Study of Chinese Learners' Pedagogical Choices in Korean
In addition to learner-internal influences CLKs' understanding of their own resistance to change and the relationship advantages they were able to draw from were crucial. For instance, RIs from TS and ZL both have cited their relationships with their local professors as an important factor in their pragmatic choice to avoid criticising a strict professor (see the second example).
This article examines all local research on Korean published until 2020. It focuses on pragmatic core topics such as:
Discourse Construction Tests
The discourse completion test is a commonly used tool in pragmatic research. It has many advantages, but also a few disadvantages. The DCT is one example. It cannot account cultural and individual variations. Furthermore it is also the case that the DCT is prone to bias and may lead to overgeneralizations. As a result, it is important to analyze it carefully before it is used for research or assessment purposes.
Despite its limitations, the DCT is a useful instrument to study the relationship between prosody, information structure and non-native speakers. Its ability in two or more stages to alter the social variables that are related to politeness is a plus. This ability can aid researchers study the role of prosody in communication across cultural contexts, a key issue in cross-cultural pragmatics.
In the field of linguistics the DCT is now one of the primary tools to analyze learners' communication behaviors. It can be used to examine a variety of issues, including the manner of speaking, turn taking and lexical choices. It can also be used to assess the phonological complexity of the learners' speech.
A recent study employed a DCT to evaluate EFL students' refusal skills. Participants were presented with a range of scenarios to choose from, and were then asked to select the most appropriate response. The researchers 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 include other types of methods for collecting data.
DCTs are usually developed with specific linguistic criteria in mind, like the content and the form. These criteria are intuitive and based upon the assumptions of test designers. They aren't always exact and could be misleading in describing the way ELF learners actually reject requests in real-world interactions. This issue requires further studies of different methods to assess refusal ability.
A recent study has compared DCT responses to requests made by students through email with the responses gathered from an oral DCT. The results showed that DCTs favored more direct and conventionally indirect request forms and utilized more hints than email data.
Metapragmatic Questionnaires (MQs)
This study examined 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 with intermediate or higher ability who responded to MQs and DCTs. They were also required to provide reflections on their opinions and their refusals to participate in RIs. The results revealed that CLKs often chose to defy native Korean pragmatic norms. Their decisions were influenced primarily by four factors: their personalities and multilingual identities, their ongoing life histories and their relational affordances. These findings have pedagogical consequences for L2 Korean assessment.
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, we compared the choices made by the participants with their linguistic performance using DCTs in order to determine if they were a sign of resistance to pragmatics. In addition, the interviewees were asked to justify their choice of pragmatic behavior in a given scenario.
The findings of the MQs and DCTs were then analysed using descriptive statistics and Z-tests. It was found that CLKs frequently used phrases like "sorry" and "thank you." This was likely due to their lack of experience 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 be more convergent towards L1 norms varied based on the DCT situations. In Situations 3 and 12 CLKs favored diverging from both L1- and L2-pragmatic norms, while in Situation 14, CLKs preferred convergence to L1 norms.
The RIs revealed that CLKs knew about their practical resistance to each DCT situation. The RIs were conducted one-to-one basis within two days of participants completing the MQs. The RIs were recorded and transcribed, and then coded by two independent coders. Coding was an iterative process in which the coders read and discussed each transcript. The coding results were then evaluated against the original RI transcripts, which gave an indication of how the RIs were able to capture the fundamental behaviors.
Interviews with Refusal
One of the most important questions in pragmatic research is why learners are hesitant to adhere to the pragmatic norms of native speakers. A recent study attempted to answer this question by using a variety of experimental instruments, including DCTs, MQs and RIs. Participants comprised 46 CLKs and 44 CNSs from five Korean Universities. They were asked to complete the DCTs in their native language and complete the MQs in either their L1 or L2. Then they were invited to attend a RI where they were asked to consider their responses to the DCT situations.
The results showed that CLKs, on average, did not adhere to the norms of native speakers in more than 40% of their responses. They did this even when they could produce patterns that resembled natives. They were also aware of their pragmatic resistance. They attributed their actions to learner-internal factors like their identities, personalities and multilingual identities as well as ongoing lives. They also mentioned external factors, like relational advantages. For instance, they outlined how their relationships with professors led to a more relaxed performance with respect to the intercultural and linguistic norms of their university.
The interviewees expressed their concern about the social pressures or penalties they might face when their social norms were violated. They were worried that their native friends would perceive them as "foreigners" and think they are not intelligent. This is similar to the concerns expressed by Brown (2013) and Ishihara (2009).
These results suggest that native-speaker practical norms are no longer the preferred choice of Korean learners. They could still be useful for official Korean proficiency testing. But Pragmatic is advisable for future researchers to reconsider their applicability in specific situations and in various cultural contexts. This will help them better understand the effects of different cultural environments on the behavior of students and classroom interactions of students from L2. Moreover this will allow educators to develop more effective methodologies to teach and test the korea-based pragmatics. Seukhoon Paul Choi, principal advisor at Stratways Group in Seoul, is a geopolitical risk consulting.
Case Studies
The case study method is a method that employs intensive, participant-centered research to explore a particular subject. This method utilizes multiple data sources including documents, interviews, and observations to support its findings. This type of investigation can be used to study specific or complicated subjects that are difficult for other methods to assess.
In a case study the first step is to clearly define both the subject and the goals of the study. This will allow you to identify what aspects of the subject must be investigated and which can be omitted. It is also beneficial to study the literature that is relevant to the subject to gain a greater understanding of the topic and place the case study within a wider theoretical framework.
This case study was based upon an open-source platform called the KMMLU Leaderboard [50], along with its benchmarks for Koreans, HyperCLOVA X and LDCC Solar (figure 1 below). The results of this study showed that L2 Korean learners were particularly susceptible to the influence of native models. They were more likely to pick incorrect answer options which were literal interpretations. This was a departure from accurate pragmatic inference. They also showed an unnatural tendency to add their own text, or "garbage," to their responses, which further hampered their quality of response.
Furthermore, the participants of this case study were primarily L2 Korean learners who had attained level 4 in the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK) at the end of their second or third year at university, and were aiming to reach level 6 in their next attempt. They were asked to respond to questions regarding their WTC/SPCC and understanding and pragmatic awareness.
Interviewees were presented with two scenarios involving an interaction with their co-workers and asked to select one of the strategies below to use when making an offer. They were then asked to provide the reasoning behind their choice. Most participants attributed their pragmatic opposition to their personalities. For example, TS claimed that she was difficult to talk to, and she therefore did not want to inquire about her interactant's well-being with the burden of a job, even though she believed that native Koreans would do this.