Study of Chinese Learners' Pedagogical Choices in Korean
CLKs' awareness and ability to tap into the benefits of relationships as well as the learner-internal aspects, were crucial. RIs from TS and ZL, for example mentioned their local professor relationship as a major factor in their rational decision to avoid criticizing a strict professor (see examples 2).
This article reviews all locally published practical research on Korean up to 2020. It focuses on key pragmatic issues such as:
Discourse Construction Tests (DCTs)
The Discourse Completion Test (DCT) is widely used in research that is based on pragmatic principles. It has numerous advantages, but it also has some disadvantages. For instance it is that the DCT is unable to account for cultural and personal differences in communicative behavior. Furthermore, the DCT is prone to bias and may lead to overgeneralizations. It is essential to analyze it carefully before it is used in research or evaluation.
Despite its limitations the DCT is a valuable tool to investigate the relationship between prosody, information structure and non-native speakers. The ability to alter social variables relevant to the manner of speaking in two or more steps can be a plus. This characteristic can be utilized to study the impact of prosody in different cultural contexts.
In the field of linguistics, the DCT has emerged as one of the most significant instruments for analyzing learners' behaviors in communication. It can be used to investigate various issues such as politeness, turn-taking, and lexical choice. It can be used to determine the level of phonological sophistication in learners' speech.
A recent study employed an DCT to evaluate 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 found that the DCT was more effective than other refusal measures, including a questionnaire and video recordings. The researchers cautioned that the DCT must be used with caution. They also recommended using other data collection methods.
DCTs can be designed using specific linguistic criteria, such as the form and content. These criteria are intuitive and are based on the assumptions of the test developers. They aren't always precise, and they could be misleading about the way ELF learners actually resist requests in actual interactions. This issue requires further studies of alternative methods of assessing refusal competence.
A recent study has compared DCT responses to requests submitted by students via email versus those obtained from an oral DCT. The results revealed that DCTs preferred more direct and conventionally-indirect request forms and utilized more hints than email data.
Metapragmatic Questionnaires (MQs)
This study investigated Chinese learners' choices in their use of Korean using a variety of tools that were tested, including Discourse Completion Tasks (DCTs), metapragmatic questionnaires, and Refusal Interviews (RIs). Participants were 46 CLKs with upper-intermediate proficiency who gave responses to DCTs and MQs. They were also required to provide reflections on their opinions and refusals in RIs. The results indicated that the CLKs frequently chose to resist native Korean pragmatic norms, and their decisions were influenced by four primary factors that included their personalities, multilingual identities, ongoing life histories, and relationship advantages. These findings have implications for pedagogy for L2 Korean assessment.
The MQ data was analyzed first to identify the participants' choices in practice. The data was classified according to Ishihara (2010)'s definition of pragmatic resistance. Then, we compared the choices made by the participants with their linguistic performance using DCTs to determine if they are indicative of a pragmatic resistance. Interviewees also had to explain why they chose an atypical behavior in certain situations.
The results of the MQs, DCTs and z-tests were examined using descriptive statistics and z tests. It was found that the CLKs frequently resorted to euphemistic responses such as "sorry" and "thank you." This is likely due to their lack of familiarity with the target language, which led to a lack of knowledge of korea pragmatic norms. The results showed that CLKs' preferences to diverge from L1 and L2 norms or to move towards L1 norms varied based on the DCT circumstances. 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 pragmatic resistance in each DCT situation. The RIs were conducted one-to-one basis within a period of two days of participants completing the MQs. The RIs were recorded and transcribed, then coded by two coders from different companies. The coding process was an iterative process, in which the coders read and discussed each transcript. The results of the coding process were compared to the original RI transcripts, which gave an indication of how well the RIs captured the underlying pragmatic behavior.
Refusal Interviews (RIs)
A key question of pragmatic research is why learners are hesitant to adhere to the pragmatic norms of native speakers. Recent research attempted to answer this question by using various experiments, including DCTs MQs and RIs. Participants included 46 CLKs and 44 CNSs from five Korean Universities. They were required to complete 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 required to think about and discuss their responses to each DCT scenario.
The results showed that on average, the CLKs resisted native-speaker pragmatic norms in over 40% of their answers. They did so even though they could create native-like patterns. In addition, they were aware of their pragmatism. They attributed their resistance to learner-internal variables such as their personality and multilingual identities. They also referred external factors, like relational affordances. For instance, they discussed how their relationships with professors helped facilitate a more relaxed performance in relation to the linguistic and intercultural rules of their university.
The interviewees expressed concern about the social pressures or consequences they might face if their local social norms were violated. They were concerned that their native friends would consider them "foreigners" and believe that they are not intelligent. This was a concern similar to those voiced by Brown (2013) and Ishihara (2009).
These findings suggest that native speakers' pragmatic norms are not the default preference for Korean learners. They could still be useful for official Korean proficiency testing. But it is advisable for future researchers to reassess their applicability in specific situations and in various cultural contexts. This will allow them to better understand the effects of different cultures on the classroom behavior and interactions of students from L2. Moreover this will allow educators to create more effective methods to teach and test the korea's pragmatics. Seukhoon Paul Choi, principal advisor at Stratways Group in Seoul, is a geopolitical risks consultancy.
Case Studies
The case study method is a method that focuses on in-depth, participant-centered investigations to explore a particular subject. It is a method that makes use of numerous sources of data to help support the findings, such as interviews and observations, documents, and artifacts. This kind of research is useful for examining unique or complex subjects that are difficult to measure using other methods.
In a case study the first step is to define the subject as well as the goals of the study. This will help you determine what aspects of the subject should be studied and which can be omitted. It is also helpful to read the literature on to the topic to gain a better understanding of the topic and place the case study in a broader theoretical context.
This study was based on an open-source platform, the KMMLU Leaderboard [50], and its Korean-specific benchmarks HyperCLOVA X, and LDCC Solar (figure 1 below). The results of the study showed that L2 Korean learners were highly vulnerable to the influence of native models. They were more likely to choose incorrect answer options that were literal interpretations of the prompts, thereby ignoring precise pragmatic inference. They also showed a strong tendency to add their own words or "garbage" to their responses. This also lowered the quality of their responses.
The participants in this study were all L2 Korean students who had achieved the level of four in the Test of Proficiency in Korean TOPIK in their second or third university year and were aiming to achieve level six on their next attempt. They were asked questions about their WTC/SPCC, pragmatic awareness, understanding knowledge of the world.
Interviewees were presented with two scenarios which involved interactions with their interlocutors and were asked to choose one of the strategies listed below to use when making demands. 슬롯 were then asked to provide the reasoning behind their choice. Most of the participants attributed their rational opposition to their personality. For example, TS claimed that she was difficult to connect to, and she therefore did not want to inquire about the well-being of her friend with an intense workload despite her belief that native Koreans would do so.