Study of Chinese Learners' Pedagogical Choices in Korean
In addition to learner-internal influences CLKs' awareness of their own resistance to change and the relational affordances they were able to draw from were significant. RIs from TS & ZL, for example, cited their relationships with their local professors as a key factor in their decision to stay clear of criticising a strict prof (see the example 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 is a commonly used instrument in pragmatic research. It has many advantages but it also has some drawbacks. The DCT, for example, is unable to account for cultural and individual variations. Additionally, the DCT can be biased and may cause overgeneralizations. It is important to carefully analyze the data before it is used for research or evaluation.
Despite its limitations the DCT can be a useful instrument to study the relationship between prosody, information structure, and non-native speakers. The ability to alter social variables that affect politeness in two or more steps could be a benefit. This feature can help researchers to study the role played by prosody in communication across different cultural contexts, a key issue in cross-cultural pragmatics.
In the field of linguistics, DCT is among the most effective tools for analyzing communication behaviors of learners. It can be used to analyze numerous issues, like manner of speaking, turn-taking, and lexical choices. It can also be used to assess the phonological difficulty of learners their speech.
A recent study employed a DCT to assess EFL students' ability to resist. Participants were presented with a range of scenarios to choose from and then asked to select the most appropriate response. The researchers found that the DCT was more effective than other measures to stop people from refusing, including a questionnaire and video recordings. The researchers cautioned that the DCT should be employed with caution. They also recommended using other methods of data collection.
DCTs can be designed with specific requirements for linguistics, such as form and content. These criteria are based on intuition and based on the assumptions of test developers. They are not necessarily accurate, and they may be misleading about the way ELF learners actually refuse requests in real-world interactions. This issue calls for further study on alternative methods for measuring refusal competence.
In a recent study, DCT responses to student requests via email were compared with the responses of an oral DCT. The results showed 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 decisions regarding their use of Korean using a variety of experimental tools, such as Discourse Completion Tasks (DCTs), metapragmatic questionnaires, and Refusal Interviews (RIs). Participants were 46 CLKs of upper-intermediate ability who provided responses to DCTs and MQs. They were also asked to provide reflections on their evaluations and refusals in RIs. The results revealed that CLKs are more likely to reject native Korean norms of pragmatism. Their choices were influenced primarily by four factors that included their personalities and multilingual identities, their current life experiences and their relational affordances. These findings have implications for pedagogy for L2 Korean assessment and teaching.
First, you could check here were examined to determine the participants' rational choices. The data were classified according to Ishihara's (2010) definition of pragmatic resistance. Then, the selections were compared to their linguistic performance on the DCTs to determine if they were a reflection of pragmatic resistance or not. Additionally, the participants were asked to explain their choices of behavior in a specific situation.
The results of the MQs, DCTs and z-tests were examined using descriptive statistics and Z tests. The CLKs were discovered to employ euphemistic phrases such as "sorry" or "thank you". This was probably due to their lack of experience with the target languages, which led to a lack of understanding of the korean pragmatic norms. The results revealed that CLKs' preferences for converging to L1 or diverging from both L1 and L2 pragmatic norms varies according to the DCT situations. In situations 3 and 12 CLKs preferred diverging from both L1pragmatic norms and L2 norms, while in Situation 14 CLKs preferred a convergence to L1 norms.
The RIs revealed that CLKs knew about their logical resistance to every 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, then coded by two coders from different companies. The coding was an iterative process in which the coders discussed and read each transcript. The coding results are then contrasted with the original RI transcripts to determine how well they accurately portrayed the underlying behavior.
Refusal Interviews (RIs)
The key question in pragmatic research is: why do some learners refuse to accept native-speaker norms? Recent research attempted to answer this question using various experimental tools, including DCTs MQs and RIs. Participants comprised 46 CLKs and 44 CNSs from five Korean Universities. Participants were asked 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 think about 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 though they were able to produce patterns that were similar to native speakers. They were also aware of their pragmatic resistance. They attributed their decision to learner-internal variables such as their personalities and multilingual identities. They also mentioned external factors, such as relationships and benefits. For instance, they discussed how their relationships with professors led to an easier performance in regards to the linguistic and intercultural standards of their university.
However, the interviewees also expressed concerns about the social pressures and penalties that they could be subjected to if they strayed from the local social norms. They were concerned that their local friends might consider them "foreigners" and think they are not intelligent. This worry was similar to the concerns expressed by Brown (2013) and Ishihara (2009).
These results suggest that native-speaker practical norms are not the norm for Korean learners. They may remain useful as a model for official Korean proficiency tests. But it is advisable for future researchers to reconsider their usefulness in particular situations and in different cultural contexts. This will help them better know how different cultures could affect the practical behavior of L2 learners in the classroom and beyond. This will also aid educators develop better methods for teaching and testing Korean pragmatics. Seukhoon Paul Choi is principal advisor for Stratways Group, a geopolitical risk consulting firm based in Seoul.
Case Studies
The case study method is a research strategy that utilizes intensive, participant-centered research to explore a particular subject. It is a method that uses various sources of information to help support the findings, such as interviews and observations, documents, and artifacts. This kind of research can be used to study complicated or unique issues that are difficult to other methods to measure.
In a case study the first step is to clearly define the subject as well as the goals of the study. This will help determine which aspects of the subject matter are crucial for investigation and which ones are best left out. It is also helpful to study the literature that is relevant to the subject to gain a broad understanding of the subject and place the case study within a larger theoretical context.
This case study was based on an open source platform such as the KMMLU leaderboard [50], and its Korean-specific benchmarks, HyperCLOVA X and LDCC-Solar (figure 1 below). The results of the study revealed that the L2 Korean students were extremely susceptible to native models. They were more likely to choose incorrect answer choices that were literal interpretations of prompts, deviating from precise pragmatic inference. They also showed a strong tendency to include their own words or "garbage" to their responses. This also lowered the quality of their answers.
The participants of this study were L2 Korean students who had achieved level four on 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 to answer questions regarding their WTC/SPCC, as well as pragmatic awareness and comprehension.
The interviewees were presented with two scenarios, each involving an imaginary interaction with their interlocutors and asked to choose one of the following strategies to use when making a request. They were then asked to provide the reasoning behind their choice. Most of the participants attributed their pragmatic resistance to their personalities. TS, for example, 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 despite the fact that she thought native Koreans would.