An Analysis of Interlanguage Research Trends in Korean Language Education

This study analyzes the trend of interlanguage research in Korean language education, focusing on the central structure and agglomeration structure. To this end, a total of 4,343 keywords were extracted from a total of 720 research papers, including 403 related academic journals and 317 degree papers, and network text analysis was attempted after data filtering. As a result of the central structure analysis, the key words with high connection centrality in the interlanguage study in Korean language education were ‘error analysis’, ‘Chinese’, ‘education plan’, ‘learner corpus’, and ‘grammar’. As a result of the agglomeration structure analysis, the trend of interlanguage research in Korean language education focused on “contrast analysis (G1) on pronunciation acquisition of Vietnamese and Mongolian learners,” “Investigation and connected mother education plan (G2) for Japanese learners using learner corpus,” “Development of specialized textbooks and research on Korean language development (G3) for various Korean learners,” and “Study on vocabulary errors and pragmatic strategies (G4) of Chinese learners.” To sum up the research results, the need to theorize learners' error research, the need to prove educational effects through experimental research, the lack of research in the listening area, the still existing Asian learner concentration, and the lack of understanding of cultural communication skills should be supplemented. This study’s significance is the diversification of learners, the discovery of trends in literacy education, and the discovery of interlanguage development research trends newly discovered through this study.