Study of Chinese Learners' Pedagogical Choices in Korean
In addition to learner-internal factors CLKs' understanding of the need to be pragmatic and the relationship advantages they were able to draw from were crucial. For instance the RIs from TS and ZL both cited their local professor relationships as an important reason for them to choose to not criticize the strictness of a professor (see the example 2).
This article reviews all local published pragmatic research on Korean until 2020. It focuses on the most important pragmatic issues such as:
Discourse Construction Tests
The discourse completion test is a commonly used instrument in pragmatic research. It has many advantages however, it also has a few disadvantages. For instance the DCT cannot account for the cultural and individual differences in communication. Furthermore, the DCT can be biased and may lead to overgeneralizations. This is why it must be carefully analyzed prior to using it for research or assessment purposes.
Despite its limitations, the DCT can be a valuable tool for investigating the relationship between prosody and information structure in non-native speakers. Its ability to use two or more stages to manipulate the social variables that are related to politeness could be a benefit. This feature can help researchers study the role of prosody in communication across different cultural contexts, a key issue in cross-cultural pragmatics.
In the field of linguistics, the DCT has become one of the most important tools for analyzing learners' communication behaviors. It can be used to investigate many issues, such as the manner of speaking, turn-taking and lexical choices. It can be used to evaluate phonological complexity in learners in their speech.
Recent research used the DCT as a tool to assess the skills of refusal among EFL students. The participants were given an array of scenarios and asked to select an appropriate response from the choices provided. The researchers found the DCT to be more efficient than other methods of refusal, such as videos or questionnaires. The researchers cautioned that the DCT should be used with caution. They also recommended using other methods for data collection.
DCTs can be designed using specific language requirements, like form and content. These criteria are intuitive and based on the assumptions of test developers. They are not necessarily precise, and they could misrepresent the way that ELF learners actually reject requests in real-world interaction. This issue requires further studies of alternative methods of assessing the ability to refuse.
A recent study has compared DCT responses to requests submitted by students via email versus those obtained from an oral DCT. The results showed that the DCT promoted more direct and traditionally indirect request forms and made a less frequent use of hints than email data did.
Metapragmatic Questionnaires (MQs)
This study examined Chinese learners' choices in their use of Korean through a variety of tools that were tested, 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 their refusals to participate in RIs. The results indicated that the CLKs often resisted native Korean pragmatic norms, and their decisions were influenced by four major factors that included their identities, their multilingual identities, their ongoing life histories, and relationship benefits. These findings have pedagogical implications for L2 Korean assessment.
The MQ data were analysed to determine the participants' pragmatic choices. The data were classified according to Ishihara's (2010) definition of pragmatic resistance. Then, the choices were compared to their linguistic performance on the DCTs to determine whether they were a reflection of pragmatic resistance or not. The interviewees were asked to justify their decision to use pragmatic language in a specific situation.
The findings of the MQs and DCTs were then examined using descriptive statistics and Z-tests. The CLKs were found use euphemistic words like "sorry" or "thank you". This was probably due to their lack of familiarity with the target languages, leading to an insufficient understanding of the korean pragmatic norms. The results revealed that CLKs' preferences to diverge from L1 and L2 norms or to move towards L1 norms varied based on the DCT situations. For example, in Situation 3 and 12, the CLKs preferred to diverge from both L1 and L2 pragmatic norms while in Situation 14 they favored a convergence to L1 norms.
The RIs also revealed that the CLKs were aware their pragmatism in every DCT situation. The RIs were conducted one-to-one within two days after participants completed the MQs. The RIs, which were transcribed and recorded by two coders who were independent and then coded. The coding process was iterative by the coders, re-reading and discussing each transcript. The coding results are then compared with the original RI transcripts to determine how well they accurately portrayed the underlying behavior.
Refusal Interviews (RIs)
The most important question in pragmatic research is: Why do some learners refuse to accept native-speaker norms? Recent research has attempted to answer this question by using several experimental tools, including DCTs MQs and RIs. 프라그마틱슬롯 included 46 CLKs and 44 CNSs from five Korean Universities. Participants were required to complete the DCTs and MQs either in their L1 or their L2. They were then invited to an RI where they were required to reflect on and discuss their responses to each DCT situation.
The results showed that CLKs, on average, did not conform to the norms of native speakers in more than 40 percent of their responses. They did this even when they were able to create patterns that closely resembled native speakers. In addition, they were aware of their pragmatic resistance. They attributed their choices to learner-internal aspects such as their identities, personalities, multilingual identities, and ongoing life histories. They also mentioned external factors, such as relationships and benefits. For instance, they discussed how their relationships with professors facilitated more relaxed performance in relation to the linguistic and intercultural norms of their university.
The interviewees expressed their concern about the social pressures or penalties they might face when their social norms were not followed. They were worried that their native friends would perceive them as "foreigners" and believe that they are unintelligent. This is similar to the concerns expressed by Brown (2013) and Ishihara (2009).
These results suggest that native-speaker pragmatic norms are not the default preference of Korean learners. Our Web Site could still be useful for official Korean proficiency testing. But it would be prudent for future researchers to revisit their usefulness in particular situations and in various contexts. This will allow them to better understand the effect of different cultural contexts on the behavior of students and classroom interactions of L2 students. This will also assist educators to improve their methods of teaching and testing Korean pragmatics. Seukhoon Paul Choi is principal advisor at 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 studies to study a specific subject. This method uses various sources of data, such as interviews, observations, and documents to support its findings. This type of investigation can be used to examine unique or complex subjects that are difficult for other methods to measure.
In a case study, the first step is to define both the subject and the goals of the study. This will allow you to determine what aspects of the subject should be studied and which ones can be skipped. It is also helpful to read the literature to gain a general knowledge of the subject and put the issue within a larger theoretical framework.
This study was based on an open-source platform, the KMMLU Leaderboard [50] along with its Korean-specific benchmarks HyperCLOVA X, and LDCC Solar (figure 1 below). The results of the test revealed that L2 Korean students were highly vulnerable to native models. They were more likely to select incorrect answer choices that were literal interpretations of the prompts, thereby ignoring the correct pragmatic inference. They also showed a strong tendency of adding their own words or "garbage" to their responses. This also lowered the quality of their responses.
Furthermore, the participants of this study were L2 Korean learners who had reached level 4 in 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 questions regarding their WTC/SPCC, pragmatic awareness, understanding and perception of the world.
The interviewees were given two situations, each involving an imaginary interaction with their interactants and were asked to choose one of the following strategies to employ when making an inquiry. They were then asked to explain the reasoning behind their choice. The majority of the participants attributed their lack of a pragmatic response to their personalities. For instance, TS claimed that she was difficult to connect to, and therefore did not want to inquire about her interactant's well-being with a heavy workload despite her belief that native Koreans would do so.