ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the findings based on empirical data showing that heritage language (HL) learners exhibit processing strategies and language transfer that differed from those of Non-heritage Learners (non-HL) learners. Due to HL experience and complex socio-psychological issues, HL learners possess distinctive language behaviors and needs that are clearly different from those of non-HL learners. The chapter investigates the differences in language transfer and strategy use of HL and non-HL learners when processing Korean sentences. In order to identify how HL learners process language differently from non-HL learners, a few empirical studies have compared the syntactic development in Korean between the two types of learners. A vital pedagogical implication for HL learners would be to maximize the combination of the learner’s production and efficient negative feedback of the teacher to promote noticing of the discrepancies between their output and the corrective feedback.
