Study of Chinese Learners' Pedagogical Choices in Korean
In addition to learner-internal influences, CLKs' awareness of pragmatic resistance and the relational affordances they could draw on were important. The RIs from TS and ZL for instance, cited their relationships with their local professors as the primary reason for their decision to stay clear of criticizing a strict professor (see example 2).
This article reviews all local pragmatic research on Korean up to 2020. It focuses on pragmatic core topics such as:
Discourse Construction Tests (DCTs)
The discourse completion test is a common tool in the field of pragmatic research. It has numerous advantages, but it also has its drawbacks. For example, the DCT cannot take into account cultural and individual differences in communication. The DCT can also be biased and lead to overgeneralizations. It is essential to analyze it carefully before it is used for research or assessment.
Despite its limitations, the DCT can be a useful tool for analyzing the relationship between prosody, information structure, and non-native speakers. Its ability in two or more stages to manipulate social variables that affect politeness is a plus. This feature can be used to study the impact of prosody across cultural contexts.
In the field of linguistics, DCT is one of the most useful tools to analyze the communication habits of learners. It can be used to investigate many issues, such as politeness, turn-taking, and lexical choices. It can be used to assess the phonological complexity of learners' speech.
A recent study utilized a DCT to assess EFL students' refusal skills. Participants were presented with a range of scenarios to choose from and then asked to select the appropriate response. The authors discovered that the DCT to be more efficient than other methods of refusal like a questionnaire or video recordings. However, they cautioned that the DCT should be used with caution and should include other types of data collection methods.
DCTs can be developed using specific requirements for linguistics, such as design and content. These criteria are based on intuition and based on the assumptions of test creators. They aren't always precise and could misrepresent the way ELF learners respond to requests in real-world interactions. This issue requires more research on alternative methods of testing refusal competence.
In a recent study DCT responses to student inquiries via email were compared to those from an oral DCT. The results revealed that DCTs favored more direct and conventionally-indirect request forms and used less hints than email data.
Metapragmatic Questionnaires (MQs)
This study investigated Chinese learners' pragmatic choices when using Korean. It employed various experimental tools such as Discourse Completion Tasks, metapragmatic questions and Refusal Interviews. Participants were 46 CLKs of upper-intermediate who participated in MQs, DCTs, and RIs. They were also asked to provide reflections on their evaluations and refusals in RIs. The results indicated that the CLKs often resisted native Korean pragmatic norms, and their choices were influenced by four main factors that included their personalities, their multilingual identities, their ongoing life histories, and relationship affordances. These findings have implications for pedagogy for L2 Korean assessment.
First, the MQ data were analysed to determine the participants' pragmatic choices. The data were categorized according to Ishihara's (2010) definition of pragmatic resistance. Then, we compared the selections with their linguistic performance using DCTs in order to determine if they were a sign of pragmatic resistance. The interviewees were asked to explain their choice of pragmatic behavior in a given scenario.
The results of the MQs, DCTs and z-tests were analysed using descriptive statistics and Z tests. It was found that the CLKs frequently resorted to the use of euphemistic phrases such as "sorry" and "thank you." This could be 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 to diverge from L1 and 2 norms or to converge towards L1 norms varied based on the DCT circumstances. For instance, in Situations 3 and 12 the CLKs would prefer to diverge from both L1 as well as L2 pragmatic norms while in Situation 14 they favored a convergence to L1 norms.
The RIs also revealed the CLKs were aware of their pragmatic resistance in each DCT situation. The RIs were conducted one-to-one within two days after the participants had completed the MQs. The RIs were recorded and transcribed, and then coded by two coders who were independent. The coding process was iterative by the coders, re-reading and discussing each transcript. The coding results were then evaluated against the original RI transcripts, which gave an indication of how well the RIs captured the underlying pragmatic behavior.
Refusal Interviews (RIs)
One of the major questions in pragmatic research is why learners decide to rescind the pragmatic norms of native speakers. Recent research attempted to answer this question by using several experiments, including DCTs MQs and RIs. The participants comprised 46 CLKs, 44 CNSs, and 45 KNSs from five Korean universities. The participants were asked to complete the DCTs and MQs either in their L1 or L2 levels. They were then invited to an RI, where they were asked to think about and discuss their responses to each DCT scenario.
The results showed that CLKs on average, did not conform to the patterns of native speakers in more than 40% of their responses. They did so even though they could create patterns that resembled native ones. In addition, they were conscious of their own pragmatism. They attributed their choice to learner-internal factors such as their personality and multilingual identities. They also referred to external factors, like relationship affordances. They outlined, for instance, how their relationships with their professors allowed them to function more easily in terms of the cultural and linguistic norms at their university.
The interviewees expressed concern about the social pressures or consequences they could face if their local social norms were not followed. They were concerned that their native friends would think they are "foreigners" and think they are not intelligent. This was a concern similar to the concerns expressed by Brown (2013) and Ishihara (2009).
These results suggest that native-speaker pragmatic norms are not the default preference of Korean learners. They may still be useful for official Korean proficiency testing. Future researchers should reassess the usefulness of these tests in various cultural contexts and specific situations. This will help them better understand the impact of different cultures on the behavior of students and classroom interactions of students from L2. This will also assist educators to create better methods for teaching and testing Korean pragmatics. Seukhoon Paul Choi, principal advisor at Stratways Group in Seoul, is a geopolitical risk consulting.
Case Studies
The case study method is an investigative strategy that uses participant-centered, in-depth investigations to investigate a particular subject. This method utilizes various sources of data including interviews, observations and documents to prove its findings. This type of investigation is ideal for studying unique or complex subjects which are difficult to assess with other methods.
The first step in conducting a case study is to clearly define the subject matter and the purpose of the study. This will allow you to determine which aspects of the topic must be investigated and which aspects can be left out. It is also helpful to study the literature that is relevant to the topic to gain a better knowledge of the subject and to place the case study in a broader theoretical context.
This case study was built on an open-source platform, the KMMLU Leaderboard [50] along with its benchmarks for Koreans, HyperCLOVA X, and LDCC Solar (figure 1 below). The results of the experiment showed that L2 Korean students were highly vulnerable to native models. They tended to choose wrong answers, which were literal interpretations. This was a departure from the correct pragmatic inference. They also had a strong tendency to include their own text, or "garbage," to their responses, which further hampered the quality of their responses.
The participants in this study were L2 Korean students who had reached the level of four in the Test of Proficiency in Korean TOPIK in their second or third year of university and were hoping to achieve level six on their next attempt. They were asked questions regarding their WTC/SPCC, pragmatic awareness, understanding and their understanding of the world.
Interviewees were presented with two hypothetical situations which involved interactions with their interlocutors and asked to select one of the strategies listed below to use when making demands. The interviewees were then asked to justify their choice. The majority of participants attributed their pragmatic resistance to their personality. 프라그마틱 슬롯 하는법 for instance, claimed that she was difficult to get along with and would not ask about the wellbeing of her colleague when they were working at a high rate, even though she thought native Koreans would.