Study of Chinese Learners' Pedagogical Choices in Korean
In addition to the learner-internal aspects CLKs' awareness of their own resistance to change and the relational affordances they could draw on were significant. For instance, RIs from TS and ZL both cited their local professor relationships as an important factor in their pragmatic choice to avoid expressing criticism of the strictness of a professor (see the example 2).
This article reviews all local pragmatic research on Korean published until 2020. It focuses on key practical issues, including:
Discourse Construction Tests (DCTs)
The discourse completion test is a common tool in the field of pragmatic research. It has many advantages, but also a few disadvantages. For example the DCT cannot take into account cultural and personal differences in communication. Furthermore it is also the case that the DCT is susceptible to bias and could lead to overgeneralizations. As a result, it must be carefully analyzed before it is used for research or assessment purposes.
Despite its limitations the DCT is a valuable tool for analyzing the relationship between prosody, information structure and non-native speakers. Its ability to use two or more stages to influence social variables that affect politeness could be a benefit. This can assist researchers study the role of prosody in communication across cultural contexts, a key issue in cross-cultural pragmatics.
In the field of linguistics, DCT is one of the most effective tools to study the behavior of communication learners. It can be used to analyze various issues, including the manner of speaking, turn-taking and the choices made in lexical use. It can be used to evaluate the phonological complexity of learners' speech.
A recent study utilized an DCT to assess EFL students' refusal skills. The participants were given a list of scenarios and required to choose a suitable response from the choices provided. The researchers found that the DCT was more effective than other measures to stop people from refusing such as a questionnaire or video recordings. The researchers cautioned that the DCT must be employed with caution. They also suggested using other data collection methods.
DCTs are often designed with specific linguistic criteria in mind, such as content and form. These criteria are based on intuition and is based on the assumptions made by the test developers. They aren't always precise, and they could incorrectly describe the way in which ELF learners actually reject requests in real-world interactions. This issue requires more study on alternative methods for assessing refusal competency.
A recent study compared DCT responses to requests made by students via email with those gathered 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 investigated Chinese learners' pragmatic choices when it comes to using Korean using a variety of experimental tools, such as Discourse Completion Tasks (DCTs) as well as metapragmatic questionnaires and Refusal Interviews (RIs). Participants were 46 CLKs at the upper-intermediate who participated in MQs, DCTs and RIs. They were also asked to reflect on their evaluation and refusal performance in RIs. The results showed that CLKs are more likely to resist native Korean pragmatic norms. 프라그마틱 슬롯 were influenced by four factors: their personalities and multilingual identities, their ongoing lives as well as their relationships. These findings have implications for L2 Korean assessment and teaching.
The MQ data was first analyzed to identify the participants' actual choices. The data were categorized according to Ishihara's (2010) definition of pragmatic resistance. Then, the responses were compared to their linguistic performance on the DCTs to determine whether they were a reflection of pragmatic resistance or not. The interviewees were asked to explain their choices of behavior in a specific scenario.
The results of the MQs, DCTs and z-tests were examined using descriptive statistics and z tests. It was found that CLKs frequently resorted to phrases like "sorry" and "thank you." This could be due to their lack of familiarity with the target language which resulted in an inadequate knowledge of korea pragmatic norms. The results showed that CLKs' preference to differ from L1 and L2 norms or to be more convergent toward L1 differed based on the DCT situations. For instance, in Situations 3 and 12 the CLKs favored to diverge from both L1 and L2 pragmatic norms while in Situation 14 they preferred converging to L1 norms.
The RIs showed that CLKs were aware of their pragmatic resistance to each DCT situation. The RIs were conducted one-to-one within two days after participants completed the MQs. The RIs, which were transcribed and recorded by two independent coders and then coded. The coding was an iterative process in which the coders listened and discussed each transcript. The results of the coding process are compared with the original RI transcripts to determine if they reflected the actual behavior.
Refusal Interviews (RIs)
The central question in pragmatic research is: Why do some learners refuse to accept native-speaker norms? Recent research attempted to answer this question with a variety of experimental tools, including DCTs MQs and RIs. Participants comprised 46 CLKs and 44 CNSs from five Korean Universities. They were asked to perform the DCTs in their first language and to complete the MQs either in their L1 or L2. Then they were invited to a RI where they were required to reflect on 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 percent 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 decisions to learner-internal factors such as their personalities and identities that are multilingual, as well as ongoing lives. They also mentioned external factors like relational advantages. They described, for example how their relations with their professors enabled them to perform more comfortably in terms of the linguistic and cultural standards of their university.
However, the interviewees expressed concern about the social pressures and consequences that they might be subject to if they violated the local social norms. They were concerned that their native interactants might perceive them as "foreigners" and think they are incompetent. This is similar to the concerns expressed by Brown (2013) and Ishihara (2009).
These findings suggest that native speakers' pragmatic norms are not the default preference for Korean learners. They may still be useful for official Korean proficiency tests. Future researchers should reconsider the applicability of these tests in different cultural contexts and in specific situations. This will allow them to better understand the impact of different cultural contexts on the classroom behavior and interactions of students from L2. Additionally this will allow educators to create more effective methods to teach and test korea pragmatics. Seukhoon Paul Choi is principal advisor to Stratways Group, a geopolitical risk consultancy based out of Seoul.
Case Studies
The case study method is an investigative strategy that uses participant-centered, in-depth studies to study a specific subject. It is a method that utilizes numerous sources of data to support the findings, including interviews and observations, documents, and artifacts. This type of investigation is useful when analyzing complicated or unique subjects that are difficult to quantify with other methods.
In a case study the first step is to define the subject and the objectives of the study. This will help determine which aspects of the subject are important for investigation and which ones could be left out. It is also helpful to study the research to gain a broad understanding of the subject and place the case within a larger theoretical framework.
This case study was based upon an open-source platform called the KMMLU Leaderboard [50], as well as its benchmarks for Koreans, HyperCLOVA X, and LDCC Solar (figure 1 below). The results of the test revealed that the L2 Korean students were extremely vulnerable to native models. They tended to choose wrong answer choices which were literal interpretations. This was a deviance from the correct pragmatic inference. They also had a strong tendency to add their own text or "garbage" to their responses. This further reduced the quality of their answers.
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 their second or third year at university and were hoping to achieve level 6 for their next test. They were asked questions about their WTC/SPCC, pragmatic awareness, understanding perception of the world.
Interviewees were presented with two scenarios which involved interactions with their counterparts and were asked to choose one of the strategies listed below to use when making demands. The interviewees were then asked to justify their decision. Most of the participants attributed their pragmatic resistance to their personality. TS, for example, claimed that she was difficult to approach and would not ask about the wellbeing of her colleague when they had a heavy work load despite the fact that she thought native Koreans would.