The acquisition of Hangul writing system among Korean language learners in a multilingual context

The number of allophone immigrants to Canada, whose mother tongue is neither French nor English, has increased over the last several decades. They often choose to preserve their heritage language as a cultural integration strategy within the reality of the larger French and English communities. However, allophone immigrant students face contradictions between tools and rules in the new cultural context as they learn their heritage language. Viewed with a Vygotskian lens, written language provides the child with a new set of psychological tools, meaning that teaching and learning writing should be dealt with differently from spoken language. Korean immigrant students are more likely to face contradictions due to the distinctive writing system of Korean. This case study of a heritage language class aims to understand how second language learners acquire the Korean writing system as a set of psychological tools situated within the multilingual context of Montreal. Using CHAT as an approach to learning writing requires learners to engage in literacy activities so that teachers and parents understand students’ writing in response to the demand of their discourse communities. Based on this perspective, our analysis focuses on three central contradictions faced by second language learners of Korean: (1) that between the Korean writing system and the Latin alphabet, (2) that between Korean and French word meaning, and (3) that between the Korean and French grammatical marking systems.