The Unknown Benefits Of Pragmatic
Study of Chinese Learners' Pedagogical Choices in Korean
In addition to learner-internal influences, CLKs' awareness of pragmatic resistance and the relational affordances they were able to draw from were important. For instance the RIs from TS and ZL both have cited their relationships with their local professors as a major factor in their decision to not criticize an uncompromising professor (see the second example).
This article reviews all local published pragmatic research on Korean up to 2020. It focuses on pragmatic core topics such as:
Discourse Construction Tests
The test for discourse completion is a commonly used tool in the field of pragmatic research. It has many advantages however, it also has a few drawbacks. For example, the DCT is unable to account for the cultural and individual differences in communicative behavior. Additionally the DCT is prone to bias and can lead to overgeneralizations. It should be carefully analyzed before it is used for research or assessment.
Despite its limitations, the DCT can be a valuable tool to study 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 could be a plus. This can assist researchers study the role of prosody in communicating across cultural contexts, a key issue in cross-cultural pragmatics.
In the field linguistics, DCT is one of the most effective tools for analyzing communication behaviors of learners. It can be used to study numerous issues, like manner of speaking, turn-taking, and the choices made in lexical use. It can be used to determine the level of phonological sophistication in learners speaking.
Recent research utilized the DCT as a tool to assess the skills of refusal among EFL students. Participants were presented with a variety of scenarios to choose from, and then asked to choose the appropriate response. The authors found that the DCT was more effective than other refusal measures, including a questionnaire and video recordings. However, they cautioned that the DCT should be used with caution and include other methods for collecting data.
DCTs are usually designed with specific linguistic criteria in mind, such as the content and the form. These criteria are based on intuition and is based on the assumptions made by the test creators. They may not be exact and could be misleading in describing how ELF learners respond to requests in real-world interactions. This issue calls for further studies of different methods of assessing the ability to refuse.
In a recent study DCT responses to student inquiries via email were compared to the responses of an oral DCT. The results revealed that DCTs preferred more direct and conventionally indirect requests and utilized more hints than email data.
Metapragmatic Questionnaires (MQs)
This study examined 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. The participants were 46 CLKs of upper-intermediate who participated in MQs, DCTs, and RIs. They were also required to provide reflections on their assessments and refusals in RIs. The results indicated that the CLKs often resisted native Korean pragmatic norms, and their decisions were influenced by four major factors that included their personalities, their multilingual identities, ongoing life histories, and relationship affordances. These findings have implications for L2 Korean assessment and teaching.
The MQ data were examined to identify the participants' choices in terms of their pragmatics. The data was classified according to Ishihara (2010)'s definition of pragmatic resistance. Then, the choices were compared to their linguistic performance in the DCTs to determine whether they were a reflection of pragmatic resistance or not. The interviewees also had to explain the reasons for choosing an atypical behavior in certain situations.
The findings of the MQs and DCTs were then examined using descriptive statistics and Z-tests. It was discovered that the CLKs often resorted to euphemistic responses 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 understanding of korea pragmatic norms. The results showed that CLKs' preferences to diverge from L1 and 2 norms or to move toward L1 differed based on the DCT situations. In the scenarios 3 and 12, CLKs preferred diverging from both L1pragmatic norms and L2 norms, while in Situation 14, CLKs preferred convergence to L1 norms.
The RIs further revealed that the CLKs were aware their pragmatism in every DCT situation. The RIs were conducted one-to-one within two days after participants had completed the MQs. The RIs, which were transcribed and recorded by two coders who were independent who then coded them. The coding process was iterative and involved the coders reading and discussing each transcript. The results of the coding process are compared with the original RI transcripts to determine if they reflected the actual behavior.
Interviews for refusal
One of the most important questions in pragmatic research is why some learners are hesitant to adhere to the pragmatic norms of native speakers. A recent study sought to answer this question employing a range of experimental tools, including DCTs MQs, DCTs and RIs. The participants consisted of 46 CLKs, 44 CNSs and 45 KNSs from five Korean universities. Participants were asked to complete the DCTs and MQs in their L1 or L2. Then they were invited to attend a RI where they were required to consider their responses to the DCT situations.
The results showed that on average, the CLKs rejected native-speaker pragmatic norms in more than 40% of their responses. They did this despite the fact that they could produce native-like patterns. They were also conscious of their own pragmatism. They attributed their decisions to learner-internal factors like their personalities, multilingual identities, and ongoing life histories. They also mentioned external factors like relational advantages. They described, for example how their interactions with their professors helped them to function more easily in terms of the linguistic and cultural expectations of their university.
However, the interviewees also expressed concerns about the social pressures and penalties that they might be subjected to if they strayed from the local social norms. They were concerned that their native interlocutors might perceive them as “foreignersand believe that they are ignorant. This worry was similar to that expressed by Brown (2013) and Ishihara (2009).
These results suggest that native speakers' pragmatic norms are not the norm for Korean learners. They may still be useful for official Korean proficiency tests. However, it is prudent for future researchers to reconsider their applicability in specific situations and in different cultural contexts. This will allow them to better understand the effects of different cultural contexts on the behavior of students and classroom interactions of students in L2. This will also help educators create better methods for teaching and testing Korean pragmatics. Seukhoon Paul Choi is principal advisor at Stratways Group, a geopolitical risk consultancy based in Seoul.
Case Studies
The case study method is an investigative technique that uses participant-centered, in-depth investigations to explore a specific subject. This method makes use of multiple data sources, such as interviews, observations and documents to confirm its findings. This kind of investigation can be used to examine unique or complex subjects that are difficult for other methods of measuring.
The first step in a case study is to define the subject matter and the purpose of the study. This will help you determine which aspects of the topic are important to investigate and which aspects can be left out. It is also useful to read the literature to gain a general understanding of the subject and place the case within a larger theoretical framework.
This case study was built on an open-source platform, the KMMLU Leaderboard [50], as well as its benchmarks for Koreans, HyperCLOVA X and LDCC Solar (figure 1 below). The results of this study showed that L2 Korean learners were extremely susceptible to the influence of native models. They were more likely to pick incorrect answer choices, which were literal interpretations. This was a deviation from the correct pragmatic inference. They also had a strong tendency of adding their own text or "garbage" to their responses. This further reduced the quality of their answers.
Furthermore, the participants of this case study were primarily L2 Korean learners who had attained level 4 in the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK) in their second or third year at university and were aiming for level 6 on their next attempt. They were asked to respond to questions regarding their WTC/SPCC and understanding and pragmatic awareness.
The interviewees were presented two situations, each involving an imagined interaction with their interactants and were asked to select one of the following strategies to employ when making an inquiry. They were then asked to provide the reasons behind their decision. 프라그마틱 슬롯 팁 of the participants attributed their rational opposition to their personality. TS for instance, claimed that she was difficult to talk to and refused to ask about the wellbeing of her colleague when they had a lot of work, even though she believed native Koreans would.