The interaction of affective factors in L2 acquisition of Korean formulaic language: A critical overview

Recent corpus approaches to Korean formulaic language reveal its richness as a lexical resource. Although many Korean-as-a-foreign-language (KFL) studies have investigated formulaic language from pedagogical perspectives, most existing research is not theoretically or empirically based, leading to issues with validity and applicability to teaching practices. This study first reviews prior KFL studies that offer inventory lists of formulaic expressions. Such lists tend to be based on commonly recognized factors in second language (L2) acquisition of formulaic language, such as first language (L1) background, L2 frequency, transparency, and culture. These inventory lists are useful resources for developing new KFL teaching materials, but tend to lack systematicity with respect to their methods and categorization. The study suggests that new instructional approaches and teaching materials need to be grounded on empirical research to provide more effective teaching of formulaic language. Therefore, the study also reviews empirical studies that demonstrate variation in the influence of these factors in different learning conditions and across different proficiency levels. The study argues that L2 learners utilize diverse strategies and knowledge sources, and therefore, to develop effective materials it is crucial to empirically investigate how the influence of the various factors changes depending on contexts and proficiency levels.