Kitaek Kim

Professor
Department of English Language Education
Seoul National University

My research in second language acquisition examines how multilingual speakers represent, develop, and use grammatical knowledge. A central question is whether learners’ difficulties reflect limitations in grammatical knowledge, problems in accessing that knowledge during processing, or both.

My work connects linguistic theory (particularly generative approaches) with experimental studies of language comprehension and production, cross-linguistic influence, and language learning. I also develop resources that help students investigate language through experimental, corpus-based, and computational methods.

Research Programs

Under what processing conditions do learners show sensitivity to grammatical structure?

My research is grounded in the view that learners develop structured grammatical representations. I combine comprehension and production tasks with real-time measures, including eye-tracking, to examine how learners use grammatical information. By manipulating perceptual clarity, lexical accessibility, and sentence context, I test whether learners who perform non-targetlike under ordinary conditions show sensitivity to grammatical structure when processing demands are reduced. 

How do a speaker’s languages shape one another over time?

I develop and test accounts of cross-linguistic influence in child and adult L2 learners, L3 learners, and heritage speakers. This work examines the influence of earlier-acquired languages on later learning, the effects of an L2 on the L1, and changes associated with language dominance, maintenance, and reduced use. A central aim is to identify which properties of the languages involved, and which aspects of a speaker’s experience with them, shape the strength and direction of cross-linguistic influence.

How can research on input processing inform language teaching and assessment?

I examine when processing support leads to lasting learning, for example in studies of prediction-based priming, and how such findings can guide the selection and adaptation of input. This work extends to the instruments and materials teachers rely on: validating proficiency measures, examining curriculum alignment with international frameworks such as the CEFR, and analyzing the vocabulary and grammar of textbooks and authentic media.

Selected Research

Case in heritage Korean

Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism · 2018

Showing that heritage speakers’ difficulty with case in scrambled sentences diminishes when case marking is made more salient and contextually supported. 

Learnability of the English tough construction

Second Language Research · 2022

Examining developmental similarities in the acquisition of the English tough construction by L1-Korean child and adult L2 learners.

L1 lexical attrition in heritage children

Bilingualism: Language and Cognition · 2022

Examining how age of acquisition and language experience relate to L1 lexical attrition in sequential bilingual heritage children.

Lexical frequency and predictive processing

Language Learning · 2026

Showing how high-frequency words earlier in a sentence can facilitate prediction in a second language.

Third-person singular -s in L2 English

Language and Cognition · 2026

Showing that sentence position modulates real-time sensitivity to agreement morphology, and that online and offline performance can dissociate.

Facilitating L2 learning through prediction

Studies in Second Language Acquisition · Accepted

Testing whether predicting a partner’s utterances supports sustained changes in L2 production through a conceptual replication and extension of Grüter et al. (2021).

View all publications →

Teaching and Research Resources

Cookbook

Step-by-step activities for exploring language through natural language processing, corpus analysis, and eye-tracking. Each recipe introduces a task, the tools needed to complete it, and questions for extending and interpreting the results.

Materials

Lecture materials, readings, experimental manuals, and research instruments for students and researchers.

Selected Awards and Grants

Selected Academic Roles

Background

I received my Ph.D. in Second Language Studies from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in 2014 (dissertation co-chairs: Bonnie D. Schwartz and William O’Grady), and my M.A. and B.A. in English Language Education from Seoul National University in 2008 and 2006, respectively. I taught at Gyeongin National University of Education before joining Seoul National University in 2020.