Study of Chinese Learners' Pedagogical Choices in Korean
CLKs' awareness and ability to make use of relational affordances and learner-internal elements, were important. RIs from TS and ZL, for example mentioned their local professor relationship as the primary reason for their pragmatic decision to avoid criticizing a strict professor (see examples 2).
This article reviews all locally published pragmatic research on Korean until 2020. It focuses on the practical important topics such as:
Discourse Construction Tests
The discourse completion test is a popular tool in the field of pragmatic research. It has many strengths but it also has some disadvantages. For example the DCT is unable to account for pragmatickr.com cultural and individual differences in communicative behavior. Additionally the DCT is prone to bias and can result in overgeneralizations. This is why it must be carefully analyzed before it is used for research or for assessment purposes.
Despite its limitations, the DCT can be a useful instrument to study the relationship between prosody, information structure and non-native speakers. The ability of the DCT in two or more stages to influence social variables that affect politeness could be a benefit. This can assist researchers to study the role played by prosody in communicating across cultural contexts, which is a major issue in cross-cultural pragmatics.
In the field of linguistics, DCT is one of the most effective tools used to study the behavior of communication learners. It can be used to investigate many issues, such as manner of speaking, turn-taking, and the use of lexical terms. It can also be used to determine the phonological complexity of the learners' speech.
A recent study used an DCT to test EFL students' ability to resist. Participants were given a list of scenarios and were required to choose a suitable response from the options offered. The authors found the DCT to be more efficient than other methods of refusal like videos or questionnaires. Researchers cautioned, however, that the DCT must be used with caution. They also suggested using other methods of data collection.
DCTs are usually designed with specific linguistic criteria in mind, such as the content and the form. These criteria are based on intuition and based on the assumptions of test creators. They aren't always accurate and may misrepresent how ELF learners actually respond to requests in real-world interactions. This issue calls for further study on alternative methods for measuring refusal competence.
In a recent research study, DCT responses to student requests via email were compared to the responses of an oral DCT. The results showed that DCTs favored more direct and traditionally indirect request forms and utilized less hints than email data.
Metapragmatic Questionnaires (MQs)
This study investigated Chinese learners' decisions regarding their use of Korean using a variety of tools that were tested, including Discourse Completion Tasks (DCTs) as well as metapragmatic questionnaires and Refusal Interviews (RIs). Participants were 46 CLKs with upper-intermediate ability who provided responses to DCTs and MQs. They were also asked to think about their evaluations and refusal performance in RIs. The results revealed that CLKs frequently chose to resist native Korean pragmatic norms, and their choices were influenced by four primary factors: their personalities, their multilingual identities, ongoing life histories, and relationship advantages. These findings have implications for L2 Korean assessment and teaching.
The MQ data was analyzed first 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 the DCTs to determine whether they reflected pragmatic resistance or not. The interviewees also had to explain the reasons for choosing an atypical behavior in certain situations.
The findings of the MQs and DCTs were then analyzed using descriptive statistics and z-tests. The CLKs were discovered to employ euphemistic phrases such as "sorry" or "thank you". This is likely due to their lack of experience with the target languages, leading to an insufficient understanding of the korean pragmatic norms. The results showed that the CLKs' preference for converging to L1 norms or departing from both L1 as well as L2 pragmatic norms varied by the DCT situations. In Situations 3 and 12 CLKs preferred diverging from both L1- and L2-pragmatic norms, while in Situation 14 CLKs preferred a convergence to L1 norms.
The RIs revealed that CLKs were aware of their practical resistance to each DCT situation. The RIs were conducted one-to-one within two days of the participants had completed the MQs. The RIs, which were transcribed and recorded by two independent coders and then coded. The coding was an iterative process in which the coders listened and discussed each transcript. The results of the coding process are compared with the original RI transcripts to determine if they captured the underlying pragmatic behavior.
Interviews with Refusal
One of the major questions in pragmatic research is why some learners choose to resist pragmatic norms that native speakers use. Recent research attempted to answer this question using various experiments, including DCTs MQs and RIs. Participants included 46 CLKs and 44 CNSs from five Korean Universities. 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 asked reflect on their responses to the DCT situations.
The results showed that, on average, the CLKs rejected native-speaker pragmatic norms in more than 40% of their answers. They did this despite the fact that they could create native-like patterns. In addition, they were conscious of their own pragmatism. They attributed their choices to learner-internal factors such as their personalities, multilingual identities, and ongoing life experiences. They also referred to external factors, like relationship advantages. They described, for example how their interactions with their professors helped them to perform better in terms of the cultural and linguistic expectations of their university.
However, the interviewees expressed concerns about the social pressures and penalties that they might be subjected to if they strayed from their social norms. They were worried that their native friends might perceive them as "foreignersand consider them ignorant. This concern was similar in nature to that expressed by Brown (2013) and Ishihara (2009).
These results suggest that native-speaker practical norms are no longer the norm for Korean learners. They could still be useful for official Korean proficiency tests. Future researchers should consider reassessing the validity of these tests in different cultural contexts and in specific situations. This will enable them to better comprehend how different environments may impact the pragmatic behavior of L2 learners in the classroom and beyond. Furthermore this will allow educators to develop more effective methodologies for teaching and testing korea pragmatics. Seukhoon Paul Choi is principal advisor to 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 utilizes various sources of data including interviews, observations, and documents, to confirm its findings. This kind of investigation can be used to examine unique or complex subjects that are difficult for other methods of measuring.
In a case study the first step is to define the subject as well as the objectives of the study. This will allow you to determine which aspects of the topic are important to investigate and which can be omitted. It is also helpful to review existing literature related to the subject to gain a broad understanding of the subject and to place the case study within a larger theoretical context.
This study was based on an open-source platform, the KMMLU Leaderboard [50] along with its benchmarks for Koreans, HyperCLOVA X, and LDCC Solar (figure 1 below). The results of the test revealed that L2 Korean students were particularly susceptible to native models. They were more likely to select incorrect answer choices that were literal interpretations. This was a departure from the correct pragmatic inference. They also showed 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 in the Test of Proficiency in Korean TOPIK in their third or second year at university and hoped to attain level six on their next attempt. They were asked to answer questions regarding their WTC/SPCC and comprehension and pragmatic awareness.
The interviewees were given two situations, each involving an imagined interaction with their co-workers and asked to choose one of the following strategies to use when making an inquiry. The interviewees were then asked to justify their choice. Most of the participants attributed their lack of a pragmatic response to their personality. For example, TS claimed that she was difficult to talk to, and she therefore did not want to inquire about her interactant's well-being with the burden of a job despite her belief that native Koreans would do so.