Study of Chinese Learners' Pedagogical Choices in Korean
CLKs' understanding and ability to draw on relational affordances as well as learner-internal elements, were important. For instance the RIs of TS and ZL both have cited their relationships with their local professors as an important factor in their pragmatic choice to avoid criticising an uncompromising professor (see example 2).
This article reviews all local published pragmatic research on Korean until 2020. It focuses on the practical core topics such as:
Discourse Construction Tests (DCTs)
The test for discourse completion (DCT) is a widely used instrument in the field of pragmatic research. It has many advantages, but also a few disadvantages. The DCT is one example. It does not take into account individual and cultural differences. Additionally 프라그마틱 is also the case that the DCT can be biased and may cause overgeneralizations. Therefore, it should be analyzed carefully before it is used for research or assessment purposes.
Despite its limitations, the DCT is a useful tool to study the relationship between prosody and information structure in non-native speakers. The ability of the DCT in two or more stages to influence social variables that affect politeness can be a strength. This can assist researchers understand the role of prosody in communication across cultural contexts, a key issue in cross-cultural pragmatics.
In the field of linguistics, the DCT has emerged as one of the most important tools to analyze learners' communication behaviors. It can be used to examine a variety of issues that include politeness, turn taking, and lexical choice. It can also be used to assess the phonological complexity of the learners their speech.
Recent research has used an DCT as tool to evaluate the skills of refusal among EFL students. Participants were presented with a range of scenarios to choose from, and were then asked to select the appropriate response. The researchers found the DCT to be more effective than other methods for refusing like a questionnaire or video recordings. Researchers cautioned, however, that the DCT should be employed with caution. They also suggested using other methods for data collection.
DCTs can be designed with specific linguistic criteria, such as design and content. These criterion are intuitive and is based on the assumptions made by the test designers. They may not be accurate and may misrepresent the way ELF learners respond to requests in real-world interactions. This issue calls for more research into alternative methods of assessing refusal competence.
In a recent research study, DCT responses to student inquiries via email were compared with those from an oral DCT. The results showed that the DCT was more direct and conventionally indirect request forms and a lower use of hints than the email data did.
Metapragmatic Questionnaires (MQs)
This study examined Chinese learners' choices when it comes to using Korean through a variety of experimental tools, including Discourse Completion Tasks (DCTs), metapragmatic questionnaires, and Refusal Interviews (RIs). Participants were 46 CLKs at the upper intermediate level who answered MQs, DCTs, and RIs. They were also asked to provide reflections on their opinions and refusals in RIs. The results showed that CLKs often chose to resist native Korean pragmatic norms. Their decisions were influenced by four factors that included their personalities and multilingual identities, their ongoing life histories as well as their relationship affordances. These findings have pedagogical consequences for L2 Korean assessment.
The MQ data was analyzed first to identify the participants' choices in practice. The data were classified according to Ishihara (2010)'s definition of pragmatic resistance. Then, we compared the selections with their linguistic performance on the DCTs to determine if they were indicative of a pragmatic resistance. In addition, the interviewees were asked to explain their choice of pragmatic behavior in a given scenario.
The results of the MQs, DCTs and z-tests were analysed using descriptive statistics and z tests. The CLKs were found to employ euphemistic phrases such as "sorry" or "thank you". This was probably due to their lack of experience with the target languages, which led to a lack of understanding of the korean pragmatic norms. The results revealed that CLKs' preferences for either converging to L1 norms or dissociating from both L1 and L2 pragmatic norms varied by the DCT situations. In Situations 3 and 12 CLKs preferred diverging from both L1pragmatic norms - and L2-pragmatic norms while in Situation 14, CLKs preferred convergence to L1 norms.
The RIs showed that CLKs knew about their pragmatic resistance to each DCT situation. The RIs were conducted in a one-to-one manner within two days after participants had completed the MQs. The RIs were recorded and transcribing, and then coded by two independent coders. The coding process was iterative by the coders, re-reading and discussing each transcript. The coding results were then compared to the original RI transcripts, giving an indication of how well the RIs were able to capture the fundamental behavior.
Refusal Interviews
One of the most important questions in pragmatic research is the reason why learners choose to resist native-speaker pragmatic norms. Recent research sought to answer this question with a variety of experimental tools, including DCTs MQs and RIs. Participants included 44 CLKs and 46 CNSs from five Korean Universities. The participants were asked to complete the DCTs and MQs either in their L1 or their L2. Then they were invited to a RI where they were asked to reflect on their responses to the DCT situations.
The results showed that CLKs on average, did not conform to the norms of native speakers in more than 40% of their responses. They did this even though they could create native-like patterns. They were also aware of their pragmatism resistance. They attributed their resistance to learner-internal factors such as their personality and multilingual identities. They also referred to external factors such as relational benefits. For example, they described how their relationships with professors helped facilitate an easier performance in relation to the intercultural and linguistic rules of their university.
However, the interviewees also expressed concerns about the social pressures and punishments they could be subjected to if they strayed from their local social norms. They were worried that their native friends might perceive them as “foreigners” and think they were incompetent. This concern was similar in nature to the concerns expressed by Brown (2013) and Ishihara (2009).
These results suggest that native speakers' pragmatic norms are not the norm for Korean learners. They may still be useful as a model for official Korean proficiency tests. Future researchers should consider reassessing the validity of these tests in various cultural contexts and specific situations. This will help them better understand the effects of different cultures on the classroom behavior and interactions of students from L2. Furthermore, this will help educators create more effective methods to teach and test the korea's pragmatics. Seukhoon Paul Choi is principal advisor for Stratways Group, a geopolitical risk consultancy based out of Seoul.
Case Studies
The case study method is a method that employs in-depth, participant-centered investigations to investigate a specific topic. It is a method that utilizes various sources of information to back up the findings, such as interviews and observations, documents, and artifacts. This type of investigation can be used to examine unique or complex issues that are difficult to other methods of measuring.
The first step in conducting a case study is to clearly define the subject and the objectives of the study. This will help determine which aspects of the subject matter are crucial for research and which are best left out. It is also helpful to study the literature to gain a better understanding of the subject and place the situation in a wider theoretical context.
This study was based on an open-source platform, the KMMLU Leaderboard [50], as well as its Korean-specific benchmarks HyperCLOVA X and LDCC Solar (figure 1 below). The results of the experiment revealed that the L2 Korean students were extremely susceptible to native models. They tended to choose wrong answer options that were literal interpretations. This was a departure from a precise pragmatic inference. They also had an unnatural tendency to add their own text, or "garbage," to their responses, further reducing their response quality.
The participants in this study were all L2 Korean students who had achieved level four on the Test of Proficiency in Korean TOPIK in their third or second university year and were aiming to attain level six on their next attempt. They were questioned about their WTC/SPCC, pragmatic awareness, understanding and perception of the world.
Interviewees were presented with two scenarios involving an interaction with their counterparts and were asked to choose one of the strategies below to use when making a demand. They were then asked to explain the reasons behind their decision. The majority of the participants attributed their pragmatic resistance to their personalities. For instance, TS claimed that she was hard to get close to, and therefore refused to ask about her interactant's well-being with an intense workload, even though she believed that native Koreans would do so.