Study of Chinese Learners' Pedagogical Choices in Korean
In addition to learner-internal influences CLKs' awareness of the need to be pragmatic and the relational affordances they could draw on were crucial. For instance the RIs from TS and ZL both have cited their relationships with their local professors as an important factor in their pragmatic choice to avoid expressing criticism of an uncompromising professor (see the second example).
This article reviews all local published pragmatic research on Korean until 2020. It focuses on practical core topics such as:
Discourse Construction Tests (DCTs)
The Discourse Completion Test (DCT) is a widely used instrument in the field of pragmatic research. It has many advantages but it also has its drawbacks. The DCT is one example. It is unable to account for cultural and individual variations. The DCT can also be biased and can lead to overgeneralizations. This is why it should be analyzed carefully prior to using it for research or for assessment purposes.
Despite its limitations, the DCT is a valuable instrument to study the connection between prosody, information structure, and non-native speakers. Its ability to manipulate the social variables that are relevant to the manner of speaking in two or more steps can be a strength. This ability can aid researchers to study the role played by prosody in communication across different cultural contexts, which is a major issue in cross-cultural pragmatics.
In the field of linguistics DCT is one of the most effective tools used for analyzing communication behaviors of learners. It can be used to investigate numerous issues, like politeness, turn-taking, and the use of lexical terms. It can be used to evaluate the phonological difficulty of learners their speech.
A recent study employed the DCT to evaluate EFL students' refusal skills. Participants were given a list of scenarios and asked to select an appropriate response from the options provided. The authors discovered that the DCT to be more effective than other refusal methods, such as the use of a questionnaire or video recordings. Researchers warned, however, that the DCT must be employed with caution. They also recommended using other methods of data collection.
DCTs can be designed with specific requirements for linguistics, such as design and content. These criteria are intuitive and are based on the assumptions of the test designers. They aren't always accurate and may misrepresent how ELF learners actually reject requests in real-world interactions. This issue calls for further research on alternative methods of measuring refusal competence.
A recent study examined DCT responses to requests made by students through email with those obtained from an oral DCT. The results revealed that DCTs favored more direct and traditionally indirect request forms and used more hints than email data.
Metapragmatic Questionnaires (MQs)
This study investigated Chinese learners their pragmatic choices when they use Korean. It used various experimental tools including Discourse Completion Tasks, metapragmatic questions and Refusal Interviews. Participants were 46 CLKs at the upper intermediate level who answered MQs, DCTs and RIs. They were also asked to consider their evaluations and refusal performance in RIs. The results showed that CLKs often chose to reject native Korean norms of pragmatism. Their decisions were influenced primarily by four factors that included their personalities and multilingual identities, their current life histories and their relational affordances. These findings have implications for pedagogy for L2 Korean assessment and teaching.
The MQ data was analyzed first to determine the participants' actual choices. The data were classified according to Ishihara's (2010) definition of pragmatic resistance. Then, the selections were compared to their linguistic performance on the DCTs to determine whether they showed a pattern of resistance to pragmatics or not. Interviewees also had to explain the reasons for choosing 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 employ euphemistic phrases such as "sorry" or "thank you". This could be due to their lack of experience with the target languages, leading to a lack of knowledge of korean's pragmatic norms. The results showed that the CLKs' preference for converging to L1 or diverging from both L1 and L2 pragmatic norms differed based on the DCT situations. For example, in Situation 3 and 12 the CLKs favored to diverge from both L1 and pragmatic norms, whereas in Situation 14 they favored a convergence to L1 norms.
The RIs revealed that CLKs knew about their practical resistance to each DCT situation. The RIs were conducted one-toone within two days after the participants completed the MQs. The RIs, which were recorded and transcribed by two coders who were independent who then coded them. The coders worked in an iterative manner, with the coders re-reading and discussing each transcript. The results of the coding process were contrasted with the original RI transcripts, which provided an indication of how the RIs accurately portrayed the core behavior.
Refusal Interviews (RIs)
One of the major questions in pragmatic research is the reason why learners choose to resist the pragmatic norms of native speakers. A recent study attempted to answer this question employing a variety of research instruments, including DCTs MQs, DCTs, and RIs. Participants included 46 CLKs and 44 CNSs from five Korean Universities. They were asked to perform the DCTs in their first language and complete the MQs in either their L1 or L2. They were then invited to an RI where they were required to think about and discuss their responses to each DCT situation.
The results showed that, on average, the CLKs rejected native-speaker pragmatic norms in more than 40% of their answers. They did this even though they were able to create patterns that resembled native speakers. They were aware of their practical resistance. They attributed their resistance to learner-internal variables such as their identities and personalities as well as multilingual identities. They also mentioned external factors, like relationship advantages. For instance, they discussed how their relationships with professors facilitated more relaxed performance with respect to the intercultural and linguistic rules of their university.
프라그마틱 이미지 expressed concerns about the social pressures or consequences they could be subject to in the event that their local social norms were violated. They were concerned that their native interactants might perceive them as "foreigners" and think they are incompetent. This was a concern similar to the concerns voiced by Brown (2013) and Ishihara (2009).
These findings suggest that native speakers' pragmatic norms are not the default preference for Korean learners. They may still be useful for official Korean proficiency tests. Future researchers should reconsider the validity of these tests in various cultural contexts and specific situations. This will allow them to better comprehend how different environments could affect the practical behavior of L2 learners in the classroom and beyond. Moreover, this will help educators create more effective methods for teaching and testing korea 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 an investigational strategy that employs participant-centered, in-depth investigations to investigate a particular subject. This method utilizes numerous sources of information like interviews, observations, and documents to prove its findings. This kind of investigation can be used to examine complicated or unique subjects that are difficult for other methods to assess.
In a case study, the first step is to clearly define both the subject and the objectives of the study. This will help determine what aspects of the subject are important to study and which can be omitted. It is also beneficial to review the existing literature to gain a general knowledge of the subject and place the situation in a wider theoretical context.
This case study was built on an open-source platform, the KMMLU Leaderboard [50] and its benchmarks for Koreans, HyperCLOVA X, and LDCC Solar (figure 1 below). The results of this experiment showed that L2 Korean learners were extremely susceptible to the influence of native models. They were more likely to select incorrect answer choices that were literal interpretations of prompts, thereby ignoring accurate pragmatic inference. They also showed an unnatural tendency to include their own text, or "garbage," to their responses, further reducing the quality of their responses.
The participants of this study were L2 Korean students who had achieved level four on the Test of Proficiency in Korean TOPIK in their third or second year at university and hoped to attain level six on their next attempt. They were asked to answer questions regarding their WTC/SPCC and comprehension and pragmatic awareness.
Interviewees were presented with two scenarios involving an interaction with their interlocutors and asked to select one of the strategies below to use when making a demand. The interviewees were then asked to justify their choice. The majority of participants attributed their lack of a pragmatic response to their personalities. TS, for example stated that she was difficult to approach and would not inquire about her interlocutor's well-being when they had a heavy work load, even though she believed native Koreans would.