Study of Chinese Learners' Pedagogical Choices in Korean
CLKs' awareness and capacity to tap into the benefits of relationships and learner-internal elements, were important. For instance the RIs from TS and ZL both mentioned their relationships with their local professors as an important factor in their pragmatic choice to avoid criticising an uncompromising professor (see the example 2).
This article reviews all local published pragmatic research on Korean up to 2020. It focuses on core pragmatic issues such as:
Discourse Construction Tests (DCTs)
The discourse completion test (DCT) is widely used in research that is based on pragmatic principles. It has many advantages, but also some disadvantages. The DCT is one example. It is unable to account for cultural and individual variations. Additionally it is also the case that the DCT can be biased and may cause overgeneralizations. It is important to carefully analyze the data before it is used in research or assessment.
Despite pragmatic kr is a useful tool to investigate the connection between prosody, information structure, and non-native speakers. Its ability to use two or more stages to manipulate social variables that affect politeness is a plus. This characteristic can be utilized to study the impact of prosody across cultural contexts.
In the field of linguistics, the DCT is now one of the primary tools for analyzing learners' behaviors in communication. It can be used to study various issues, including politeness, turn-taking, and lexical choices. It can be used to determine the level of phonological sophistication in learners speaking.
A recent study utilized a DCT to assess EFL students' refusal skills. Participants were presented with a range of scenarios to choose from and then asked to select the most appropriate response. The authors found that the DCT was more effective than other refusal measures, including a questionnaire and video recordings. Researchers cautioned, however, that the DCT must be employed with caution. They also recommended using other methods of data collection.
DCTs are usually developed with specific linguistic criteria in mind, such as the content and the form. These criteria are intuitive and based on the assumptions of test creators. They may not be precise, and they could be misleading about the way ELF learners actually resist requests in real-world interaction. This issue calls for further studies of different methods of assessing refusal ability.
In a recent study DCT responses to student inquiries via email were compared to the responses of an oral DCT. The results revealed that the DCT encouraged more direct and traditionally indirect request forms and a lower use of hints than the email data did.
Metapragmatic Questionnaires (MQs)
This study looked at Chinese learners' pragmatic choices when using Korean. It used various experimental tools such as Discourse Completion Tasks, metapragmatic questions and Refusal Interviews. The participants were 46 CLKs of upper intermediate level who answered MQs, DCTs and RIs. They were also asked for reflections on their opinions and refusals in RIs. The results revealed that CLKs frequently chose to defy native Korean pragmatic norms. Their decisions were influenced by four factors: their personalities and multilingual identities, their ongoing life histories and their relational affordances. These findings have pedagogical implications for L2 Korean assessment and teaching.
The MQ data was analyzed first to determine the participants' practical choices. The data were categorized according to Ishihara's (2010) definition of pragmatic resistance. Then, the selections were compared with their linguistic performance on the DCTs to determine whether they showed a pattern of resistance to pragmatics or not. Additionally, the participants were asked to explain their choices of behavior in a specific scenario.
The results of the MQs, DCTs and z-tests were analysed using descriptive statistics and z tests. It was found that CLKs frequently used the use of euphemistic phrases 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 knowledge of korea 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-pragmatic norms while in Situation 14, CLKs preferred convergence to L1 norms.
The RIs showed that CLKs were aware of their practical resistance to each DCT situation. The RIs were conducted in a one-to-one manner within two days after the participants completed the MQs. The RIs were recorded and transcribing, and then coded by two coders from different companies. The code was re-coded repeatedly, with the coders re-reading and discussing each transcript. The results of the coding process are compared with the original RI transcripts to determine how well they captured the underlying pragmatic behavior.
Refusal Interviews (RIs)
The key issue in research on pragmatics is: Why do some learners choose not to accept native-speaker norms? Recent research has attempted to answer this question with a variety of experiments, including DCTs MQs and RIs. Participants included 46 CLKs and 44 CNSs from five Korean Universities. Participants were required to complete the DCTs and MQs either in their L1 or L2. They were then invited to an RI where they were asked to think about and discuss their responses to each DCT situation.
The results showed that, on average, the CLKs disapproved of native-speaker pragmatic norms in over 40% of their responses. They did this despite the fact that they were able to create patterns that were similar to native speakers. They were also aware of their pragmatism resistance. They attributed their choice to learner-internal factors like their personality and multilingual identities. They also referred to external factors, such as relational affordances. For example, they described how their relationships with professors led to a more relaxed performance with respect to the linguistic and intercultural rules of their university.
The interviewees expressed concern about the social pressures or penalties they could face in the event that their local social norms were not followed. They were worried that their local friends might think they are "foreigners" and believe that they are incompetent. This worry was similar to the concerns expressed by Brown (2013) and Ishihara (2009).
These results suggest that native-speaker pragmatic norms are no longer the preferred choice of Korean learners. They may still be a useful model for official Korean proficiency tests. Future researchers should reconsider the usefulness of these tests in different cultural contexts and specific situations. This will help them better understand the effects of different cultural environments on the pragmatic behavior and classroom interactions of students from L2. Moreover it will assist educators to develop more effective methodologies to teach and test korea pragmatics. Seukhoon Paul Choi, principal advisor at Stratways Group in Seoul, is a geopolitical risk consultancy.
Case Studies
The case study method is an investigational strategy that relies on participant-centered, deep investigations to explore a specific subject. This method makes use of numerous sources of information like interviews, observations and documents to support its findings. This kind of investigation can be used to study complicated or unique subjects that are difficult for other methods to assess.
The first step in the case study is to define the subject matter and the purpose of the study. This will help determine which aspects of the subject are important for investigation and which ones are best left out. It is also beneficial to review existing literature related to the topic to gain a better understanding of the topic and place the case in a broader theoretical context.
This case study was based on an open source platform that is the KMMLU leaderboard [50], and its specific benchmarks for Korea, 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 choose incorrect answer choices that were literal interpretations of the prompts, thereby ignoring the correct pragmatic inference. They also exhibited a strong tendency to add their own text, or "garbage," to their responses, further reducing the quality of their responses.
Additionally, the participants in this case study were L2 Korean learners who had attained level 4 on the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK) at the end of their second or third year at university and were hoping to achieve level 6 in their next attempt. They were required to answer questions about their WTC/SPCC as well as understanding and pragmatic awareness.
Interviewees were presented with two scenarios that involved interaction with their counterparts and asked to select one of the strategies listed below to use when making demands. Interviewees were then asked to justify their decision. Most participants attributed their pragmatic opposition to their personality. TS for instance stated that she was difficult to approach and would not inquire about her interlocutor's well-being when they had a lot of work, even though she believed native Koreans would.