Language learners’ mental images of Korea: insights for the teaching of culture in the language classroom

Adopting French Names as Identity Markers among Second Foreign Language (L3) Learners in China

“…Culture-associated norms or factors were taken into consideration by five students (17.24%) when selecting their French names. Previous studies on multilingual development offer empirical evidence that culture-related aspects of a target language country play prominent roles in shaping language learners' mental perceptions of the language and influence their linguistic awareness (Nikitina & Furuoka 2019). The reasons given by the participants in this study suggest that their cross-cultural awareness of France is generally concerned with Western myth, history, and customs.…”

“…Many other studies reveal that foreign language learning also involves learning about the target language country, its culture, and its society. This cultural awareness is recognized as a valuable resource for developing linguistic competence through a foreign language instructional program (Nikitina & Furuoka 2019). This kind of cultural embeddedness can involve teaching students about the literature, philosophy, and history of a country.…”

Motivations for Learning Korean in Vietnam: L2 Selves and Regulatory Focus Perspectives

“…However, the notion of the ideal multilingual self may not necessarily be applicable in other LOTE learning contexts. For example, LOTE learners in Asia have shown strong interests in the target language culture, fondness towards the target language itself, cultural affinity between the target and native languages (e.g., Huang & Feng, 2019;Nikitina & Furuoka, 2019;Zheng et al, 2019), or the effects of geographical proximity (Humphreys & Miyazoe-Wong, 2007). In addition, perceived attributes of the target language speakers were found to be an important component of LOTE motivation; for Chinese learners of Japanese language, people's appearance (e.g., well-groomed) and personality (e.g., attention to details) were often mentioned as a motivation for learning Japanese (Huang & Feng, 2019).…”