Study of Chinese Learners' Pedagogical Choices in Korean
In addition to learner-internal influences CLKs' awareness of pragmatic resistance and the relational affordances they had access to were significant. Researchers from TS & ZL, for example, cited their relationships with their local professors as the primary reason for their rational decision to avoid criticism of a strict professor (see the example 2).
This article examines all local research on Korean published up to 2020. It focuses on key practical issues, including:
Discourse Construction Tests (DCTs)
The test for discourse completion is a commonly used tool in pragmatic research. It has many advantages, but it also has some disadvantages. For instance, the DCT is unable to account for cultural and individual variations in communication. The DCT can also be biased and can lead to overgeneralizations. This is why it is important to analyze it carefully before it is used for research or for assessment purposes.
Despite its limitations the DCT can be a useful tool to investigate the connection between prosody, information structure and non-native speakers. The ability of the DCT in two or more stages to manipulate the social variables that are related to politeness is a plus. This can assist researchers understand the role of prosody in communication across different cultural contexts, which is a major issue in cross-cultural pragmatics.
In the field of linguistics, the DCT is now one of the most important tools to analyze learners' communication behaviors. It can be used to examine various issues such as politeness, turn-taking, and lexical selection. It can be used to evaluate the phonological complexity of the learners' speech.
Recent research used a DCT as tool to evaluate the refusal skills of EFL students. Participants were presented with a variety of scenarios to choose from, and then asked to choose the most appropriate response. The authors found the DCT to be more effective than other methods for refusing, such as videos or questionnaires. The researchers cautioned that the DCT should be employed with caution. They also recommended using other methods for data collection.
DCTs can be developed using specific requirements for linguistics, such as the form and content. These criterion are intuitive and is based on the assumptions made by the test developers. They are not always precise and could misrepresent the way ELF learners respond to requests in real-world interactions. This issue requires more research into different methods of assessing the ability to refuse.
A recent study has compared DCT responses to requests made 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 a lower use of hints than email data did.
pragmatickr (MQs)
This study explored Chinese learners' pragmatic choices in their use of Korean by using a range of experimental tools, including Discourse Completion Tasks (DCTs), metapragmatic questionnaires, and Refusal Interviews (RIs). Participants were 46 CLKs with upper-intermediate proficiency who gave responses to DCTs and MQs. They were also asked to think about their evaluations and refusal responses in RIs. The results revealed that CLKs were more likely to reject native Korean pragmatic norms, and their decisions were influenced by four major factors such as their personalities, their multilingual identities, their ongoing lives, and their relational affordances. These findings have pedagogical implications for L2 Korean assessment and teaching.
First, the MQ data were analyzed to identify the participants' pragmatic choices. The data were categorized according to Ishihara's (2010) definition of pragmatic resistance. Then, the selections were compared with their linguistic performance in DCTs to determine whether they were a reflection of pragmatic resistance or not. The 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 used the use of euphemistic phrases such as "sorry" and "thank you." This was likely due to their lack of experience with the target language, which resulted in an inadequate knowledge of korea pragmatic norms. The results showed that CLKs' preference for converging to L1 norms or dissociating from both L1 and L2 pragmatic norms varies according to the DCT situations. For example, in Situation 3 and 12 the CLKs favored to diverge from both L1 and pragmatic norms while in Situation 14, they favored converging to L1 norms.
The RIs also revealed that the CLKs were aware their own pragmatism in each DCT situation. The RIs were conducted one-to-one within two days after participants completed the MQs. The RIs were recorded and transcribed, then coded by two coders who were independent. The code was re-coded repeatedly by the coders, re-reading and discussing each transcript. The results of the coding process were compared to the original RI transcripts, giving an indication of how well the RIs accurately portrayed the core behaviors.
Interviews with Refusal
The central issue in research on pragmatics is: why do some learners choose not to accept native-speaker norms? A recent study attempted to answer this question by employing a variety of research tools, including 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 either in their L1 or L2. They were then invited to an RI where they were asked to reflect and discuss their responses to each DCT scenario.
The results showed that on average, the CLKs resisted the pragmatic norms of native speakers in more than 40% of their responses. They did this even though they were able to produce patterns that resembled native speakers. In addition, they were aware of their pragmatic resistance. They attributed their decision to learner-internal factors such as their personality and multilingual identities. They also referred to external factors such as relational benefits. They described, for example how their relationships with their professors allowed them to function more easily in terms of the linguistic and cultural norms at their university.
The interviewees expressed concern about the social pressures or consequences they could be subject to if their local social norms were violated. They were worried that their local friends might consider them "foreigners" and think they are incompetent. This was a concern similar to the concerns voiced by Brown (2013) and Ishihara (2009).
These findings suggest that native-speakers' pragmatic norms are not the default preference for Korean learners. They could still be useful for official Korean proficiency tests. Future researchers should reconsider the usefulness of these tests in different cultural contexts and in specific situations. This will help them better understand the effects of different cultures on the classroom behavior and interactions of students from L2. Moreover it will assist educators to develop more effective methodologies for teaching and testing korea pragmatics. Seukhoon Paul Choi, principal advisor at Stratways Group in Seoul, is a geopolitical risks consultancy.
Case Studies
The case study method is an investigative strategy that employs participant-centered, in-depth investigations to explore a specific subject. This method uses numerous sources of information including documents, interviews, and observations to support its findings. This kind of investigation can be used to examine specific or complicated topics that are difficult for other methods to measure.
The first step in conducting a case study is to clearly define the subject matter and the purpose of the study. This will help determine what aspects of the subject are important for investigation and which ones can be omitted. It is also helpful to read the literature on to the topic to gain a better understanding of the subject and place the case study in a broader theoretical context.
This case study was based on an open source platform such as the KMMLU leaderboard [50], and its benchmarks that are specific to Korea, HyperCLOVA X and LDCC-Solar (figure 1 below). The results of this experiment showed that L2 Korean learners were highly vulnerable to the influence of native models. They tended to choose wrong answer choices which were literal interpretations. This was a departure from accurate pragmatic inference. They also exhibited an inclination to include their own text, or "garbage," to their responses, further reducing their quality of response.
The participants of this study were all L2 Korean students who had achieved level four in the Test of Proficiency in Korean TOPIK in their third or second year of university and were hoping to attain level six on their next attempt. They were asked questions regarding their WTC/SPCC, pragmatic awareness and understanding knowledge of the world.
Interviewees were presented with two hypothetical situations involving an interaction with their interlocutors and asked to choose one of the strategies below to use when making a demand. They were then asked to explain the reasoning behind their choice. The majority of participants attributed their pragmatic resistance to their personality. For example, TS claimed that she was hard to get close to, and therefore was reluctant to inquire about the well-being of her friend with an intense workload despite her belief that native Koreans would do this.