Study of Chinese Learners' Pedagogical Choices in Korean
CLKs' awareness and ability to make use of relational affordances as well as learner-internal elements, were important. For instance the RIs of TS and ZL both cited their local professor relationships as an important factor in their decision to not criticize an uncompromising professor (see the second example).
This article examines all local research on Korean published until 2020. It focuses on key pragmatic topics including:
Discourse Construction Tests (DCTs)
The discourse completion test is a common instrument in pragmatic research. It has many strengths but it also has a few disadvantages. The DCT, for example, cannot account cultural and individual variations. The DCT can also be biased and can lead to overgeneralizations. It is important to carefully analyze the data before being used for research or evaluation.
Despite its limitations the DCT is a valuable instrument to study the relationship between prosody, information structure, and non-native speakers. Its ability in two or more stages to alter social variables that affect politeness could be a benefit. This feature can help researchers study the role of prosody in communicating across cultural contexts, a key issue in cross-cultural pragmatics.
In the field of linguistics the DCT has become one of the most important tools for analyzing learners' behavior in communication. It can be used to study a variety of issues that include politeness, turn taking, and lexical selection. It can be used to evaluate the phonological complexity of learners speaking.
A recent study employed a DCT to assess EFL students' refusal skills. Participants were given a set 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 that included a questionnaire as well as video recordings. Researchers cautioned, however, that the DCT should be used with caution. They also suggested using other methods of data collection.
DCTs are usually created with specific linguistic requirements in mind, like the content and the form. These criteria are based on intuition and based upon the assumptions of test developers. They may not be precise and could misrepresent the way ELF learners respond to requests in real-world interactions. This issue requires further studies of different methods of assessing refusal competence.
A recent study examined DCT responses to requests submitted by students via email with the responses gathered from an oral DCT. The results revealed that DCTs favored more direct and traditionally indirect request forms and used hints less than email data.
Metapragmatic Questionnaires (MQs)
This study examined Chinese learners their pragmatic choices when they use Korean. It employed various tools for experimentation including Discourse Completion Tasks, metapragmatic questions and Refusal Interviews. Participants were 46 CLKs of upper-intermediate level who responded to MQs, DCTs and RIs. They were also asked for reflections on their evaluations and refusals in RIs. The results revealed that CLKs frequently chose to defy native Korean pragmatic norms. Their decisions were influenced primarily by four factors that included their personalities and multilingual identities, their current life experiences as well as their relational affordances. These findings have pedagogical consequences for L2 Korean assessment.
The MQ data were analyzed to determine the participants' pragmatic choices. The data was categorized according Ishihara (2010)'s definition of pragmatic resistance. Then, we compared the choices with their linguistic performance on DCTs to determine if they were a sign of pragmatic resistance. In addition, the interviewees were asked to explain their decision to use pragmatic language in a given situation.
프라그마틱 슬롯 조작 of the MQs and DCTs were then analyzed using descriptive statistics and z-tests. It was found that CLKs often resorted to euphemistic responses such as "sorry" and "thank you." This is likely due to their lack of experience with the target language which resulted in an inadequate knowledge of korea pragmatic norms. The results revealed that CLKs' preference to differ from L1 and L2 norms or to converge toward L1 differed based on the DCT situations. For example, in Situation 3 and 12 the CLKs favored to diverge from both L1 and L2 pragmatic norms, whereas in Situation 14 they favored a convergence to L1 norms.
The RIs revealed that CLKs knew about their pragmatic resistance to each DCT situation. The RIs were conducted one-toone within two days after participants completed the MQs. The RIs, which were recorded and transcribed by two independent coders, were then coded. The coders worked in an iterative manner by the coders, re-reading and discussing each transcript. The results of the coding process were contrasted with the original RI transcripts, giving an indication of how the RIs were able to capture the fundamental behavior.
Refusal Interviews (RIs)
The central issue in research on pragmatics is: Why do certain learners refuse to accept native-speaker norms? Recent research attempted to answer this question using a variety 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 perform 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 think about and discuss their responses to each DCT situation.
The results showed that CLKs, on average, did not follow the pragmatic norms of native speakers in more than 40 percent of their responses. They did this even though they could produce native-like patterns. They were aware of their practical resistance. They attributed their choice to learner-internal factors like their personality and multilingual identities. They also referred to external factors like relational benefits. For instance, they discussed how their relationships with professors facilitated an easier performance with respect to the intercultural and linguistic rules of their university.
The interviewees expressed concerns about the social pressures and penalties they could face when their social norms were violated. They were concerned that their native interlocutors may view them as "foreignersand believe that they are unintelligent. This was a concern similar to the concerns expressed by Brown (2013) and Ishihara (2009).
These results suggest that native-speaker practical norms are no longer the preferred choice of Korean learners. They may remain useful as a model for official Korean proficiency tests. Future researchers should consider reassessing the applicability of these tests in different cultural contexts and specific situations. This will help them better comprehend how different environments could affect the practical behavior of learners in the classroom and beyond. This will also help educators create better methods for teaching and testing Korean 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. It is a method that makes use of numerous sources of data to back up the findings, such as interviews and observations, documents, and artifacts. This type of investigation is ideal for studying unique or complex subjects that are difficult to quantify with other methods.
The first step in the case study is to clearly define the subject and the objectives of the study. This will allow you to identify which aspects of the topic must be investigated and which can be omitted. It is also helpful to study the literature that is relevant to the topic to gain a better understanding of the topic and to place the case study within a wider theoretical framework.
This case study was based upon an open-source platform, the KMMLU Leaderboard [50], along with its benchmarks for Koreans, HyperCLOVA X, and LDCC Solar (figure 1 below). The results of the study revealed that L2 Korean students were extremely vulnerable to native models. They were more likely to choose incorrect answer options that were literal interpretations of prompts, thereby ignoring the correct pragmatic inference. They also had an inclination to add their own text, or "garbage," to their responses, which further hampered their quality of response.
Moreover, the participants of this case study were L2 Korean learners who had achieved level 4 in the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK) at the end of their third or second year of university and were hoping to achieve level 6 on their next attempt. They were required to answer questions about their WTC/SPCC as well as pragmatic awareness and comprehension.
Interviewees were presented with two scenarios which involved interactions with their interlocutors and asked to select one of the strategies listed below to use when making an offer. They were then asked to explain the reasons behind their decision. Most of the participants attributed their lack of a pragmatic response to their personality. For example, TS claimed that she was difficult to talk to, and therefore refused to ask about the health of her interlocutors despite having a heavy workload despite the fact that she believed that native Koreans would do this.