The Standards for Korean language learning is a tour de force that serves as an exemplary model for other world language education programs. The dedicated efforts of the authors have provided the field with a set of well-articulated and robust expectations and learning outcomes across seven proficiency levels including a notable separate heritage language (HL) level. This work lays a solid foundation for continued advancements in learning outcomes and pedagogy in Korean language education.There are several impressive points about the proposed Korean standards. First, the systematic design of the learning progression increments reflects a deep understanding of realistic performance outcomes across a broad range of language learners as well as the needs of language learners, in particular, those unique to HL learners. The presentation of the learning progression in a spiraling manner not only enables a smooth transition from level to level, but also takes into account learning slides that may happen over nonacademic months. Second, the comprehensive articulation of learning goals that covers the multiple facets of language performance including communicative functions, contexts, content topics, text types, language control, targeted vocabulary, communication strategies, and cultural awareness of learners at the different proficiency levels are presented in an accessible manner. The learning goals and performance indicators can easily become overwhelming; however, the inclusion of sample texts, audiovisual materials, and suggested classroom activities makes it possible for even the most novice language teacher to effectively and successfully utilize. Yet, it must be noted that although the standards are proposed for K–16 grade levels and are described to allow enough flexibility for adaptation for individual student populations, the proposed curricula were mainly designed with a post-secondary student audience in mind. In future revisions, perhaps inclusion of some K–12 models and sample units as well as more involvement from K–12 educators would be ideal. Third, its strong alignment with the language and communication goals of the Common Core Standards as well as the five Cs of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) standards contributes to a consistent educational trajectory that places Korean language learning in alliance with the learning goals of other content areas. However, one of the most significant aspects about this version of the Standards for Korean Learning, in my opinion, is its distinct treatment of the learning objectives and performance indicators for HL learners. Given the immense diversity of backgrounds of HL learners ranging from differences in exposure to Korean, maintenance efforts, motivation, investment, and proficiency levels in addition to our shallow understanding of the unique linguistic and sociopsychological characteristics of HL learners, generating these performance standards must have been a very challenging task. These initial efforts have filled an important gap in the field and have created a blueprint upon which to refine our thinking and plans for Korean HL education.The HL curriculum (pp. 235–272) consists of five themes starting with “I, We,” “Leisure Life,” “Preparing to visit Korea,” “Life in Korea,” and “Korean Culture.” The curriculum strikes a nice balance between introduction to content topics that are likely to be of high relevance to HL learners and the development of their proficiency in standard Korean language use. For example, the inclusion of the history of Korean immigration and important Korean American figures in the 100-plus year history of Korean immigration to the United States is a topic that all Korean Americans should learn, but rarely have an opportunity to study in their K–12 schooling. Recently, my high school daughter heard the son of Susan Ahn Cuddy, the first female gunnery officer in the U.S. Navy who was of Korean descent, speak about his mother; her life story sparked an interest to learn more about other Korean Americans which also fueled a motivation to better understand her position as a Korean American in this society. This learning opportunity not only contributed to her developing sense of ethnic identity, but also provided another channel for her to develop her Korean language proficiency. For my daughter, this opportunity was serendipitous; however, these standards are likely to assure this kind of critical learning opportunity for all Korean HL learners. There were other topic areas that could have addressed more specifically relevant issues for Korean HL learners. As an example, the “Life in Korea” section that covers public transportation, shopping, and health reflects topics that are commonly addressed in most textbooks for the prototypical world language learner; however, this could have been a section where issues of stereotypes of Kyopos (Korean Americans) and prejudices toward Kyopos by native Koreans as well as attitudes toward Korean HL maintenance could be discussed.In addition, although there is some overlap with the non-HL curricula, the HL curriculum is presented with alterations and extensions that appear to be more representative of the unique HL learner contexts and experiences. For example, while in Level 1 the focus is on identifying key expressions and in Level 2 producing them, the HL curriculum, which straddles Levels 1 and 2, focuses on having learners recognize core differences in cultural practices, registers, and speech levels. Thereby, learners are guided to develop an understanding of how their familiar Korean language use and cultural practices relate to native Korean and American practices. This is an important point of contrast because it indicates that the proposed HL curriculum recognizes the potential hybrid nature of HL language use and cultural practices. Hornberger and Wang (2008) state that concepts of mediation and hybridity are valuable in understanding how different varieties of a language, communicative modes, cultural practices, and language development paths happen among HL learners. That is, hybridity is an association or mixture of ideas, concepts, and/or linguistic features that are likely to occur when different languages and cultures come into contact. Although more research is needed to identify the specifics and breadth of the hybridity of Korean HL, some of the proposed activities acknowledge that Korean HL learners possess unique cultural practices. For instance, there are many suggested activities that encourage learners to compare and contrast Korean, Korean American, and American cultures in regard to manners and daily routines (p. 173). Yet, this recognition is not consistent throughout the HL curriculum.There are many other aspects of hybridity that have yet to be included in the curriculum. For instance, HL learners may be faced with challenging decisions about when and how to use English and Korean in their social domains, and how to manage the coexistence of various standard and/or nonstandard varieties of English and Korean. Furthermore, there may be vocabulary and morphological constructions that are uniquely used by HL speakers, but do not appear as valid constructions in the textbooks. Such hybrid cultural practices and hybrid language features (e.g., code-switching, morphological blending, and lexical borrowing) that are often marked forms of Korean American culture and speech need to be validated and valued rather than treated as errors to be corrected (Lee & Shin, 2008). This brings up an interesting question about whether Korean HL language use should mirror the language of native monolingual Korean speakers in Korea. HL speakers generally learn and use Korean within Korean American communities that are created at the contact points of Korean and American culture, which have different norms and expectations than Korean speakers in Korea (Shin and Lee, 2014). Thus, it does not make sense to expect HL learners to adopt the norms and practices of a speech community that is less relevant to them because of existing beliefs about what constitutes “standard” or “correct” language use. HL learners should have the opportunity to learn about standard language use and its variance from their personal language practices to make informed decisions about their language use.As much as I am impressed with the advancements made in the HL curriculum, I am still left with some fundamental questions such as what specific characteristics of HL learners the authors had in mind when constructing the curriculum. Understanding who HL learners are is a complex task. Gonzalez Pino and Pino (2000) found that university-identified HL students did not self-identify as an HL learner, displayed less confidence in their language abilities and skills, desired more in-depth analysis of their linguistic skills and curricular needs, internalized societal negative attitudes toward their particular language use, and resisted being separated/segregated into HL tracks. We know that there are differences between HL and non-HL students in terms of their language development, motivations to learn, and performance outcomes, yet there is little consensus as to who constitutes an HL learner and what their unique range of linguistic characteristics are. This fundamental lack of information is the source of the remaining questions that I have about the design of the HL curriculum and the proposed performance indicators.The articulated proficiency levels appear to roughly coincide with the duration of instruction in a university setting (p. 154). It is stated that there are six levels aligned with the ACTFL novice to advance high proficiency levels and the heritage level straddles Levels 1 and 2. The heritage levels are also separated into Levels 1 and 2. The entry proficiency for HL Levels 1 and 2 is not specified probably because of the wide range of HL experiences and exposure, and the projected proficiency objectives are indicated as intermediate low for HL Level 1 and intermediate mid for HL Level 2. There are several points of confusion here. Why do the HL levels straddle between Levels 1 and 2 and aim to reach only an intermediate mid production level? I would assume that given the diversity of HL learners, one would expect to have HL learners across all proficiency levels. Moreover, one of the main arguments for wider societal support for HL education is that HL speakers have the greatest potential to reach the advanced high proficiency levels that are needed in academic and professional sectors such as government and business. Yet, the highest HL curriculum level only projects production to be at the intermediate mid level. Thereby, a fuller consideration of an HL curriculum should be in parallel to Levels 1–6 or more closely integrated across all proficiency levels.Further, in the proposed set of objectives (pp. 155–174), the HL learning objectives overlap with objectives from other proficiency levels. For example, the objective of “demonstrating awareness of the nuances of speech level and choices and their implications for the relationships between speakers in different social situations” overlap with one of the objectives in Level 5, whereas others such as “students recognize and compare the organizational principle in the Korean language of general-to specific, and macro-to micro with that of their own language” coincides with one from Level 1. How were decisions made to include or not include certain learning objectives in the HL category? What was the rationale behind the broad range of overlap in learning objectives across proficiency levels? Perhaps, future versions of the HL curriculum would benefit from a systematic set of grounding principles to guide the design of learning objectives.In sum, these standards are undoubtedly a timely and significant contribution toward the larger goal of producing translingual and transcultural communicators and collaborators in our global context. World language education has come a long way in producing speakers of a language that can operate between and across languages and cultures in contrast to just knowers of the grammatical aspects of a language. Despite these advancements, however, what is still a bit surprising is how much world language standards are still driven by ideologies of linguistic hegemony (Valdés, González, López García, & Márquez, 2008) and the dominant culture of college-level foreign language departments that place greater focus on academic language, functions and canonical literature, and history rather than other more everyday common topics such as K-pop culture that may drive students' interest and motivation to learn and speak Korean. The notion of the monolingual educated native speaker continues to permeate throughout all standards where the idealized goal seems to be acquiring noncontaminated language forms and usage of a monolingual native speaker of Korean. However, as Einar Haugen (1972 as cited in Valdés et al., 2008, p. 126) pointed out when immigrant languages come into contact with English “each language has been forced to adapt itself to new conditions.” Thus, native speaker-like proficiency should not or may not be the target goal of language learners as is assumed by the standards.In addition, the belief that language learning and teaching must proceed from simple cognitive tasks to complex cognitive tasks to mirror the acquisition of simple language forms to more complex language forms is very prominent in the proposed standards. Yet, we know from research on English as second language learners that students who have limited proficiency are still able to engage in cognitively demanding tasks; therefore, the simple to complex academic task continuum needs to be reconsidered, especially when dealing with a range of different grade levels and HL learners. We need to keep in mind that language proficiency should not be a barrier to engaging in complex tasks and that it should be engagement with topic and need for HL language use that should drive the curriculum. That is, as we move forward, we should think of ways to build a coherent curriculum that stimulates learners to learn and speak the language at every proficiency level, rather than holding off until a certain threshold of proficiency is developed to engage with topics that may be of great interest to the learner. For example, the topic of K-pop presents an authentic opportunity to engage and motivate not only HL learners, but all Korean language learners. Our family hosted an exchange student from Afghanistan who shared with us how popular Korean dramas and music was among her peers in Afghanistan. The reach of K-pop culture never ceases to amaze us! Moreover, my teenage daughters tell me that their friends envy their ability to understand Korean without having to read subtitles in the dramas they watch together and how her non-Korean friends are wanting to learn Korean to access K-pop more readily. This presents a natural hook that should be optimally utilized as motivators and pedagogical instruments. The proposed Korean standards have successfully integrated the power of Hallyu in the suggested teaching materials and activities, yet defined learning goals related to Korean popular culture does not appear until Level 3, when in fact, such goals can be incorporated even in the very beginning levels. Our steadfast belief that language learning should progress some simple to complex rather than be driven by interest and need may result in missed opportunities to utilize learners' motivation to learn and speak Korean for better learning outcomes.There is still much to do to create learning environments and conditions that produce strong communicators in a globalized world where assumptions and expectations are rapidly changing. I think future work on HL standards will greatly benefit from more research on the characteristics of HL language use as well as documentation of effective and feasible assessment practices. As I mentioned earlier, HL curriculum may benefit from a set of grounding principles that can help define learning objectives. However, in order to identify HL-specific principles, we need more research on the following: Psychological and attitudinal issues of HL learners to help them overcome their linguistic insecurities in speaking Korean in public. According to Hornberger and Wang (2008), many HL learners experience language shyness due to the ways in which they produce their forms that may be considered nonstandard or hybrid. Thus, HL curriculum needs to incorporate opportunities for learners to gain guidance in dealing with the sociopsychological effects of stigma attached to their personal HL language use. HL learners will also need positive reinforcement from their instructors who can further explain the benefits (e.g., having linguistic and cultural intuition) and differences (e.g., knowing a nonstandard from of Korean) of being an HL learner.Linguistic features of HL speakers to be better prepared to understand and address code-switching, lexical borrowing, and semantic extensions that are typical of Korean HL/bilingual speakers. HL learners need to be able to make informed decisions about when it is appropriate to use these linguistic features as well as develop a metalinguistic ability to use their language intuitions to acquire the grammatical rules of Korean. Furthermore, living at the intersection of English and Korean, HL speakers may have unique ways of pronunciation, literacy practices, and morphological creations that need to be identified and acknowledged as legitimate ways of language use in the different Korean-American communities of HL speakers. In addition, sociolinguistic research on social variations, language change, diglossia, use of registers, and language attitudes among Korean HL learners is needed to continually track the dynamic and changing practices within HL communities.Cultural extensions (i.e., Korean-American cultural idiosyncrasies that result from Korean mannerisms are applied to American contexts and vice versa) and syncretism (i.e., new practices mixing cultures) to help develop a more informed cultural curriculum that highlights the uniqueness of the Korean-American experience.In addition, I believe the next task in line is to create standards for Korean HL teacher preparation. Most HL learners are taught by teachers who do not have the necessary training to make appropriate adaptations to meet the needs of HL learners (Schwartz Caballero, 2014). Currently, there are no certification, licensure, or endorsements in teaching of HL learners. To maximize the benefits of the implementation of Korean language standards for HL learners, we must focus our attention on preparing effective HL teachers who have knowledge of HL students and their needs as well as an understanding of societal bilingualism, language contact, and how immigrant bilinguals function (Schwartz Caballero, 2014). Thus, in addition to the need for more research on HL linguistic characteristics and language development, there is an urgent need for classroom-based research that can illuminate pedagogical strategies, program models, and curricular content that work well for HL learners of different backgrounds. As I imagine directions for future work that builds on this volume, I am excited about the potential connections and possibilities that will emerge by opening up the conversation beyond the context of Korean with other scholars engaged in deep thinking about world language and HL education more globally.