The present study investigates attitudes, opinions, or characteristics of a group of heritage language learners of Korean in terms of teacher's language use in the US university foreign language classroom compared to those of non-heritage language learners. Data were collected through direct, first-hand observations, students' self-reports and questionnaires. Looking at the process of learning a foreign language, this study considers how foreign language teachers can address the complex histories of language learners by drawing on a qualitative as well as quantitative analysis of a foreign language class. The results of this study reveal that there were indeed no inter-language group (between heritage and non-heritage learners) differences in the perceptions of teacher's language use in the classroom. Both heritage and non-heritage learner groups have quite strong reactions to the teacher's use of L2 for the purposes of giving instructions, evaluating/commenting their oral performances, and building relationships. During the learners' reaction component of the study, most learners indicated that students' ability in the L2 most consistently affected the amount of L2 that teachers could use.

This paper investigated Korean heritage learners" acquisition of Korean as a second language. In particular, written narratives of 16 Korean heritage learners were analyzed in order to identify errors and strategies observed in Korean heritage learners" second language writing. The findings of the study indicated that learners" errors were not significantly related to their proficiency levels in the target language. Likewise, no significant differences were observed in errors due to their proficiency levels. However, some differences were noted in several grammatical categories. In case- or tense-related areas, learners with higher proficiency levels were not much more accurate than those with lower proficiency levels. However, in terms of the use of inflectional markers, learners with higher proficiency levels exhibited higher accuracy than lower level learners. With regard to their use of strategies, literal translation, code-switching, and approximation were most frequently observed in their writings. The paper concludes with some implications for teaching Korean as a foreign language.