Study of Chinese Learners' Pedagogical Choices in Korean
In addition to the learner-internal aspects CLKs' understanding of the need to be pragmatic and the relationship advantages they could draw on were significant. RIs from TS and ZL for instance, cited their relationship with their local professor as the primary reason for their rational decision to avoid criticising a strict prof (see examples 2).
This article reviews all local pragmatic research on Korean published up to 2020. It focuses on the most important pragmatic issues such as:
Discourse Construction Tests
The test for discourse completion (DCT) is an instrument that is widely used in research that is based on pragmatic principles. It has numerous advantages, but it also has some disadvantages. The DCT for instance, is unable to account for cultural and individual variations. Furthermore, the DCT is susceptible to bias and could cause overgeneralizations. This is why it must be carefully analyzed prior to using it for research or assessment purposes.
Despite its limitations the DCT is a useful tool to investigate the relationship between prosody, information structure and non-native speakers. Its ability in two or more stages to alter social variables that affect politeness can be a strength. This ability can be used to study the effect of prosody in different cultural contexts.
In the field of linguistics the DCT has become one of the primary tools to analyze learners' behavior in communication. It can be used to analyze numerous issues, like politeness, turn-taking, and lexical choices. It can be used to evaluate the phonological complexity of learners' speech.
Recent research utilized the DCT as tool to evaluate the ability to resist of EFL students. Participants were given various scenarios and were asked to select an appropriate response from the options offered. The authors discovered that the DCT to be more effective than other methods for refusing, such as a questionnaire or video recordings. However, the researchers cautioned that the DCT should be employed with caution and include other methods for collecting data.
DCTs are often created with specific linguistic requirements in mind, like the content and the form. These criteria are based on intuition and based upon the assumptions of test creators. They are not always precise and could misrepresent how ELF learners actually reject requests in real-world interactions. This issue calls for further studies of different methods of assessing refusal competence.
In a recent study, DCT responses to student inquiries via email were compared with those from an oral DCT. The results showed that DCTs favored more direct and conventionally-indirect requests and utilized more hints than email data.
Metapragmatic Questionnaires (MQs)
This study investigated Chinese learners their pragmatic choices when they use Korean. It used various experimental tools such as Discourse Completion Tasks, metapragmatic questions and Refusal Interviews. Participants were 46 CLKs with upper-intermediate ability who provided responses to MQs and DCTs. They were also asked to provide reflections on their assessments and refusals in RIs. The results showed that CLKs were more likely to reject native Korean pragmatic norms, and that their choices were influenced by four main factors: their personalities, multilingual identities, their ongoing life histories, and relational benefits. These findings have implications for pedagogy for L2 Korean assessment and teaching.
The MQ data was analyzed in order to identify the participants' actual choices. The data was classified according to Ishihara (2010)'s definition of pragmatic resistance. Then, the selections were compared to their linguistic performance in DCTs to determine whether they reflected pragmatic resistance or not. In addition, the interviewees were asked to justify their choices of behavior in a specific scenario.
The results of the MQs, DCTs and z-tests were analyzed with descriptive statistics and Z tests. It was found that the CLKs frequently used euphemistic responses such as "sorry" and "thank you." This could be due to their lack of familiarity with the target language which led to an insufficient knowledge of korea pragmatic norms. The results revealed that CLKs' preferences to diverge from L1 and 2 norms or to move toward L1 differed based on the DCT circumstances. For instance, in Situations 3 and 12, the CLKs preferred to diverge from both L1 and pragmatic norms, whereas in Situation 14, they favored converging to L1 norms.
The RIs also revealed that CLKs were aware of their pragmatism in every DCT situation. The RIs were conducted one-to-one basis in the space of two days of participants completing the MQs. The RIs were recorded and transcribed by two independent coders and then coded. The code was re-coded repeatedly by the coders, re-reading and discussing each transcript. The results of coding are evaluated against the original RI transcripts to determine whether they reflected the actual behavior.
Refusal Interviews (RIs)
The most important question in pragmatic research is: why do some learners decide to not accept native-speaker norms? Recent research has attempted to answer this question by using various experimental tools, including DCTs MQs and RIs. Participants included 46 CLKs and 44 CNSs from five Korean Universities. Participants were asked to complete the DCTs and MQs either in their L1 or L2 levels. 프라그마틱 무료체험 메타 were then invited to an RI where they were required to reflect on and discuss their responses to each DCT scenario.
The results showed that, on average, the CLKs disapproved of native-speaker pragmatic norms in over 40% of their answers. They did this even though they could create patterns that resembled native ones. They were also conscious of their own pragmatism. They attributed their actions to learner-internal aspects such as their personalities, multilingual identities, and ongoing life histories. They also mentioned external factors, such as relationships and advantages. They described, for example how their relations with their professors enabled them to perform more comfortably in terms of the linguistic and social expectations of their university.
However, the interviewees also expressed concerns about the social pressures and punishments they could face if they flouted the local social norms. They were concerned that their native interactants might perceive them as "foreigners" and think they are not intelligent. This concern was similar to the concerns expressed by Brown (2013) and Ishihara (2009).
These findings suggest that native-speakers' pragmatic norms are not the norm for Korean learners. They may still be useful for official Korean proficiency testing. But it is advisable for future researchers to reconsider their usefulness in particular situations and in various contexts. This will enable them to better know how different cultures can affect the pragmatic behavior of L2 learners in the classroom and beyond. Additionally this will allow educators to develop more effective methodologies for teaching and testing the korea-based pragmatics. Seukhoon Paul Choi is principal advisor to Stratways Group, a geopolitical risk consulting firm based in Seoul.
Case Studies
The case study method is an investigative strategy that uses participant-centered, in-depth studies to study a specific subject. This method uses various sources of data including documents, interviews, and observations to support its findings. This kind of research is ideal for studying complicated or unique subjects which are difficult to assess with other methods.
The first step in the case study is to define the subject matter and the purpose of the study. This will help you determine which aspects of the topic are important to investigate and which ones can be skipped. It is also helpful to read the literature on to the subject to gain a greater understanding of the topic and to place the case study in a broader 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 the study showed that L2 Korean learners were highly vulnerable to the influence of native models. They were more likely to select incorrect answers which were literal interpretations. This was a deviance from a precise pragmatic inference. They also showed a strong tendency to add their own text or "garbage," to their responses, further detracting from their quality of response.
Additionally, the participants in this study were L2 Korean learners who had reached level 4 on the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK) in their third or second year of university and were hoping to achieve level 6 for their next test. They were asked questions about their WTC/SPCC, their pragmatic awareness and understanding understanding of the world.
Interviewees were presented with two scenarios involving an interaction with their counterparts and were asked to choose one of the strategies listed below to use when making an offer. They were then asked to provide the reasoning behind their choice. Most of the participants attributed their rational opposition to their personalities. For example, TS claimed that she was difficult to talk to, and therefore refused to ask about her interactant's well-being with the burden of a job, even though she believed that native Koreans would do this.