Study of Chinese Learners' Pedagogical Choices in Korean
In addition to the learner-internal aspects CLKs' awareness of the need to be pragmatic and the social ties they had access to were important. The RIs from TS & ZL for instance, cited their local professor relationship as a major factor in their decision to stay clear of criticising a strict prof (see example 2).
This article examines all local pragmatic research on Korean published until 2020. It focuses on key practical issues, including:
Discourse Construction Tests (DCTs)
The Discourse Completion Test (DCT) is widely used in the field of pragmatic research. It has many strengths but it also has a few disadvantages. For example the DCT cannot take into account cultural and individual differences in communication. The DCT can also be biased and lead to overgeneralizations. It is essential to analyze it carefully before it is used for research or evaluation.
Despite its limitations, the DCT is a valuable instrument to study the connection between prosody, information structure, and non-native speakers. The ability to manipulate the social variables that are relevant to politeness in two or more steps could be a strength. This ability can aid researchers understand the role of prosody in communicating across cultural contexts, which is a major issue in cross-cultural pragmatics.
In the field of linguistics the DCT has emerged as one of the primary instruments for analyzing learners' behavior in communication. It can be used to analyze many issues, such as politeness, turn-taking, and the choices made in lexical use. It can be used to determine the phonological complexity of learners in their speech.
Recent research has used a DCT as tool to evaluate the skills of refusal among EFL students. The participants were given various scenarios and asked to choose the appropriate response from the options offered. The authors found that the DCT was more effective than other refusal measures such as a questionnaire or video recordings. 프라그마틱 공식홈페이지 pragmatickr cautioned, however, that the DCT must be employed with caution. They also recommended using other data collection methods.
DCTs are usually designed with specific linguistic criteria in mind, like the content and the form. These criteria are based on intuition and is based on the assumptions made by the test developers. 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 studies of alternative methods of assessing refusal competence.
A recent study compared DCT responses to requests made by students via email versus those gathered 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' pragmatic choices when it comes to using Korean by using a range of experimental tools, including Discourse Completion Tasks (DCTs) as well as metapragmatic questionnaires and Refusal Interviews (RIs). Participants were 46 CLKs of upper intermediate level who answered DCTs, MQs, and RIs. They were also asked to reflect on their evaluation and refusal performance in RIs. The results revealed that CLKs often chose to defy native Korean norms of pragmatism. Their decisions were influenced by four factors that included their personalities and multilingual identities, their ongoing lives, as well as their relational affordances. These findings have pedagogical implications for L2 Korean assessment.
The MQ data was first analyzed to identify the participants' choices in practice. The data were classified according to Ishihara's (2010) definition of pragmatic resistance. Then, we compared the choices with their linguistic performance on the DCTs in order to determine if they are indicative of pragmatic resistance. Interviewees also had to explain the reasons for choosing a pragmatic behavior in certain situations.
The results of the MQs, DCTs and z-tests were analysed using descriptive statistics and Z tests. It was discovered that the CLKs frequently resorted to euphemistic responses such as "sorry" and "thank you." This is likely due to their lack of familiarity with the target language, which led to an insufficient knowledge of korea pragmatic norms. The results showed that the CLKs' preferences for converging to L1 or departing from both L1 as well as L2 pragmatic norms differed based on the DCT situations. For example, in Situation 3 and 12 the CLKs would prefer to diverge from both L1 and pragmatic norms, whereas in Situation 14 they preferred converging to L1 norms.
The RIs showed that CLKs knew about their logical resistance to every DCT situation. The RIs were conducted one-toone within two days after participants completed the MQs. The RIs were recorded and transcribing, and then coded by two independent coders. Coding was an iterative process, in which the coders read and discussed each transcript. The coding results were then compared to the original RI transcripts, which gave an indication of how well the RIs were able to capture the fundamental behaviors.
Interviews for refusal
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 several 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 asked to perform the DCTs in their first language and complete the MQs either in their L1 or their L2. They were then invited to an RI where they were required to think about and discuss their responses to each DCT scenario.
The results showed that CLKs on average, did not follow the pragmatic norms of native speakers in more than 40 percent of their responses. They did this even when they were able to produce patterns that resembled native speakers. They were aware of their practical resistance. They attributed their choices to learner-internal aspects such as their identities, personalities and identities that are multilingual, as well as ongoing life histories. They also mentioned external factors, such as relational affordances. For example, they described how their relationships with professors led to an easier performance in regards to the intercultural and linguistic standards of their university.
The interviewees expressed concerns about the social pressures or penalties they could face when their social norms were not followed. They were worried that their native friends might view them as "foreigners” and think they were ignorant. This worry 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 testing. Future researchers should consider reassessing the usefulness of these tests in different cultural contexts and in specific situations. This will allow them to better know how different cultures may impact the pragmatic behavior of L2 students in the classroom and beyond. This will also assist educators to develop better methods for teaching and testing Korean pragmatics. Seukhoon Paul Choi is principal advisor for Stratways Group, a geopolitical risk consultancy based in Seoul.
Case Studies
The case study method is an investigative strategy that uses participant-centered, in-depth investigations to investigate a particular subject. It is a method that makes use of numerous sources of data to help support the findings, such as interviews and observations, documents, and artifacts. This type of investigation is ideal for studying specific or complex subjects that are difficult to measure with other methods.
In a case study the first step is to define the subject and the objectives of the study. This will allow you to determine which aspects of the topic should be studied and which aspects can be left out. It is also beneficial to study the literature to gain a general understanding of the subject. It will also help put the issue in a wider theoretical context.
This case study was based on an open source platform, the KMMLU leaderboard [50], and its benchmarks that are specific to Korea, HyperCLOVA X and LDCC-Solar (figure 1 below). The results of this study revealed that L2 Korean learners were highly susceptible to the influence of native models. They were more likely to choose incorrect answer choices that were literal interpretations of prompts, deviating from the correct pragmatic inference. They also had a strong tendency to add 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 the end of their second or third year of university and were hoping to achieve level 6 in their next attempt. They were asked to answer questions regarding their WTC/SPCC, as well as understanding and pragmatic awareness.
The interviewees were presented two scenarios, each of which involved an imaginary interaction with their co-workers and were asked to select one of the following strategies to use when making an inquiry. They were then asked to explain the reasons behind their decision. Most of the participants attributed their rational opposition to their personality. TS, for example stated that she was difficult to approach and was hesitant to inquire about the health of her co-worker when they had a lot of work despite the fact that she thought native Koreans would.