Study of Chinese Learners' Pedagogical Choices in Korean
In addition to learner-internal factors, CLKs' awareness of pragmatic resistance and the relational affordances they were able to draw from were significant. For instance, RIs from TS and ZL both cited their local professor relationships as an important factor in their pragmatic choice to avoid expressing criticism of a strict professor (see the second example).
This article reviews all local pragmatic research on Korean published up to 2020. It focuses on practical fundamental topics like:
Discourse Construction Tests
The test for discourse completion is a popular tool in the field of pragmatic research. It has many advantages, but also some disadvantages. For instance it is that the DCT is unable to account for cultural and personal differences in communication. The DCT can also be biased and lead to overgeneralizations. It should be carefully analyzed before it is used in research or assessment.
Despite its limitations, the DCT can be a valuable tool for investigating the relationship between prosody and information structure in non-native speakers. The ability to alter social variables relevant to the manner of speaking in two or more steps can be a benefit. This feature can be used to study the impact of prosody in different cultural contexts.
In the field linguistics, DCT is among the most effective tools to analyze the communication habits of learners. It can be used to investigate various issues that include the manner of speaking, turn taking and lexical choice. It can be used to evaluate the phonological difficulty of learners their speech.
Recent research used an DCT as an instrument to test the skills of refusal among EFL students. Participants were presented with a range of scenarios to choose from, and then asked to select the appropriate response. The researchers found that the DCT was more effective than other refusal measures such as a questionnaire or video recordings. However, they cautioned that the DCT should be used with caution and include other types of methods for collecting data.
DCTs can be designed using specific requirements for linguistics, such as design and content. These criteria are intuitive and based upon the assumptions of test designers. They aren't always correct, and they could incorrectly describe the way in which ELF learners actually resist requests in real-world interactions. This issue calls for further research on different methods of assessing refusal ability.
In a recent study DCT responses to student requests via email were compared to the responses of an oral DCT. The results revealed that DCT encouraged more direct and conventionally indirect request forms, and a lesser use of hints than the email data did.
Metapragmatic Questionnaires (MQs)
This study investigated Chinese learners' pragmatic choices when using Korean. It employed various tools for experimentation including Discourse Completion Tasks, metapragmatic questions, and Refusal Interviews. Participants were 46 CLKs with upper-intermediate ability who provided responses to MQs and DCTs. They were also asked to reflect on their evaluation and refusal performances in RIs. The results showed that CLKs are more likely to reject native Korean norms of pragmatism. Their choices were influenced by four factors such as their personality and multilingual identities, their ongoing life histories and their relationships. These findings have pedagogical implications for L2 Korean assessment.
The MQ data were analysed to determine the participants' pragmatic choices. The data was classified according to Ishihara (2010)'s definition of pragmatic resistance. Then, the choices were compared to their linguistic performance in the DCTs to determine whether they were a reflection of pragmatic resistance or not. In addition, the interviewees were asked to explain their choice of pragmatic behavior in a particular scenario.
The results of the MQs, DCTs and z-tests were examined using descriptive statistics and z tests. The CLKs were found to use euphemistic words like "sorry" or "thank you". This was probably due to their lack experience with the target languages, leading to an inadequate understanding of the korean pragmatic norms. The results showed that CLKs' preferences to diverge from L1 and L2 norms or to converge towards L1 norms varied based on the DCT situations. For example, in Situation 3 and 12 the CLKs would prefer to diverge from both L1 and L2 pragmatic norms, whereas in Situation 14, they favored converging to L1 norms.
The RIs further revealed that the CLKs were aware of their own pragmatism in each DCT situation. The RIs were conducted one-toone within two days after the participants had completed the MQs. The RIs were recorded and transcribed, and then coded by two coders who were independent. The coding process was iterative, with the coders re-reading and discussing each transcript. The coding results are then compared with the original RI transcripts to determine how well they captured the underlying pragmatic behavior.
Interviews for refusal
The most important issue in research on pragmatics is: why do some learners choose not to accept native-speaker norms? A recent study sought to answer this question by employing a range of experimental instruments, including DCTs, MQs, and RIs. The participants were comprised of 46 CLKs, 44 CNSs and 45 KNSs 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 attend a RI where they were required to consider their responses to the DCT situations.
The results showed that, on average, the CLKs resisted native-speaker pragmatic norms in over 40% of their answers. They did this even when they were able to create patterns that resembled natives. They were also aware of their pragmatism resistance. They attributed their choices to learner-internal factors like their personalities and identities that are multilingual, as well as ongoing life histories. They also referred to external factors like relational advantages. For instance, they outlined how their relationships with professors facilitated more relaxed performance with respect to the intercultural and linguistic norms of their university.
However, the interviewees also expressed concern about the social pressures and penalties that they might face if they flouted their local social norms. They were worried that their local friends might think they are "foreigners" and believe they are incompetent. This concern was similar to the concerns expressed by Brown (2013) and Ishihara (2009).
These findings suggest that native-speakers pragmatic norms aren't the norm for Korean learners. They could still be useful for official Korean proficiency tests. Future researchers should reassess the usefulness of these tests in various cultural contexts and in specific situations. This will enable them to better understand how different cultural environments can affect the pragmatic behavior of L2 learners in the classroom and beyond. 프라그마틱 플레이 will also help educators improve their methods of teaching and testing Korean 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 an investigative technique that uses participant-centered, in-depth investigations to investigate a particular subject. This method uses numerous sources of information like interviews, observations, and documents to support its findings. This type of investigation is useful for examining complicated or unique subjects that are difficult to measure using other methods.
The first step in a case study is to define the subject and the objectives of the study. This will help determine what aspects of the subject matter are crucial to study and which can be omitted. It is also useful to review the existing research to gain a broad understanding of the subject. It will also help put the issue in a wider theoretical context.
This case study was built on an open-source platform, the KMMLU Leaderboard [50], and its Korean-specific benchmarks HyperCLOVA X, and LDCC Solar (figure 1 below). 프라그마틱 플레이 of the study showed that L2 Korean students were extremely vulnerable to native models. They tended to choose wrong answer choices, which were literal interpretations. This was a deviance from the correct pragmatic inference. They also showed a strong tendency of adding their own words or "garbage" to their responses. This lowered the quality of their responses.
Additionally, the participants in this case study were primarily L2 Korean learners who had reached level 4 on the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK) at their third or second year of university and were hoping to achieve level 6 in their next attempt. They were asked to answer questions about their WTC/SPCC as well as pragmatic awareness and comprehension.
Interviewees were presented with two scenarios that involved interaction with their co-workers and were asked to choose one of the strategies below to employ when making an offer. The interviewees were then asked to justify their decision. The majority of participants attributed their lack of a pragmatic response to their personality. For instance, TS claimed that she was hard to get close to, and therefore refused to ask about her interactant's well-being with the burden of a job, even though she believed that native Koreans would ask.