Study of Chinese Learners' Pedagogical Choices in Korean
CLKs' awareness and capacity to make use of relational affordances and learner-internal elements, were important. Researchers from TS & ZL for instance mentioned their relationship with their local professor as a major factor in their pragmatic decision to avoid criticising a strict prof (see example 2).
This article reviews all local pragmatic research on Korean published up to 2020. It focuses on key practical issues, including:
Discourse Construction Tests (DCTs)
The discourse completion test is a popular instrument in pragmatic research. It has many advantages, but it also has some disadvantages. For example, the DCT cannot take into account the cultural and individual differences in communication. Furthermore, the DCT can be biased and could lead to overgeneralizations. Therefore, it is important to analyze it carefully before using it for research or for assessment purposes.
Despite its limitations, the DCT is a useful 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 that affect politeness can be a strength. This characteristic can be utilized to study the role of prosody in different cultural contexts.
In the field of linguistics DCT is among the most effective tools used to analyze the communication habits of learners. It can be used to study various aspects, including politeness, turn-taking, and lexical choices. It can be used to assess the level of phonological sophistication in learners speaking.
Recent research has used an DCT as a tool to assess the refusal skills of EFL students. Participants were given various scenarios and asked to choose the appropriate response from the choices provided. The authors found the DCT to be more effective than other methods for refusing like a questionnaire or video recordings. However, the researchers cautioned that the DCT should be used with caution and should include other types of data collection methods.
DCTs can be designed with specific requirements for linguistics, such as the form and content. These criterion are intuitive and are based on the assumptions of the test designers. They are not always precise and could misrepresent the way ELF learners actually respond to requests in real-world interactions. This issue calls for further research on different methods to assess 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 showed that the DCT encouraged more direct and conventionally indirect request forms and a lower use of hints than the email data did.
Metapragmatic Questionnaires (MQs)
This study looked at Chinese learners' pragmatic choices when using Korean. It employed various tools for experimentation such as Discourse Completion Tasks, metapragmatic questions and Refusal Interviews. Participants were 46 CLKs of upper intermediate level who answered MQs, DCTs and RIs. They were also required to provide reflections on their evaluations and refusals in RIs. The results showed that CLKs frequently chose to resist native Korean norms of pragmatism. Their decisions were influenced by four factors such as their personality and multilingual identities, their ongoing lives, as well as their relationship affordances. These findings have implications for pedagogy for L2 Korean assessment and teaching.
The MQ data was first analyzed to determine the participants' practical choices. The data was classified according to Ishihara (2010)'s definition of pragmatic resistance. Then, we compared their choices made by the participants with their linguistic performance using DCTs to determine if they were indicative of a pragmatic resistance. The interviewees were asked to explain their choices of behavior in a given 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 resorted to euphemistic responses such as "sorry" and "thank you." 프라그마틱 데모 was likely due to their lack of experience with the target language which led to a lack of knowledge of korea pragmatic norms. The results revealed that CLKs' preferences for either converging to L1 or dissociating from both L1 and L2 pragmatic norms varied by the DCT situations. For instance, in Situations 3 and 12 the CLKs would prefer to diverge from both L1 and L2 pragmatic norms, whereas in Situation 14, they favored converging to L1 norms.
The RIs showed that CLKs knew about their pragmatic resistance to each DCT situation. RIs were conducted on a one-to-one basis in the space of two days of participants completing the MQs. The RIs were transcribed and recorded by two independent coders and then coded. Coding was an iterative process, in which the coders read and discussed each transcript. The results of coding are evaluated against the original RI transcripts to determine whether they reflected the actual behavior.
Refusal Interviews (RIs)
A key question of pragmatic research is why some learners are hesitant to adhere to pragmatic norms that native speakers use. A recent study attempted to answer this question using a variety of experimental tools, such as DCTs MQs, DCTs and RIs. Participants included 44 CLKs and 46 CNSs from five Korean Universities. Participants were asked to complete the DCTs and MQs either 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 scenario.
The results showed that on average, the CLKs rejected native-speaker pragmatic norms in over 40% of their responses. They did so even though they could create native-like patterns. They were also aware of their pragmatic resistance. They attributed their decision to learner-internal factors like their personality and multilingual identities. They also mentioned external factors, such as relationships and advantages. For instance, they discussed how their relationships with professors led to an easier performance with respect to the intercultural and linguistic standards of their university.
The interviewees expressed their concern about the social pressures or penalties they could face when their social norms were violated. They were concerned that their native counterparts might view them as "foreignersand believe that they are incompetent. This concern was similar in nature to the one expressed by Brown (2013) and Ishihara (2009).
These results suggest that native-speaker practical norms are no longer the norm for Korean learners. They could still be useful for official Korean proficiency testing. But it would be prudent for future researchers to reconsider their applicability in specific situations and in various contexts. This will allow them to better understand the effects of different cultural contexts on the behavior of students and classroom interactions of L2 students. Additionally it will assist educators to develop more effective methodologies for teaching and testing korea pragmatics. Seukhoon Paul Choi is principal advisor at Stratways Group, a geopolitical risk consultancy based out of Seoul.
Case Studies
The case study method is an investigative technique that employs participant-centered, in-depth studies to study a specific subject. This method makes use of multiple data sources like interviews, observations, and documents, to confirm its findings. This kind of research is useful for examining unique or complex subjects that are difficult to quantify with other methods.
The first step in the case study is to define the subject and the goals of the study. This will help you determine what aspects of the subject must be investigated and which ones can be skipped. It is also helpful to read the literature on to the subject to gain a greater knowledge of the subject and place the case within a wider 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 the test revealed that the L2 Korean students were particularly vulnerable to native models. They tended to choose wrong answer options that were literal interpretations. This was a deviation from the correct pragmatic inference. They also showed a distinct tendency to include their own text or "garbage" to their responses. This further reduced the quality of their responses.
Furthermore, the participants of this case study were primarily L2 Korean learners who had achieved 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 regarding their WTC/SPCC, pragmatic awareness, understanding and understanding of the world.
Interviewees were presented with two hypothetical situations involving an interaction with their counterparts and asked to choose one of the strategies below to employ when making an offer. The interviewees were asked to justify their choice. Most participants attributed their pragmatic opposition to their personalities. For example, TS claimed that she was hard to get close to, and so she was reluctant to inquire about the health of her interlocutors despite having a heavy workload despite her belief that native Koreans would do so.