Study of Chinese Learners' Pedagogical Choices in Korean
CLKs' awareness and ability to tap into the benefits of relationships as well as the learner-internal aspects, were crucial. For instance the RIs of TS and ZL both cited their local professor relationships as an important factor in their pragmatic choice to avoid expressing criticism of an uncompromising professor (see the example 2).
This article reviews all local pragmatic research on Korean until 2020. It focuses on key pragmatic topics including:
Discourse Construction Tests
The discourse completion test is a common tool in the field of pragmatic research. It has many strengths however, it also has a few drawbacks. For example, the DCT cannot take into account cultural and individual variations in communication. Furthermore it is also the case that the DCT is susceptible to bias and can result in overgeneralizations. Therefore, it must be carefully analyzed before it is used for research or assessment purposes.
Despite its limitations, the DCT is a useful tool to study the relationship between prosody and information structure in non-native speakers. Its ability in two or more stages to alter the social variables that are related to politeness could be a benefit. This ability can aid researchers study the role of prosody in communicating across cultural contexts, which is a major issue in cross-cultural pragmatics.
In the field of linguistics the DCT is now one of the most important instruments for analyzing learners' behaviors in communication. It can be used to analyze numerous issues, like the manner of speaking, turn-taking and lexical choices. It can also be used to assess the phonological complexity of learners speaking.
A recent study used a DCT to evaluate EFL students' refusal skills. Participants were given an array of scenarios and asked to select an appropriate response from the options offered. The researchers found that the DCT was more effective than other measures to stop people from refusing that included a questionnaire as well as video recordings. The researchers cautioned that the DCT should be employed with caution. They also recommended using other data collection methods.
DCTs can be designed using specific linguistic criteria, such as the form and content. These criteria are intuitive and are based on the assumptions of the test designers. They aren't always precise, and they could incorrectly describe the way in which ELF learners actually refuse requests in actual interactions. This issue calls for further research on alternative methods of measuring refusal competence.
In a recent research study, DCT responses to student inquiries via email were compared with the responses from an oral DCT. The results showed that the DCT encouraged more direct and conventionally indirect request forms and made a less frequent use of hints than the email data did.
Metapragmatic Questionnaires (MQs)
This study investigated Chinese learners' pragmatic choices when using Korean. It employed various experimental tools including Discourse Completion Tasks, metapragmatic questions and Refusal Interviews. Participants were 46 CLKs with intermediate or higher ability who responded to DCTs and MQs. They were also required to provide reflections on their assessments and their refusals to participate in RIs. The results showed that CLKs were more likely to reject native Korean pragmatic norms, and their decisions were influenced by four main factors: their identities, their multilingual identities, ongoing life histories, and relational affordances. These findings have implications for L2 Korean assessment and teaching.
The MQ data was analyzed first to identify the participants' actual choices. The data were classified according to Ishihara's (2010) definition of pragmatic resistance. Then, the selections were matched with their linguistic performance on the DCTs to determine whether they showed a pattern of resistance to pragmatics or not. The interviewees were asked to justify their choice of pragmatic behavior in a specific situation.
The findings of the MQs and DCTs were then analyzed using descriptive statistics and Z-tests. It was discovered that the CLKs frequently resorted to euphemistic responses such as "sorry" and "thank you." This was likely due to their lack of experience with the target language which led to a lack of understanding of korea pragmatic norms. The results revealed that CLKs' preferences to differ from L1 and L2 norms or to be more convergent toward L1 differed based on the DCT circumstances. In Situations 3 and 12 CLKs preferred diverging from both L1pragmatic norms and L2 norms, while in Situation 14, CLKs preferred convergence to L1 norms.
The RIs showed that CLKs knew about their practical resistance to each DCT situation. The RIs were conducted one-to-one within two days after the participants completed the MQs. The RIs were recorded and transcribed, and then coded by two independent coders. The coders worked in an iterative manner, with the coders re-reading and discussing each transcript. The results of the coding process were contrasted with the original RI transcripts, which provided an indication of how the RIs were able to capture the fundamental behavior.
Refusal Interviews (RIs)
The key question in pragmatic research is: Why do some learners refuse to accept native-speaker norms? Recent research has attempted to answer this question by using several experiments, including DCTs MQs and RIs. Participants included 44 CLKs and 46 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 to reflect on their responses to the DCT situations.
The results showed that CLKs, on average, did not adhere to the patterns of native speakers in more than 40% of their responses. They did this despite the fact that they could create native-like patterns. Furthermore, they were clearly conscious of their own pragmatism. They attributed their resistance to learner-internal variables such as their identities and personalities as well as multilingual identities. simply click the next document referred to external factors, like relationship advantages. They outlined, for instance how their interactions with their professors helped them to perform better in terms of the linguistic and social standards of their university.
The interviewees expressed concerns about the social pressures or penalties they could face when their social norms were not followed. They were worried that their native friends might view them as "foreignersand believe that they are unintelligent. This concern was similar in nature to the concerns expressed by Brown (2013) and Ishihara (2009).
These results suggest that native-speaker pragmatic norms are no longer the default preference of Korean learners. They may still be a useful model for official Korean proficiency tests. Future researchers should reassess the validity 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. Moreover it will assist 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 in Seoul.
Case Studies
The case study method is an investigative strategy that uses participant-centered, in-depth investigations to investigate a particular subject. This method makes use of multiple data sources, such as interviews, observations, and documents to support its findings. This kind of research is useful for examining complicated or unique subjects which are difficult to assess with other methods.
In a case study, the first step is to clearly define both the subject and the objectives of the study. This will help determine which aspects of the subject matter are crucial to study and which could be left out. It is also helpful to read the literature on to the subject to gain a broad knowledge of the subject and place the case within a wider theoretical framework.
This case study was built on an open-source platform, the KMMLU Leaderboard [50], as well as its Korean-specific benchmarks HyperCLOVA X and LDCC Solar (figure 1 below). The results of the test revealed that the L2 Korean students were extremely susceptible to native models. They tended to choose wrong answer options, which were literal interpretations. This was a deviation from the correct pragmatic inference. They also exhibited an unnatural tendency to include their own text, or "garbage," to their responses, further detracting from their quality of response.
Additionally, the participants in this study were L2 Korean learners who had achieved level 4 on the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK) at their second or third year at university and were aiming for level 6 for their next test. They were asked to respond to questions regarding their WTC/SPCC and comprehension and pragmatic awareness.
The interviewees were presented two scenarios, each involving an imaginary interaction with their co-workers and were asked to select one of the following strategies when making a request. They were then asked to explain the reasoning behind their choice. Most of the participants attributed their rational opposition to their personality. For instance, TS claimed that she was hard to get close to, and she therefore refused to ask about her interactant's well-being with an intense workload, even though she believed that native Koreans would do so.