How Well Do Jeju Islanders Know Jejueo? 제주도민은 제주어를 얼마나 잘 알고 있을까?
It is often very difficult to assess a language's vitality by simply surveying residents about how well they speak it. This is certainly true of Jejueo as well. In this paper, we describe an experimental technique designed to improve self-assessments of proficiency in Jejueo by exposing participants to a simple linguistic task before they render their judgments. The viability of the approach is evaluated with the help of a case study involving 81 residents of Jeju Island; the paper can be downloaded below.
Testing is increasingly recognized as a vital part of language revitalization. The following paper demonstrates that the assessment of linguistic knowledge should also be part of the planning process that precedes the creation of a revitalization program.
"Pre-revitalization language assessment" by Sejung Yang.