earticle

영어

The forms and demands of language learning are changing in the pandemic era. Learners no longer rely solely on a formal language curriculum. Instead, they are using various informal language learning (ILL) channels. Although informal language learning has been in the spotlight and is growing, more research on ILL is needed. In this study, ILL taking place through an online community was analyzed. Articles from the Korean learning community (r/Korean in Reddit) were collected, and the topic modeling technique, Latent Dirichlet Allocation, was conducted on the collected data. As a result, seven major topics were selected. The most common topics in all posts were issues faced by beginner learners, followed by vocabulary and sentence meanings, interest in Chinese characters and applications of Korean language skills, culture and daily life, translation, online learning materials, and Korean phonics. Through this, the interests of ILL learners and the characteristics of learners could be identified. Due to the nature of ILL, in which a formal curriculum does not exist, it was found that questions about general strategies for learning and questions that could not be solved in formal language education were most prominent. In addition, the characteristics of ILL learners who actively sought learning content and materials were also found.