A consequence of starting my career in 2020 was starting my career in the depths of the global Covid 19 pandemic. Like many others, I turned to new hobbies to pass time and cope. My first pandemic hobby was Animal Crossing and sour dough. My second was completing as much online professional learning during my CF year (clinical fellowship year) to help me learn about my case load. (I was treating phonological disorders with help of interpreters, funding AAC, complex language, emergent language, voice, etc. I felt pulled in many directions. ) My third pandemic hobby was Hallyu content or Korean Dramas and Kpop.
If you have met anyone who fell in love with kdramas, one day they are trying a recommended show on Netflix, and two weeks later they are cooking new recipes and starting Korean on Duolingo. This is of course the power of our favorite things! My interest in language, food, and media of Korea also led me to the question of Korean AAC. What options existed out there the Korean speaking clients and more selfishly, could these Korean AAC tools help me learn Korean.
My job had given me the opportunity to introduce alternative and augmentative communication (AAC) tools to kids with the home language of Spanish. With the help of their parents and interpreters, we would conduct the treatment sessions in Spanish and English. Aside from those treatment sessions, I didn’t have time or energy to study Spanish. Incredibly I learned lots of Spanish nouns and verbs over time and retained them for quite some time. Using language in context and with lot of visual support I think were critical ingredients to my accidental Spanish vocabulary retention.
Since asking “what options are there for Korean AAC”, I have learned about lots of great tech! I’ll share a future time what I have found and continue learning about Korean AAC options. I also designed a language learning tool for myself in the AAC program Coughdrop AAC. I based it on Core Word research, so it may over time be useful for AAC. However, its purpose is as a language learning tool primarily as I don’t have native proficiency or experience to make an accurate linguistic visual representation of Korean.
Here is a link to the project: https://app.mycoughdrop.com/cmadsen/korean-core_1
I like to speak on my design process and elevate and share about other Korean AAC projects. Stay tuned for more!