Study of Chinese Learners' Pedagogical Choices in Korean
CLKs' awareness and capacity to tap into the benefits of relationships as well as learner-internal elements, were important. For instance the RIs of TS and ZL both have cited their relationships with their local professors as an important factor in their decision to avoid expressing criticism of the strictness of a professor (see the second example).
This article reviews all locally published practical research on Korean up to 2020. It focuses on the practical fundamental topics like:
Discourse Construction Tests
The Discourse Completion Test (DCT) is widely used in pragmatic research. It has many strengths, but it also has its drawbacks. The DCT, for example, cannot account cultural and individual differences. The DCT can also be biased and can lead to overgeneralizations. This is why it should be analyzed carefully before it is used for research or assessment purposes.
Despite its limitations, the DCT is a useful tool for investigating the relationship between prosody and information structure in non-native speakers. Its ability to manipulate social variables relevant to politeness in two or more steps can be a benefit. This can assist researchers understand the role of prosody in communication across different cultural contexts, a major challenge in cross-cultural pragmatics.
In the field of linguistics the DCT has become one of the most important tools for analyzing learners' behaviors in communication. It can be used to study many issues, such as politeness, turn-taking, and the use of lexical terms. It can also be used to determine the phonological complexity of learners their speech.
A recent study employed a DCT to test 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 such as a questionnaire or video recordings. However, the researchers cautioned that the DCT should be employed with caution and include other methods for collecting data.
DCTs are usually created with specific linguistic requirements in mind, like the content and the form. These criteria are intuitive and based on the assumptions of test developers. They are not always accurate and may misrepresent the way ELF learners actually reject requests in real-world interactions. This issue calls for more research into alternative methods of assessing refusal ability.
A recent study has compared DCT responses to requests made by students via email with those gathered from an oral DCT. The results showed that the DCT was 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 investigated Chinese learners their pragmatic choices when they use Korean. It employed various tools for experimentation such as Discourse Completion Tasks, metapragmatic questions and Refusal Interviews. Participants were 46 CLKs of upper-intermediate ability who provided responses to DCTs and MQs. They were also asked to consider their evaluations and refusal performance in RIs. The results showed that CLKs frequently chose to resist native Korean pragmatism norms. Their decisions were influenced primarily by four factors that included their personalities and multilingual identities, their ongoing lives and their relationship affordances. These findings have pedagogical implications for L2 Korean assessment and teaching.
First, the MQ data were analysed to identify the participants' pragmatic choices. The data was classified according to 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 a pragmatic resistance. The interviewees also had to explain the reasons for choosing a pragmatic behavior in certain situations.
The results of the MQs, DCTs and z-tests were examined using 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 of familiarity with the target languages, leading to an inadequate understanding of korean pragmatic norms. The results showed that CLKs' preferences to differ from L1 and L2 norms or to converge towards L1 norms varied based on the DCT situations. In Situations 3 and 12 CLKs favored diverging from both L1- and L2-pragmatic norms, while in Situation 14 CLKs favored convergence to L1 norms.
The RIs revealed 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 the participants had completed the MQs. The RIs were recorded and transcribed, and then coded by two coders from different companies. The code was re-coded repeatedly by the coders, re-reading and discussing each transcript. The results of coding are evaluated against the original RI transcripts to determine how well they accurately portrayed the underlying behavior.
Interviews with Refusal
The most important problem in the field of pragmatic research is: Why do some learners decide to not accept native-speaker norms? A recent study sought to answer this question by employing a variety of research tools, such as DCTs MQs, DCTs and RIs. The participants were comprised of 46 CLKs, 44 CNSs, and 45 KNSs from five Korean universities. They were required to complete the DCTs in their first 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 CLKs on average, did not adhere to the norms of native speakers in more than 40% of their responses. They did this despite the fact that they could create patterns that resembled native ones. They were also aware of their pragmatic resistance. They attributed their actions to learner-internal aspects such as their personalities and identities that are multilingual, as well as ongoing lives. They also mentioned external factors such as relational advantages. They described, for example how their relations with their professors enabled them to perform more comfortably in terms of the linguistic and social expectations of their university.
The interviewees expressed concerns about the social pressures and penalties they could be subject to in the event that their local social norms were violated. They were concerned that their native interactants might consider them "foreigners" and believe that they are incompetent. This concern was similar to the concerns voiced by Brown (2013) and Ishihara (2009).
These findings suggest that native-speakers pragmatic norms aren't the default preference for Korean learners. They may still be a useful model for official Korean proficiency tests. However, it is prudent for future researchers to revisit their relevance in specific scenarios and in various cultural contexts. This will allow them to better know how different cultures may impact the pragmatic behavior of students in the classroom and beyond. This will also aid educators improve their methods of teaching and testing Korean pragmatics. Seukhoon Paul Choi is principal advisor to Stratways Group, a geopolitical risk consultancy based out of Seoul.
Case Studies
The case study method is a research method that focuses on deep, participatory investigations to explore a particular subject. It is a method that uses multiple data sources to back up the findings, such as interviews, observations, documents, and artifacts. This kind of research is useful for examining complicated or unique subjects that are difficult to quantify using other methods.
The first step in a case study is to clearly define the subject and the goals of the study. This will help determine which aspects of the subject matter are essential for investigation and which ones are best left out. It is also helpful to read the literature on to the topic to gain a better understanding of the subject and place the case in a broader theoretical context.
This study was based on an open-source platform, the KMMLU Leaderboard [50] as well as its Korean-specific benchmarks HyperCLOVA X, and LDCC Solar (figure 1 below). The results of the test revealed that the L2 Korean students were particularly susceptible to native models. They tended to choose wrong answer options that were literal interpretations. This was a departure from accurate pragmatic inference. They also had a strong tendency to include their own text or "garbage" to their responses. This also lowered the quality of their responses.
Furthermore, the participants of this case study were primarily L2 Korean learners who had achieved level 4 in the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK) in their third or second year of university, and were aiming to reach level 6 on their next attempt. They were asked questions regarding their WTC/SPCC, pragmatic awareness and understanding and understanding of the world.
Interviewees were presented with two hypothetical situations involving an interaction with their co-workers and asked to choose one of the strategies below to use when making a demand. pragmatickr.com were then asked to justify their decision. Most participants attributed their pragmatic opposition to their personalities. TS, for example stated that she was difficult to approach and was hesitant to ask about the wellbeing of her colleague when they had a lot of work, even though she believed native Koreans would.