Realizations of two speech acts of heritage learners of Korean: Request and apology strategies

The purpose of this study was to describe and analyze realizations of two speech acts, request and apology, of heritage learners of Korean in comparison with those of Korean native speakers. Twenty native speakers of Korean and twenty Korean-Americans who speak Korean as a second language participated in the study. They we undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in a university in the Midwest. Data we collected using oral Discourse Completion Tests (DCT) that consisted of ten items for request and apology, respectively. In addition to performing on DCT, the participants responded to the interview questions regarding the thinking processes that they experienced while performing on the DCT. Participants' performances on DCT and interview were audiotaped and transcribed for analysis. The request and apology data were analyzed using a coding scheme adapted from the Cross Cultural Speech Act Research Project (CCSARP) and Suh (1999a) by deleting some categories and adding new categories. Frequency of occurrence of the strategies in each situation were calculated. Additionally, the linguistic characteristics of the two groups' productions were described and compared for each situation. Interview data were analyzed in terms of recurring themes and patterns. The data analysis revealed differences between NS and NNS participants' request and apology realizations. The main findings were: (1) NS subjects used a greater number and wider range of supportive moves than NNS subjects did, (2) NNS subjects made a request when NS subjects tended to avoid making a request, (3) NS participants' use of IFID and intensifying adverbials varied depending on the degree of offense/mistake, age, and power relationship while NNS subjects' use of those features was more evenly spread out across the situations, (4) the participants considered many factors such as age, power relationship, social distance, situation, and setting in performing DCT, (5) the sources of difficulty in NNS participants' performance on DCT were grammar, vocabulary, speech style, and unfamiliarity with the setting, and (6) half of the NNS participants formulated their responses in English and translated them into Korean.;Based on the findings, implications for teaching Korean as a second/foreign language are presented for teachers and program designers.