IN LEARNING VIETNAMESE AS A HERITAGE LANGUAGE: A CASE STUDY OF KOREAN - VIETNAMESE LEARNERS

Abstract

Heritage language is a term that has recently emerged and become a new trend in research. In addition to being a foreign language, Vietnamese is also considered a heritage language taught, preserved, and maintained in many communities. This article examines a group of Korean students learning Vietnamese as a heritage language to investigate the influence of the dominant language (Korean) on the heritage language (Vietnamese) and their proficiency of the heritage language with respect to the directed motion constructions. In our study, we have identified several performance errors commonly made by the heritage language speakers, including: the inability to distinguish different Path elements in motion constructions, the failure to recognize the word order of Vietnamese sentential constituents, and the error in misplacing different elements in the extended verb phrase, leading to comprehension  difficulties.