Study of Chinese Learners' Pedagogical Choices in Korean
CLKs' awareness and ability to draw on relational affordances as well as the learner-internal aspects, were crucial. For instance, RIs from TS and ZL both mentioned their relationships with their local professors as an important factor in their decision to not criticize a strict professor (see the example 2).
This article reviews all local pragmatic research on Korean published up to 2020. It focuses on the practical important topics such as:
Discourse Construction Tests
The test for discourse completion is a common tool in pragmatic research. It has numerous advantages however, it also has some drawbacks. The DCT is one example. It cannot account cultural and individual differences. Additionally the DCT can be biased and can cause overgeneralizations. It should be carefully analyzed before it is used in research or assessment.
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 social variables related to politeness is a plus. This ability can aid researchers to study the role played by prosody in communication across different cultural contexts, a major challenge in cross-cultural pragmatics.
In the field of linguistics the DCT has become one of the most significant instruments for analyzing learners' behavior in communication. It can be used to investigate numerous issues, like the manner of speaking, turn-taking and lexical choices. It can be used to evaluate the phonological complexity of learners speaking.
A recent study employed the DCT to assess EFL students' refusal skills. Participants were given an array of scenarios and asked to choose the appropriate response from the choices provided. The researchers discovered that the DCT to be more effective than other refusal methods like a questionnaire or video recordings. However, the researchers warned that the DCT should be employed with caution and include other data collection methods.
DCTs can be developed using specific requirements for linguistics, such as form and content. These criteria are intuitive and based on the assumptions of the test creators. They aren't always accurate and may misrepresent the way ELF learners actually respond to requests in real-world interactions. This issue calls for further studies of alternative methods of assessing the ability to refuse.
A recent study examined DCT responses to requests made by students through email with those obtained from an oral DCT. The results revealed that DCT encouraged more direct and traditionally indirect request forms and a lower use of hints than email data did.
Metapragmatic Questionnaires (MQs)
This study investigated Chinese learners their pragmatic choices when they use Korean. It employed various experimental tools including Discourse Completion Tasks, metapragmatic questions, and Refusal Interviews. The participants were 46 CLKs of upper-intermediate level who responded to DCTs, MQs, and RIs. They were also asked for reflections on their assessments and their refusals to participate in RIs. The results showed that CLKs often resisted native Korean pragmatic norms, and their decisions were influenced by four major factors that included their personalities, multilingual identities, ongoing life histories, and relationship affordances. These findings have implications for pedagogy for L2 Korean assessment and teaching.
The MQ data were analyzed to identify the participants' choices in terms of their pragmatics. The data was categorized according Ishihara (2010)'s definition of pragmatic resistance. Then, the selections were matched with their linguistic performance in DCTs to determine whether they showed a pattern of resistance to pragmatics or not. The interviewees were asked to justify their choice of pragmatic behavior in a particular situation.
The findings of the MQs and DCTs were then examined using descriptive statistics and z-tests. It was found that CLKs frequently resorted to phrases like "sorry" and "thank you." This was likely due to their lack of familiarity with the target language which resulted in an inadequate knowledge of korea pragmatic norms. The results revealed that CLKs' preferences to diverge from L1 and L2 norms or to be more convergent towards L1 norms varied based on the DCT circumstances. In Situations 3 and 12 CLKs favored diverging from both L1pragmatic norms - and L2-pragmatic norms while in Situation 14 CLKs preferred a convergence to L1 norms.
The RIs also revealed CLKs were aware of their own pragmatism in each DCT situation. The RIs were conducted on a one-to-one basis within a period of two days of the participants completing the MQs. The RIs were recorded and transcribing, and then coded by two coders who were independent. Coding was an iterative process, where the coders read and discussed each transcript. The coding results are then compared with the original RI transcripts to determine if they reflected the actual behavior.
Refusal Interviews
The most important issue in research on pragmatics is: Why do certain learners refuse to accept native-speaker norms? A recent study sought to answer this question by employing a variety of research tools, such as DCTs MQs, DCTs 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 their L2. They were then invited to an RI, where they were required to reflect and discuss their responses to each DCT situation.
The results showed that, on average, the CLKs disapproved of native-speaker pragmatic norms in over 40% of their answers. They did so even though they could produce native-like patterns. Furthermore, they were clearly conscious of their own pragmatism. They attributed their decisions to learner-internal factors like their identities, personalities and identities that are multilingual, as well as ongoing life histories. They also mentioned external factors such as relational advantages. They outlined, for instance how their relationships with their professors allowed them to perform more comfortably in terms of the linguistic and social standards of their university.
The interviewees expressed their concern about the social pressures or consequences they could be subject to if their local social norms were violated. They were worried that their native friends might perceive them as “foreigners” and think they were unintelligent. This worry was similar to the one expressed by Brown (2013) and Ishihara (2009).
These results suggest that native speakers pragmatic norms aren't the norm for Korean learners. They may still be useful for official Korean proficiency testing. Future researchers should consider reassessing the validity of these tests in various contexts and in particular situations. This will help them better understand the impact of different cultural environments on the pragmatic behavior and classroom interactions of students from L2. Additionally this will allow educators to develop more effective methodologies for teaching and testing the korea's pragmatics. Seukhoon Paul Choi is principal advisor at Stratways Group, a geopolitical risk consulting firm based in Seoul.
Case Studies
The case study method is a method that focuses on intensive, participant-centered research to study a specific subject. This method makes use of numerous sources of information like interviews, observations, and documents to confirm its findings. This type of investigation can be used to study unique or complex topics that are difficult for other methods to assess.
In a case study the first step is to define the subject as well as the goals of the study. This will help determine which aspects of the subject matter are essential to study and which can be omitted. It is also helpful to read the literature to gain a better knowledge of the subject and place the situation in a larger theoretical context.
This case study was based on an open source platform that is the KMMLU leaderboard [50], and its specific benchmarks for Korea, HyperCLOVA X and LDCC-Solar (figure 1 below). 프라그마틱 슬롯 of the experiment revealed that the L2 Korean students were highly vulnerable to native models. They were more likely to select incorrect answer options that were literal interpretations of prompts, which were not based on accurate pragmatic inference. They also exhibited an inclination to add their own text, or "garbage," to their responses, further reducing their response quality.
Moreover, the participants of this case study were primarily L2 Korean learners who had attained level 4 on the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK) in their second or third year at university and were aiming for level 6 in their next attempt. They were asked questions regarding their WTC/SPCC, their pragmatic awareness and understanding and knowledge of the world.
Interviewees were presented with two scenarios involving an interaction with their co-workers and asked to choose one of the strategies below to employ when making a demand. They were then asked to explain the reasons behind their decision. 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 therefore did not want to inquire about her interactant's well-being with a heavy workload despite the fact that she believed that native Koreans would do this.