Study of Chinese Learners' Pedagogical Choices in Korean
CLKs' awareness and ability to draw on relational affordances and learner-internal elements, were important. For instance, RIs from TS and ZL both cited their local professor relationships as a major factor in their pragmatic choice to not criticize a strict professor (see the example 2).
This article reviews all local practical research on Korean up to 2020. It focuses on core pragmatic issues such as:
Discourse Construction Tests
The Discourse Completion Test (DCT) is an instrument that is widely used in pragmatic research. It has many advantages, but also a few disadvantages. The DCT for instance, cannot account cultural and individual differences. 프라그마틱 슈가러쉬 can also be biased and lead to overgeneralizations. It is important to carefully analyze the data before it is used for research or evaluation.
Despite its limitations, the DCT can be a valuable tool to study the relationship between prosody and information structure in non-native speakers. Its ability in two or more stages to manipulate social variables related to politeness could be a benefit. This ability can be used to study the impact of prosody across cultural contexts.
In the field of linguistics, DCT is among the most useful tools to analyze the communication habits of learners. It can be used to investigate various aspects, including the manner of speaking, turn taking and lexical choices. It can also be used to assess the phonological complexity of learners' speech.
Recent research utilized an DCT as an instrument to test the skills of refusal among EFL students. Participants were presented with a range of scenarios to choose from, and were then asked to select the appropriate response. The researchers discovered that the DCT to be more efficient than other methods of refusal like videos or questionnaires. The researchers cautioned that the DCT should be used with caution. They also recommended using other methods of data collection.
DCTs can be developed using specific linguistic criteria, such as form and content. These criteria are intuitive and based on the assumptions of test designers. They aren't always accurate, and they may incorrectly describe the way in which ELF learners actually reject requests in real-world interaction. This issue calls for more research on alternative methods of testing refusal competence.
A recent study examined DCT responses to requests made by students via email versus the responses gathered from an oral DCT. The results revealed that DCT promoted more direct and traditionally form-based requests and made a less frequent use of hints than email data did.
Metapragmatic Questionnaires (MQs)
This study investigated Chinese learners' pragmatic choices when using Korean. It used various tools for experimentation including Discourse Completion Tasks, metapragmatic questions, and Refusal Interviews. Participants were 46 CLKs of upper-intermediate proficiency who gave responses to MQs and DCTs. They were also asked to think about their evaluations and refusal performance in RIs. The results showed that CLKs frequently chose to reject native Korean pragmatic norms. Their choices were influenced by four factors: their personalities and multilingual identities, their current lives, as well as their relational affordances. These findings have implications for pedagogy for L2 Korean assessment and teaching.
First, the MQ data were examined to determine the participants' pragmatic choices. The data were classified according to Ishihara (2010)'s definition of pragmatic resistance. Then, the choices were compared to their linguistic performance on the DCTs to determine if they reflected pragmatic resistance or not. Additionally, the participants were asked to explain their decision to use pragmatic language in a specific scenario.
The findings of the MQs and DCTs were then analysed using descriptive statistics and Z-tests. It was found that the CLKs often 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 a lack of knowledge of korea pragmatic norms. The results revealed that CLKs' preferences for converging to L1 norms or departing from both L1 as well as L2 pragmatic norms varied by the DCT situations. For instance, in Situations 3 and 12, the CLKs preferred to diverge from both L1 and pragmatic norms, whereas in Situation 14 they preferred converging to L1 norms.
The RIs also revealed that the CLKs were aware their own pragmatism in each DCT situation. RIs were conducted on a one-to-one basis in the space of two days of the participants completing the MQs. The RIs were transcribed and recorded by two independent coders and then coded. The coding process was an iterative process, where the coders listened and discussed each transcript. The coding results are then compared with the original RI transcripts to determine whether they captured the underlying pragmatic behavior.
Refusal Interviews (RIs)
The key issue in research on pragmatics is: Why do some learners decide to not accept native-speaker norms? Recent research sought to answer this question by using a variety of experimental tools including DCTs MQs and RIs. Participants comprised 46 CLKs and 44 CNSs from five Korean Universities. Participants were required to complete the DCTs and MQs in their L1 or L2. Then they were invited to attend a RI where they were asked think about 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 responses. They did this even though they could create patterns that resembled native ones. Furthermore, they were clearly aware of their pragmatic resistance. They attributed their decision to learner-internal variables such as their personality and multilingual identities. They also referred external factors, such as relational affordances. For instance, they discussed how their relationships with professors facilitated more relaxed performance with respect to the intercultural and linguistic standards of their university.
The interviewees expressed concerns about the social pressures or consequences they could face if their local social norms were violated. They were concerned that their native counterparts may view them as "foreignersand consider them unintelligent. This worry was similar to the one expressed by Brown (2013) and Ishihara (2009).
These results suggest that native-speaker practical norms are no longer the default preference of Korean learners. They could still be useful for official Korean proficiency testing. Future researchers should reassess the applicability of these tests in different cultural contexts and specific situations. This will allow them to better understand the impact of different cultural contexts on the pragmatic behavior and classroom interactions of students in L2. This will also aid educators create better methods for teaching and testing Korean pragmatics. Seukhoon Paul Choi is principal advisor to Stratways Group, a geopolitical risk consultancy based in Seoul.
Case Studies
The case study method is a research method that focuses on deep, participatory investigations to investigate a specific topic. This method makes use of numerous sources of information including interviews, observations, and documents, to prove its findings. This kind of investigation can be used to examine complicated or unique issues that are difficult to other methods to assess.
The first step in conducting a case study is to clearly define the subject and the objectives of the study. This will help you determine which aspects of the topic should be studied and which ones can be skipped. It is also helpful to read the literature to gain a better understanding 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], and its Korean-specific benchmarks HyperCLOVA X and LDCC Solar (figure 1 below). The results of this experiment revealed that L2 Korean learners were extremely dependent on the influence of native models. They tended to choose wrong answers which were literal interpretations. This was a deviation from the correct pragmatic inference. They also exhibited an inclination to include their own text, or "garbage," to their responses, further detracting from their quality of response.
Moreover, the participants of this case study were primarily L2 Korean learners who had attained level 4 in the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK) at the end of their second or third year of university, and were aiming to reach level 6 for their next test. They were asked to answer questions about their WTC/SPCC as well as understanding and pragmatic awareness.
The interviewees were given two scenarios, each involving a hypothetical interaction with their interlocutors and asked to choose one of the following strategies when making an inquiry. They were then asked to provide the reasons behind their decision. Most participants attributed their pragmatic opposition to their personality. For example, TS claimed that she was difficult to connect to, and therefore did not want to inquire about the health of her interlocutors despite having the burden of a job despite the fact that she believed that native Koreans would do so.