authority and power, the tone of sentence. However, it is observed that in speech communication, a directive sentence is given by the speaker based on some other influences besides those factors, which is against the former studies. Therefore, there should be a more complicated mechanism in the formation of a speech act of directives, not just formed by an individual factor. This article examines the selection process of the directive speech acts based on the theory of prototypic categories, and take more complicated, organic organized contexts into consideration. The context factors can be divided into constant factors and changeable factors. The combination of the two factors decides the range of selection of directive speech acts and the final form of output of the speech act.

중국과 한국이 다 한자문화권에 속해 언어와 문화의 비슷한 부분이 많다. 학자들이 양국 언어에 대해 비교연구를 많이 실시했으며 중한 인터넷언어는 비슷한 부분이 있지만 차이점도 적지 않다. 본 연구는 중한 양국 인터넷 언어의 어휘적 특징에 대한 비교연구를 한 결과 양국 인터넷 언어의 구성방식은 해음식, 생략식, 새로 해석식, 부호식 등으로 나눌 수 있는 공동점이 있지만 언어 자체의 특성과 사회적 문화차이 등으로 인해 많은 차이점도 있는 것으로 나타났다. 중국 인터넷 언어에서 해음 현상이 많으나 한국어에서는 적으며 중국어도 표의문자의 특성으로 인해 많은 기존 단어들에 대한 새로운 해석이 많지만 한국어에서는 거의 없다.