«¿Qué deberá poner allí?»: Del du-rama y el K-pop a un curso de coreano

'What does it say?' From du-rama and K-pop to a Korean language course

Abstract

We offer a case study about the online learning experiences of a Catalan translator who in her free time watches du-rama series and listens to K-pop music. We get to know the development of her motivation, her discursive practices, the web resources she discovers and utilizes to learn the language (apps, social networks) or what comprehension and reasoning strategies she implements in her informal learning. Our data come from semi-structured interviews and from online observations of her affinity spaces (Twitter account, Korean Instagram accounts) with her informed consent. Our findings disclose that her motivation for Korean music and series, as well as for the fandom contexts surrounding these products, have encouraged her to learn the language in an informal way. As a result, she uses different apps and specific web resources according to her beliefs and experiences with the language, since she considers that grammar is easier than vocabulary, and that the latter is key to communication. Although the young woman holds in high regard these informal learning practices, she believes it is necessary to complement them with formal training of Korean.