Study of Chinese Learners' Pedagogical Choices in Korean
In addition to learner-internal influences CLKs' awareness of the need to be pragmatic and the social ties they had access to were significant. For instance the RIs of TS and ZL both mentioned their relationships with their local professors as an important factor in their decision to avoid criticising the strictness of a professor (see example 2).
This article reviews all local pragmatic research on Korean published up to 2020. It focuses on core practical issues, including:
Discourse Construction Tests
The Discourse Completion Test (DCT) is an instrument that is widely used in pragmatic research. It has many advantages but it also has its disadvantages. The DCT for instance, does not take into account individual and cultural differences. The DCT can also be biased and lead to overgeneralizations. Therefore, it must be carefully analyzed prior to using it for research or for 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 manipulate social variables that affect the manner of speaking in two or more steps could be a plus. This characteristic can be utilized to study the impact of prosody in various cultural contexts.
In the field of linguistics DCT is among the most useful tools to study the behavior of communication learners. It can be used to examine various issues that include the manner of speaking, turn taking and lexical choice. It can be used to evaluate the phonological complexity of learners speaking.
A recent study used the DCT to assess EFL students' ability to resist. Participants were given a list of scenarios and were asked to select an appropriate response from the choices provided. The researchers found the DCT to be more effective than other methods for refusing, such as a questionnaire or video recordings. The researchers cautioned that the DCT should be employed with caution. They also suggested using other methods for data collection.
DCTs can be designed using specific language requirements, like the form and content. These criteria are intuitive and are based on the assumptions of the test developers. They are not always precise and could misrepresent how ELF learners actually respond to requests in real-world interactions. This issue calls for further study on alternative methods for assessing refusal competency.
In a recent study, DCT responses to student inquiries via email were compared to the responses from an oral DCT. The results showed that the DCT promoted more direct and conventionally indirect request forms and made a less frequent use of hints than email data did.
Metapragmatic Questionnaires (MQs)
This study looked at Chinese learners making pragmatic choices when using Korean. It employed a variety of experimental tools including Discourse Completion Tasks, metapragmatic questions and Refusal Interviews. Participants were 46 CLKs at the upper intermediate level who answered MQs, DCTs, and RIs. They were also asked to provide reflections on their opinions and their refusals to participate in RIs. The results indicated that the CLKs often resisted native Korean pragmatic norms, and their decisions were influenced by four main factors such as their personalities, multilingual identities, their ongoing life histories, and relational advantages. These findings have implications for pedagogy for L2 Korean assessment.
The MQ data was analyzed in order to identify the participants' practical choices. The data was categorized according Ishihara (2010)'s definition of pragmatic resistance. Then, the selections were compared with their linguistic performance in DCTs to determine whether they showed a pattern of resistance to pragmatics or not. In addition, the interviewees were asked to justify their decision to use pragmatic language in a specific scenario.
The results of the MQs, DCTs and z-tests were analyzed with descriptive statistics and Z tests. It was found that the CLKs often resorted to the use of euphemistic phrases such as "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 revealed that CLKs' preference for converging to L1 norms or departing from both L1 as well as L2 pragmatic norms varies according to the DCT situations. In the scenarios 3 and 12, CLKs preferred diverging from both L1pragmatic norms and L2 norms, while in Situation 14 CLKs favored convergence to L1 norms.
More suggestions revealed that CLKs knew about their pragmatic resistance to each DCT situation. RIs were conducted on a one-to-one basis within two days of participants having completed the MQs. The RIs were recorded and transcribing, and then coded by two independent coders. The coders worked in an iterative manner by the coders, re-reading and discussing each transcript. The coding results are then compared with the original RI transcripts to determine whether 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? A recent study attempted to answer this question employing a range of experimental instruments, including DCTs MQs, DCTs and RIs. Participants included 46 CLKs and 44 CNSs from five Korean Universities. They were asked to complete the DCTs in their native language and to complete the MQs either in their L1 or their L2. They were then invited to an RI where they were asked to reflect on and discuss their responses to each DCT situation.
More suggestions showed that on average, the CLKs rejected the pragmatic norms of native speakers in more than 40% of their answers. They did this 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 multilingual identities as well as ongoing life histories. They also spoke of external factors, such as relationships and benefits. For instance, they discussed how their relationships with professors facilitated a more relaxed performance in regards to the intercultural and linguistic standards of their university.
However, the interviewees expressed concern about the social pressures and consequences they could be subject to if they violated their social norms. They were concerned that their local friends might think they are "foreigners" and believe they are not intelligent. This concern was similar to the concerns expressed by Brown (2013) and Ishihara (2009).
These findings suggest that native-speaker pragmatic norms are not the default preference of Korean learners. They may still be useful for official Korean proficiency tests. Future researchers should reassess the applicability of these tests in various cultural contexts and in specific situations. This will enable them to better comprehend how different environments may impact the pragmatic behavior of students in the classroom and beyond. Additionally this will allow educators to create more effective methods to teach and test korea pragmatics. Seukhoon Paul Choi, principal advisor at Stratways Group in Seoul, is a geopolitical risk consulting.
Case Studies
The case study method is a research method that focuses on intensive, participant-centered research to study a specific subject. This method makes use of numerous sources of information including interviews, observations and documents to confirm its findings. This kind of research is useful when analyzing unique or complex subjects which are difficult to assess using other methods.
The first step in conducting a case study is to define the subject and the goals of the study. This will help you determine what aspects of the subject are important to investigate and which aspects can be left out. It is also helpful to study the literature that is relevant to the subject to gain a greater understanding of the subject and place the case study within a wider theoretical framework.
This case study was built on an open-source platform called the KMMLU Leaderboard [50], as well as its Korean-specific benchmarks HyperCLOVA X, and LDCC Solar (figure 1 below). The results of the experiment revealed that L2 Korean students were particularly vulnerable to native models. They were more likely to select incorrect answer choices that were literal interpretations. This was a deviation from a precise pragmatic inference. They also had a strong tendency to include their own words or "garbage" to their responses. This lowered the quality of their answers.
The participants of this study were all L2 Korean students who had reached 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 questioned about their WTC/SPCC, pragmatic awareness, understanding understanding of the world.
Interviewees were presented with two hypothetical situations that involved interaction with their co-workers and were asked to choose one of the strategies below to use when making a demand. The interviewees were asked to justify their decision. Most of the participants attributed their lack of a pragmatic response to their personality. TS for instance, claimed that she was difficult to talk to and refused to inquire about her interlocutor's well-being when they had a heavy work load, even though she believed native Koreans would.