Activity

Study of Chinese Learners’ Pedagogical Choices in Korean

CLKs’ awareness and capacity to tap into the benefits of relationships, as well as the learner-internal aspects, were crucial. The RIs from TS and ZL, for example, cited their local professor relationship as a key factor in their pragmatic decision to avoid criticism of a strict professor (see example 2).

This article reviews all locally published pragmatic research on Korean until 2020. It focuses on practical important topics such as:

Discourse Construction Tests (DCTs)

The test for discourse completion is a commonly used instrument in pragmatic research. It has many advantages, but also a few disadvantages. The DCT, for example, cannot account cultural and individual variations. The DCT can also be biased and lead to overgeneralizations. It is important to carefully analyze the data before being used for research or assessment.

Despite its limitations, the DCT is a useful instrument to study the connection between prosody, information structure and non-native speakers. Its ability to use two or more stages to alter social variables related to politeness can be a strength. This characteristic can be utilized to study the impact of prosody in various cultural contexts.

In the field linguistics, DCT is among the most effective tools used for analyzing communication behaviors of learners. It can be used to investigate a variety of issues that include politeness, turn taking, and lexical choices. It can be used to evaluate the phonological complexity of learners’ speech.

A recent study utilized a DCT to assess EFL students’ refusal skills. Participants were presented with an array of scenarios and were asked to select an appropriate response from the options offered. The researchers discovered that the DCT to be more effective than other methods for refusing, such as videos or questionnaires. However, they cautioned that the DCT should be employed with caution and include other methods for collecting data.

DCTs are often designed with specific linguistic criteria in mind, such as content and form. These criteria are based on intuition and based on the assumptions of test designers. They may not be correct, and they could be misleading about the way ELF learners actually refuse requests in real-world interaction. This issue calls for further study on alternative methods for measuring refusal competence.

A recent study examined DCT responses to requests submitted by students through email with the responses gathered from an oral DCT. The results showed that the DCT promoted more direct and conventionally form-based requests and made a less frequent use of hints than the email data did.

Metapragmatic Questionnaires (MQs)

This study looked at Chinese learners making pragmatic choices when using Korean. It used various experimental tools such as Discourse Completion Tasks, metapragmatic questions, and Refusal Interviews. 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 responses in RIs. The results revealed that CLKs frequently chose to defy native Korean pragmatism norms. Their choices were influenced by four factors such as their personality and multilingual identities, their current life histories and their relationship affordances. These findings have implications for pedagogy for L2 Korean assessment and teaching.

The MQ data was analyzed first to identify the participants’ choices in practice. The data were classified according to Ishihara (2010)’s definition of pragmatic resistance. Then, the choices were compared with their linguistic performance on the DCTs to determine if they showed a pattern of resistance to pragmatics or not. Interviewees were also required to explain why they chose the pragmatic approach in certain situations.

The results of the MQs, DCTs and z-tests were analyzed with descriptive statistics and z tests. The CLKs were found to use euphemistic terms such as “sorry” or “thank you”. This is likely due to their lack experience with the target languages, leading to a lack of understanding of the korean pragmatic norms. 프라그마틱 정품인증 revealed that CLKs’ preferences to differ from L1 and L2 norms or to be more convergent towards L1 varied depending on the DCT situations. For example, in Situation 3 and 12 the CLKs would prefer to diverge from both L1 and pragmatic norms whereas in Situation 14, they favored converging to L1 norms.

The RIs also revealed CLKs were aware of their pragmatic resistance in each DCT situation. RIs were conducted on a one-to-one basis in the space of two days of the participants completing the MQs. The RIs were recorded and transcribed by two independent coders, were then coded. The coding process was an iterative process, in which the coders discussed and read each transcript. The coding results were then evaluated against the original RI transcripts, which provided an indication of how well the RIs captured the underlying pragmatic behaviors.

Refusal Interviews (RIs)

A key question of pragmatic research is the reason why learners choose to resist the pragmatic norms of native speakers. A recent study attempted to answer this question by employing a range of experimental tools, including DCTs, MQs and RIs. The participants consisted of 46 CLKs, 44 CNSs and 45 KNSs 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. Then, they were invited to a RI where they were asked reflect on their responses to the DCT situations.

The results showed that on average, the CLKs resisted native-speaker pragmatic norms in over 40% of their responses. They did so even though they could produce native-like patterns. They were also aware of their pragmatism resistance. They attributed their choices to learner-internal aspects such as their personalities and identities that are multilingual, as well as ongoing life experiences. They also referred external factors, like relationship advantages. For instance, they discussed how their relationships with professors helped facilitate more relaxed performance in regards to the linguistic and intercultural norms of their university.

The interviewees expressed concern about the social pressures and penalties they could face when their social norms were violated. They were concerned that their local friends might consider them “foreigners” and believe they are incompetent. This concern was similar to the concerns voiced by Brown (2013) and Ishihara (2009).

These results suggest that native-speaker pragmatic norms are not the default preference of Korean learners. They may still be useful as a model for official Korean proficiency tests. Future researchers should reassess the usefulness of these tests in various cultural contexts and specific situations. This will help them better understand the effect of different cultural contexts on the pragmatic behavior and classroom interactions of students from L2. Moreover, this will help educators create more effective methods for teaching and testing korea pragmatics. Seukhoon Paul Choi, principal advisor at Stratways Group in Seoul, is a geopolitical risks consultancy.

Case Studies

The case study method is an investigational strategy that employs participant-centered, in-depth studies to study a specific subject. This method utilizes numerous sources of information like documents, interviews, and observations, to prove its findings. This kind of research is useful when analyzing unique or complex subjects that are difficult to quantify with other methods.

The first step in the case study is to define the subject and the goals of the study. This will help determine what aspects of the subject matter are essential to study and which can be omitted. It is also beneficial to study the literature to gain a general knowledge of the subject and place the case in a wider theoretical context.

This study was based on an open-source platform, the KMMLU Leaderboard , along with its Korean-specific benchmarks HyperCLOVA X, and LDCC Solar (figure 1 below). The results of the study showed that L2 Korean learners were extremely dependent on the influence of native models. They were more likely to choose incorrect answer choices that were literal interpretations of the prompts, which were not based on the correct pragmatic inference. They also had a strong tendency of adding their own words or “garbage” to their responses. This also lowered the quality of their answers.

Moreover, the participants of this case study were primarily L2 Korean learners who had reached level 4 in the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK) in 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, as well as understanding and pragmatic awareness.

The interviewees were given two scenarios, each of which involved a hypothetical interaction with their co-workers and were asked to select one of the following strategies when making a request. Interviewees were then asked to justify their choice. Most of the participants attributed their rational opposition to their personalities. TS, for example, claimed that she was difficult to get along with and would not inquire about the health of her co-worker when they had a heavy work load, even though she thought native Koreans would.