Study of Chinese Learners' Pedagogical Choices in Korean
In addition to the learner-internal aspects CLKs' understanding of pragmatic resistance and the relationship advantages they could draw on were important. For instance, RIs from TS and ZL both mentioned their relationships with their local professors as an important factor in their decision to avoid criticising an uncompromising professor (see the example 2).
This article examines all local pragmatic research on Korean published until 2020. It focuses on the most important pragmatic issues such as:
Discourse Construction Tests
The test for discourse completion (DCT) is widely used in the field of pragmatic research. It has numerous advantages, but also some disadvantages. For example, the DCT cannot account for cultural and individual differences in communication. The DCT can also be biased and lead to overgeneralizations. It is essential to analyze it carefully before it is used for research or assessment.
Despite its limitations, the DCT can be 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 related to politeness could be a benefit. This ability can aid researchers understand the role of prosody in communication across cultural contexts, which is a major issue in cross-cultural pragmatics.
In the field of linguistics DCT is among the most effective tools to study the behavior of communication learners. It can be used to investigate a variety of issues that include politeness, turn-taking, and lexical selection. It can be used to evaluate the level of phonological sophistication in learners in their speech.
A recent study utilized a DCT to evaluate EFL students' ability to resist. Participants were presented with a variety of scenarios to choose from and then asked to choose the most appropriate response. The authors concluded that the DCT was more effective than other measures to stop people from refusing, including a questionnaire and video recordings. However, the researchers cautioned that the DCT should be used with caution and include other types of data collection methods.
DCTs are typically designed with specific linguistic criteria in mind, such as the content and the form. These criteria are based on intuition and based on the assumptions of test creators. They may not be exact and could be misleading in describing the way ELF learners actually reject requests in real-world interactions. This issue calls for further studies of different methods of assessing refusal competence.
A recent study compared DCT responses to requests made by students through email with those obtained from an oral DCT. The results revealed that DCT encouraged more direct and traditionally indirect request forms and made a less frequent use of hints than 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. Participants were 46 CLKs of upper-intermediate ability who provided responses to MQs and DCTs. They were also asked to reflect on their evaluation and refusal responses in RIs. The results revealed that CLKs frequently chose to resist native Korean pragmatic norms, and their choices were influenced by four major factors that included their personalities, their multilingual identities, ongoing lives, and their relational affordances. These findings have pedagogical implications for L2 Korean assessment and teaching.
The MQ data was analyzed first to identify the participants' practical choices. The data was categorized according Ishihara (2010)'s definition of pragmatic resistance. Then, the responses were compared with their linguistic performance on the DCTs to determine whether they reflected pragmatic resistance or not. In addition, the interviewees were asked to explain their decision to use pragmatic language in a particular situation.
The results of the MQs, DCTs and z-tests were analyzed with descriptive statistics and Z tests. It was discovered that the CLKs often resorted to euphemistic responses such as "sorry" and "thank you." This could be due to their lack of familiarity with the target language, which led to a lack of understanding of korea pragmatic norms. The results revealed that CLKs' preference to diverge from L1 and 2 norms or to be more convergent towards L1 norms varied based on the DCT circumstances. For instance, in Situations 3 and 12 the CLKs favored to diverge from both L1 and pragmatic norms while in Situation 14 they preferred converging to L1 norms.
The RIs showed that CLKs knew about their logical resistance to every DCT situation. The RIs were conducted in a one-to-one manner within two days after participants completed the MQs. The RIs were transcribed and recorded by two coders independent of each other and then coded. Coding was an iterative process in which the coders listened and discussed each transcript. The results of the coding process are contrasted with the original RI transcripts to determine how well they reflected the actual behavior.
Refusal Interviews (RIs)
The key issue in research on pragmatics is: Why do certain learners refuse to accept native-speaker norms? A recent study attempted to answer this question by employing a range of experimental instruments, including DCTs MQs, DCTs, and RIs. Participants comprised 46 CLKs and 44 CNSs from five Korean Universities. Participants were asked to complete the DCTs and MQs in their L1 or L2 levels. They were then invited to an RI where they were asked to reflect and discuss their responses to each DCT scenario.
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 this even though they could create native-like patterns. They were also aware of their pragmatism resistance. They attributed their actions to learner-internal aspects such as their personalities, multilingual identities, and ongoing life histories. They also referred to external factors such as relational affordances. They also discussed, for instance, how their relations with their professors enabled them to perform better in terms of the linguistic and cultural norms at their university.
However, the interviewees also expressed concern about the social pressures and punishments they could be subjected to if they strayed from their local social norms. They were worried that their local friends might consider them "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 no longer the norm for Korean learners. They could still be useful for official Korean proficiency testing. However, it is prudent for future researchers to reconsider their usefulness in particular situations and in different cultural contexts. This will allow them to better understand the effects of different cultures on the behavior of students and classroom interactions of students in L2. Moreover it will assist 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 risks consultancy.
Case Studies
The case study method is a research strategy that utilizes deep, participatory investigations to explore a particular subject. This method utilizes various sources of data like interviews, observations and documents, to confirm its findings. This kind of investigation can be used to analyze specific or complicated subjects that are difficult for other methods to measure.
In a case study the first step is to define both the subject and the goals of the study. This will help determine what aspects of the subject matter are crucial for research and which can be omitted. It is also beneficial to review the existing research to gain a broad understanding of the subject. It will also help 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 experiment revealed that the L2 Korean students were particularly susceptible to native models. They were more likely to select incorrect answers which were literal interpretations. This was a deviation from a precise pragmatic inference. Highly recommended Internet site had a strong tendency to add their own words or "garbage" to their responses. This also lowered the quality of their responses.
The participants in this study were L2 Korean students who had attained the level of four in the Test of Proficiency in Korean TOPIK in their second or third year at university and hoped to reach level six by their next attempt. They were asked to answer questions regarding their WTC/SPCC, as well as pragmatic awareness and comprehension.
The interviewees were given two situations, each involving an imagined interaction with their co-workers and asked to choose one of the following strategies to employ when making a request. The interviewees were asked to justify their choice. The majority of participants attributed their pragmatism to their personality. TS for instance stated that she was difficult to get along with and was hesitant to inquire about the health of her co-worker when they were working at a high rate, even though she thought native Koreans would.