Study of Chinese Learners' Pedagogical Choices in Korean
In addition to the learner-internal aspects CLKs' awareness of pragmatic resistance and the social ties they had access to were important. Researchers from TS & ZL, for example, cited their relationship with their local professor as a major factor in their decision to stay clear of criticizing a strict professor (see the example 2).
This article reviews all local published pragmatic research on Korean up to 2020. It focuses on key pragmatic topics including:
Discourse Construction Tests
The Discourse Completion Test (DCT) is an instrument that is widely used in pragmatic research. It has numerous advantages, but it also has some disadvantages. For instance it is that the DCT is unable to account for cultural and individual variations in communication. The DCT can also be biased and lead to overgeneralizations. This is why it is important to analyze it carefully prior to using it for research or for assessment purposes.
Despite its limitations, the DCT is a useful tool for analyzing the relationship between prosody, information structure and non-native speakers. The ability to manipulate 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 effect of prosody in various cultural contexts.
In the field of linguistics, the DCT has become one of the most significant instruments for analyzing learners' communication behaviors. It can be used to study various issues, including politeness, turn-taking, and lexical choices. It can be used to evaluate the phonological difficulty of learners speaking.
Recent research utilized an DCT as tool to evaluate the skills of refusal among EFL students. Participants were given a set of scenarios to choose from and then asked to choose the most appropriate response. The authors discovered that the DCT to be more efficient than other methods of refusal like the use of a questionnaire or video recordings. However, the researchers warned that the DCT should be used with caution and should include other types of methods for collecting data.
DCTs can be developed using specific linguistic criteria, such as form and content. These criteria are based on intuition and based upon the assumptions of test creators. They aren't always accurate, and they may incorrectly describe the way in which ELF learners actually refuse requests in real-world interaction. This issue requires more study on alternative methods for testing refusal competence.
In a recent study, DCT responses to student requests via email were compared to those from an oral DCT. The results revealed that DCTs favored more direct and conventionally indirect request forms and utilized more hints than email data.
Metapragmatic Questionnaires (MQs)
This study explored Chinese learners' decisions regarding their use of Korean using a variety of tools that were tested, including Discourse Completion Tasks (DCTs), metapragmatic questionnaires, and Refusal Interviews (RIs). Participants were 46 CLKs with intermediate or higher ability who responded to DCTs and MQs. They were also asked to provide reflections on their opinions and refusals in RIs. The results showed that CLKs frequently chose to resist native Korean pragmatic norms, and their decisions were influenced by four major factors that included their personalities, their multilingual identities, their ongoing life histories, and relational advantages. These findings have pedagogical implications for L2 Korean assessment and teaching.
The MQ data was first analyzed to identify the participants' practical choices. The data were categorized according to Ishihara's (2010) definition of pragmatic resistance. Then, the selections were compared to their linguistic performance in DCTs to determine whether they showed a pattern of resistance to pragmatics or not. In addition, the interviewees were asked to explain their choice of pragmatic behavior in a specific scenario.
The results of the MQs, DCTs and z-tests were examined using descriptive statistics and z tests. It was found that the CLKs often resorted to the use of euphemistic phrases such as "sorry" and "thank you." This is likely due to their lack of experience with the target language which led to an insufficient understanding of korea pragmatic norms. The results showed that CLKs' preferences for converging to L1 or diverging from both L1 and L2 pragmatic norms varied by the DCT situations. In the scenarios 3 and 12, CLKs preferred diverging from both L1pragmatic norms and L2 norms, while in Situation 14 CLKs preferred a convergence to L1 norms.
프라그마틱 슬롯 조작 revealed that 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 transcribed and recorded by two coders who were independent, were then coded. The code was re-coded repeatedly and involved the coders reading and discussing each transcript. The results of coding were contrasted with the original RI transcripts, giving an indication of how the RIs captured the underlying pragmatic behavior.
Interviews for refusal
A key question of pragmatic research is why learners decide to rescind pragmatic norms that native speakers use. Recent research attempted to answer this question with several experimental tools including DCTs MQs and RIs. Participants comprised 46 CLKs and 44 CNSs from five Korean Universities. They were asked to complete the DCTs in their first language and complete the MQs either in their L1 or L2. They were then invited to an RI, where they were required to reflect and discuss their responses to each DCT situation.
The results showed that, on average, the CLKs resisted native-speaker pragmatic norms in over 40% of their responses. They did this even when they were able to create patterns that were similar to natives. In addition, they were conscious of their own pragmatism. They attributed their decisions to learner-internal aspects such as their personalities, multilingual identities, and ongoing lives. They also spoke of external factors like relational affordances. They described, for example how their relationships with their professors allowed them to function more easily in terms of the cultural and linguistic expectations of their university.
The interviewees expressed their concern about the social pressures and penalties they could face if their local social norms were not followed. They were worried that their native friends might perceive them as “foreigners” and think they were unintelligent. This concern was similar to those voiced by Brown (2013) and Ishihara (2009).
These results suggest that native-speaker practical norms are not the norm for Korean learners. They may still be useful for official Korean proficiency tests. But it would be prudent for future researchers to reassess their usefulness in particular situations and in various contexts. This will help them better understand the impact of different cultural environments on the behavior of students and classroom interactions of students from L2. Moreover, this will help educators create more effective methods to teach and test korea pragmatics. Seukhoon Paul Choi, principal advisor at Stratways Group in Seoul, is a geopolitical risk consultancy.
Case Studies
The case study method is a research strategy that utilizes in-depth, participant-centered investigations to investigate a specific topic. This method uses various sources of data like interviews, observations and documents, to prove its findings. This type of investigation can be used to analyze complicated or unique subjects that are difficult for other methods to measure.
In a case study the first step is to define the subject as well as the objectives of the study. This will help determine which aspects of the subject are important for investigation and which ones could be left out. It is also helpful to review existing literature related to the subject to gain a greater understanding of the topic and place the case in a broader theoretical context.
This study was based on an open-source platform, the KMMLU Leaderboard [50], as well as its benchmarks for Koreans, HyperCLOVA X, and LDCC Solar (figure 1 below). The results of the study revealed that the L2 Korean students were highly susceptible to native models. They were more likely to choose incorrect answer choices that were literal interpretations of the prompts, which were not based on accurate pragmatic inference. They also showed a strong tendency to add their own text, or "garbage," to their responses, further detracting from their quality of response.
The participants of this study were all L2 Korean students who had reached level four on the Test of Proficiency in Korean TOPIK in their second or third year at university and hoped to achieve level six on their next attempt. They were questioned about their WTC/SPCC, their pragmatic awareness and understanding and their understanding of the world.
The interviewees were given two situations, each involving a hypothetical interaction with their interactants and were asked to choose one of the following strategies when making a request. They were then asked to provide the reasons behind their decision. Most of the participants attributed their pragmatism to their personalities. TS for instance stated that she was difficult to talk to and would not inquire about the health of her co-worker when they had a heavy work load, even though she believed native Koreans would.