Study of Chinese Learners' Pedagogical Choices in Korean
CLKs' awareness and ability to make use of relational affordances and the learner-internal aspects, were crucial. Researchers from TS and ZL for instance mentioned their relationship with their local professor as a major factor in their decision to stay clear of criticizing a strict professor (see the example 2).
This article examines all local research on Korean published until 2020. It focuses on pragmatic fundamental topics like:
Discourse Construction Tests (DCTs)
The test for discourse completion is a common instrument in pragmatic research. It has many advantages, but it also has some disadvantages. For instance, the DCT cannot account for cultural and personal differences in communicative behavior. Additionally it is also the case that the DCT can be biased and may result in overgeneralizations. It is essential to analyze it carefully before it is used in research or evaluation.
Despite its limitations, the DCT is a useful tool for investigating the relationship between prosody and information structure in 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 to study the role played by prosody in communicating across cultural contexts, a major challenge in cross-cultural pragmatics.
In the field linguistics, DCT is one of the most effective tools used for analyzing communication behaviors of learners. It can be used to study various aspects such as the manner of speaking, turn taking and lexical choice. It can be used to determine the level of phonological sophistication in learners' speech.
Recent research utilized the DCT as an instrument to test the skills of refusal among EFL students. The participants were given a list of scenarios and asked to choose the appropriate response from the options provided. The authors concluded that the DCT was more effective than other refusal measures such as a questionnaire or video recordings. Researchers warned, however, that the DCT must be employed with caution. They also recommended using other methods for data collection.
DCTs can be developed using specific language requirements, like form and content. These criteria are intuitive and is based on the assumptions made by the test designers. They aren't always precise and could misrepresent how ELF learners actually respond to requests in real-world interactions. This issue calls for more research into alternative methods of assessing refusal ability.
A recent study examined DCT responses to requests submitted by students through email with those obtained from an oral DCT. The results showed that DCTs favored more direct and traditionally indirect request forms and utilized hints less than email data.
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 proficiency who gave responses to DCTs and MQs. They were also asked for reflections on their opinions and their refusals to participate in RIs. The results revealed that CLKs were more likely to reject native Korean pragmatic norms, and their choices were influenced by four primary factors such as their identities, their multilingual identities, ongoing lives, and their relational affordances. These findings have implications for pedagogy for L2 Korean assessment.
The MQ data was analyzed in order to determine the participants' actual choices. The data were classified according to Ishihara (2010)'s definition of pragmatic resistance. Then, the responses were matched with their linguistic performance in the DCTs to determine if they reflected pragmatic resistance or not. The interviewees also had to explain the reasons for choosing a pragmatic behavior in certain situations.
The findings of the MQs and DCTs were then examined using descriptive statistics and Z-tests. The CLKs were discovered to use euphemistic terms such as "sorry" or "thank you". This could be due to their lack of familiarity with the target languages, which led to a lack of understanding of the korean pragmatic norms. The results showed that the CLKs' preferences for either converging to L1 norms or diverging from both L1 and 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 showed that CLKs were aware of their pragmatic resistance to each DCT situation. RIs were conducted on a one-to-one basis within two days of participants completing the MQs. The RIs were recorded and transcribed, then coded by two independent coders. The code was re-coded repeatedly, with the coders re-reading and discussing each transcript. The results of coding are compared with the original RI transcripts to determine whether they captured the underlying pragmatic behavior.
Refusal Interviews (RIs)
One of the most important questions in pragmatic research is the reason why learners are hesitant to adhere to native-speaker pragmatic norms. A recent study attempted to answer this question employing a variety of research instruments, including DCTs MQs, DCTs, and RIs. The participants were comprised of 46 CLKs, 44 CNSs, and 45 KNSs from five Korean universities. Participants were required to complete the DCTs and MQs either in their L1 or their L2. Then they were invited to attend a RI where they were asked consider their responses to the DCT situations.
The results showed that, on average, the CLKs disapproved of the pragmatic norms of native speakers in more than 40% of their answers. They did this even when they could produce patterns that resembled natives. They were also aware of their pragmatism resistance. They attributed their resistance to learner-internal factors like their personality and multilingual identities. They also mentioned external factors such as relational advantages. For example, they described how their relationships with professors facilitated a more relaxed performance in relation to the linguistic and intercultural norms of their university.
The interviewees expressed concern about the social pressures or penalties they might face if their local social norms were not followed. They were worried that their native friends might perceive them as “foreignersand believe that they are unintelligent. This is similar to the concerns expressed by Brown (2013) and Ishihara (2009).
These findings suggest that native-speaker pragmatic norms are no longer the default preference of Korean learners. They may remain useful as a model for official Korean proficiency tests. However, it is prudent for future researchers to reassess their usefulness in particular situations and in various cultural contexts. This will help them better understand the effects of different cultures on the behavior of students and classroom interactions of students in L2. Furthermore it will assist educators to create more effective methods for teaching and testing korea pragmatics. Seukhoon Paul Choi, principal advisor at Stratways Group in Seoul, is a geopolitical risk consulting.
Case Studies
The case study method is a research strategy that utilizes in-depth, participant-centered investigations to investigate a specific topic. It is a method that uses various sources of information to back up the findings, such as interviews and observations, documents, and artifacts. This kind of research is useful when analyzing complicated or unique subjects which are difficult to assess with other methods.
In a case study the first step is to clearly define the subject as well as the purpose of the study. This will help you determine what aspects of the subject should be studied and which aspects can be left out. It is also beneficial to review the existing research to gain a broad understanding of the subject and place the case in a wider theoretical context.
This study was conducted 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). The results of this study revealed that L2 Korean learners were highly susceptible to the influence of native models. They tended to select wrong answers that were literal interpretations of the prompts, thereby ignoring the correct pragmatic inference. They also showed a distinct tendency to add their own text or "garbage" to their responses. This lowered the quality of their answers.
The participants in this study were L2 Korean students who had achieved level four on the Test of Proficiency in Korean TOPIK in their second or third university year and were aiming to reach level six by their next attempt. They were asked questions regarding their WTC/SPCC, pragmatic awareness and understanding and knowledge of the world.
Interviewees were presented with two hypothetical situations involving an interaction with their co-workers and asked to choose one of the strategies listed below to use when making demands. They were then asked to provide the reasons behind their decision. The majority of participants attributed their pragmatist opposition to their personalities. For instance, TS claimed that she was difficult to connect to, and therefore did not want to inquire about her interactant's well-being with an intense workload despite her belief that native Koreans would do so.