Study of Chinese Learners' Pedagogical Choices in Korean
In addition to learner-internal influences CLKs' understanding of the need to be pragmatic and the social ties they had access to were crucial. For instance, RIs from TS and ZL both mentioned their relationships with their local professors as a significant reason for them to choose to not criticize a strict professor (see the second example).
This article reviews all local published practical research on Korean until 2020. It focuses on key pragmatic topics including:
Discourse Construction Tests (DCTs)
The test for discourse completion is a commonly used tool in pragmatic research. It has many advantages, but also a few disadvantages. The DCT, for example, cannot account cultural and individual differences. Additionally, the DCT can be biased and may lead to overgeneralizations. Therefore, it should be analyzed carefully prior to using it for research or for assessment purposes.
Despite its limitations, the DCT can be a useful instrument to study the relationship between prosody and information structure in non-native speakers. Its ability to manipulate social variables relevant to politeness in two or more steps could be a benefit. This characteristic can be utilized to study the impact of prosody in various cultural contexts.
In the field of linguistics, DCT is one of the most effective tools to study the behavior of communication learners. It can be used to examine various aspects, including politeness, turn-taking, and lexical choices. It can be used to assess phonological complexity in learners in their speech.
Recent research has used an DCT as tool to evaluate the refusal skills of EFL students. The participants were given an array of scenarios and were required to choose a suitable response from the options offered. The authors concluded that the DCT was more effective than other refusal measures, including a questionnaire and video recordings. However, the researchers cautioned that the DCT should be used with caution and should include other data collection methods.
DCTs can be designed with specific linguistic criteria, such as form and content. These criteria are intuitive and based upon the assumptions of test creators. They are not necessarily precise, and they could misrepresent the way that ELF learners actually refuse requests in actual interactions. This issue requires more research on alternative methods of measuring refusal competence.
In a recent research study, DCT responses to student inquiries via email were compared with the responses of an oral DCT. The results revealed that DCT encouraged more direct and traditionally form-based requests, and a lesser use of hints than email data did.
Metapragmatic Questionnaires (MQs)
This study looked at Chinese learners their pragmatic choices when they use Korean. It employed a variety of experimental tools including Discourse Completion Tasks, metapragmatic questions, and Refusal Interviews. Participants were 46 CLKs of intermediate or higher ability who responded to MQs and DCTs. They were also asked for reflections on their opinions and refusals in RIs. The results indicated that the CLKs were more likely to reject native Korean pragmatic norms, and that their choices were influenced by four major factors such as their personalities, their multilingual identities, their ongoing lives, and their relational benefits. These findings have implications for pedagogy for L2 Korean assessment and teaching.
The MQ data was analyzed first to determine the participants' actual choices. The data were classified according to Ishihara (2010)'s definition of pragmatic resistance. Then, we compared their selections with their linguistic performance using DCTs to determine if they were indicative of pragmatic resistance. The interviewees were asked to justify their choices of behavior in a specific scenario.
The findings of the MQs and DCTs were then analysed using descriptive statistics and z-tests. It was found that CLKs frequently used euphemistic responses 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' preference to diverge from L1 and L2 norms or to be more convergent towards L1 norms varied based on the DCT situations. For instance, in Situations 3 and 12 the CLKs would prefer to diverge from both L1 and pragmatic norms, whereas in Situation 14 they favored a convergence to L1 norms.
The RIs further revealed that CLKs were aware of their pragmatic resistance in each DCT situation. The RIs were conducted one-toone within two days after participants completed the MQs. The RIs, which were recorded and transcribed by two coders who were independent, were then coded. The coding process was iterative by the coders, re-reading and discussing each transcript. The results of coding were compared to the original RI transcripts, which gave an indication of how well the RIs were able to capture the fundamental behaviors.
Refusal Interviews (RIs)
The central issue in research on pragmatics is: Why do some learners decide to not accept native-speaker norms? Recent research has attempted to answer this question using a variety of experimental tools, including DCTs MQs and RIs. The participants were comprised of 46 CLKs, 44 CNSs, and 45 KNSs from five Korean universities. They were required to complete the DCTs in their first language and complete the MQs either in their L1 or L2. Then, they were invited to a RI where they were asked consider their responses to the DCT situations.
The results showed that on average, the CLKs rejected the pragmatic norms of native speakers in more than 40% of their responses. They did this even though they could create patterns that resembled native ones. Furthermore, they were clearly aware of their pragmatism. They attributed their resistance to learner-internal factors such as their personalities and multilingual identities. They also referred to external factors such as relational affordances. For example, they described how their relationships with professors helped facilitate more relaxed performance in relation to the intercultural and linguistic norms of their university.
The interviewees expressed concern about the social pressures and penalties they could be subject to in the event that their local social norms were not followed. They were concerned that their local friends might consider them "foreigners" and think they are unintelligent. This was a concern similar to the concerns expressed by Brown (2013) and Ishihara (2009).
These results suggest that native-speaker pragmatic norms are no longer the default preference of Korean learners. They may still be useful as a model for official Korean proficiency tests. Future researchers should consider reassessing the usefulness of these tests in different contexts and in particular situations. This will help them better understand the effect of different cultural contexts on the pragmatic behavior and classroom interactions of students in L2. Additionally it will assist educators to create more effective methods to teach and test korea pragmatics. Seukhoon Paul Choi is principal advisor at Stratways Group, a geopolitical risk consultancy based in Seoul.
Case Studies
The case study method is a research method that employs in-depth, participant-centered investigations to investigate a specific topic. It is a method that makes use of numerous sources of data to help support the findings, such as interviews, observations, documents, and artifacts. This kind of investigation can be used to study complicated or unique topics that are difficult for other methods to measure.
The first step in the case study is to clearly define the subject and the objectives of the study. This will help determine which aspects of the subject are important to study and which are best left out. It is also helpful to study the literature to gain a general understanding of the subject. It will also help place the case in a wider theoretical context.
프라그마틱 데모 Pragmatic was conducted on an open source platform, the KMMLU leaderboard [50] and its specific benchmarks for Korea, HyperCLOVA X and LDCC-Solar (figure 1 below). The results of this experiment showed that L2 Korean learners were highly dependent on the influence of native models. They were more likely to select incorrect answer options, which were literal interpretations. This was a deviance from a precise pragmatic inference. They also showed an unnatural tendency to add their own text or "garbage," to their responses, further detracting from their response quality.
The participants of this study were L2 Korean students who had achieved the level of four in 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 asked questions regarding their WTC/SPCC, pragmatic awareness, understanding and understanding of the world.
The interviewees were presented with two situations, each involving a hypothetical interaction with their co-workers and were asked to choose one of the following strategies to use when making an inquiry. They were then asked to provide the reasons behind their decision. Most of the participants attributed their rational opposition to their personality. For example, TS claimed that she was difficult to talk to, and therefore did not want to inquire about the well-being of her friend with the burden of a job despite the fact that she believed that native Koreans would do so.