Study of Chinese Learners' Pedagogical Choices in Korean

In addition to learner-internal factors, CLKs' awareness of their own resistance to change and the relationship advantages they had access to were important. For instance the RIs of TS and ZL both mentioned their relationships with their local professors as a major factor in their pragmatic choice to avoid expressing criticism of the strictness of a professor (see the second example).

This article reviews all local published pragmatic research on Korean up to 2020. It focuses on the most important pragmatic issues such as:

Discourse Construction Tests

The Discourse Completion Test (DCT) is widely used in pragmatic research. It has numerous advantages, but it also has a few drawbacks. https://zenwriting.net/snailiron6/8-tips-for-boosting-your-pragmatic-game , for example, is unable to account for cultural and individual differences. Additionally the DCT can be biased and can lead to overgeneralizations. It is important to carefully analyze the data before it is used for research or assessment.

Despite its limitations, the DCT is a useful instrument to study the relationship between prosody and information structure in non-native speakers. The ability to manipulate social variables relevant to politeness in two or more steps can be a benefit. This ability can be used to study the role of prosody in different cultural contexts.

In the field of linguistics, the DCT is now one of the most important tools for analyzing learners' behavior in communication. https://boyd-bang-3.hubstack.net/this-is-the-myths-and-facts-behind-pragmatic-slot-experience can be used to study numerous issues, like politeness, turn-taking, and lexical choices. It can be used to determine the phonological complexity of learners' speech.

A recent study used a DCT to assess EFL students' refusal skills. Participants were presented with a variety of scenarios to choose from, and were then asked to select the appropriate response. The authors found that the DCT was more efficient than other methods of refusal that included a questionnaire as well as video recordings. However, the researchers cautioned that the DCT should be used with caution and should include other methods for collecting data.

DCTs can be designed with specific requirements for linguistics, such as form and content. These criteria are intuitive and based on the assumptions of the test developers. They are not always precise and could misrepresent the way ELF learners actually reject requests in real-world interactions. This issue calls for further study on alternative methods for assessing refusal competency.

In a recent study DCT responses to student requests via email were compared with the responses from an oral DCT. The results revealed that DCTs preferred more direct and conventionally-indirect requests and utilized less hints than email data.

Metapragmatic Questionnaires (MQs)

This study examined Chinese learners' pragmatic choices in their use of Korean using a variety of experimental tools, such as Discourse Completion Tasks (DCTs) Metapragmatic Questionnaires, Refusal Interviews (RIs). Participants were 46 CLKs of upper-intermediate level who responded to MQs, DCTs, and RIs. They were also asked to think about their evaluations and refusal responses in RIs. The results indicated that the CLKs frequently chose to resist native Korean pragmatic norms, and their decisions were influenced by four major factors such as their identities, their multilingual identities, ongoing life histories, and relationship affordances. These findings have pedagogical consequences for L2 Korean assessment.

The MQ data was analyzed in order to determine the participants' actual choices. The data was classified according to Ishihara (2010)'s definition of pragmatic resistance. Then, we compared the choices with their linguistic performance on the DCTs to determine if they are indicative of a pragmatic resistance. The interviewees also had to explain why they chose an atypical behavior in certain situations.

The results of the MQs and DCTs were then examined using descriptive statistics and z-tests. The CLKs were found to use euphemistic words like "sorry" or "thank you". This was probably due to their lack of familiarity with the target languages, leading to an insufficient understanding of the korean pragmatic norms. The results revealed that CLKs' preferences for converging to L1 or dissociating from both L1 and L2 pragmatic norms varies according to the DCT situations. In situations 3 and 12, CLKs preferred diverging from both L1- and L2-pragmatic norms, while in Situation 14, CLKs preferred convergence to L1 norms.

The RIs further revealed that the CLKs were aware of their own pragmatism in each DCT situation. The RIs were conducted one-to-one within two days after participants had completed the MQs. The RIs were recorded and transcribed, and then coded by two independent coders. The coding process was iterative, with the coders re-reading and discussing each transcript. The results of coding were evaluated against the original RI transcripts, giving an indication of how well the RIs accurately portrayed the core behaviors.

Refusal Interviews

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 by using various experimental tools 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 first language and complete the MQs either in their L1 or their L2. They were then invited to an RI, where they were required to reflect and discuss their responses to each DCT situation.

The results showed that, on average, the CLKs disapproved of native-speaker pragmatic norms in more than 40% of their answers. They did this even when they were able to create patterns that closely resembled natives. They were also conscious of their own pragmatism. They attributed their decisions to learner-internal factors such as their identities, personalities and multilingual identities as well as ongoing lives. They also referred to external factors, such as relationships and benefits. They also discussed, for instance, how their relationships with their professors allowed them to function more easily in terms of the cultural and linguistic norms at their university.

The interviewees expressed concern about the social pressures or penalties they could face if their local social norms were not followed. They were concerned that their native counterparts may view them as "foreignersand consider them ignorant. This is similar to the one expressed by Brown (2013) and Ishihara (2009).

These findings suggest that native-speakers pragmatic norms aren't the default preference for Korean learners. They could still be useful as a model for official Korean proficiency tests. But it is advisable for future researchers to reconsider their usefulness in particular situations and in different cultural contexts. This will help them better understand the effects of different cultural contexts on the pragmatic behavior and classroom interactions of students from L2. Additionally, this will help educators create more effective methods for teaching and testing the korea's pragmatics. Seukhoon Paul Choi is principal advisor at Stratways Group, a geopolitical risk consultancy based out of Seoul.

Case Studies



The case study method is a research method that employs in-depth, participant-centered investigations to study a specific subject. It is a method that uses multiple data sources to help support the findings, such as interviews or observations, documents and artifacts. This kind of research can be used to examine specific or complicated subjects that are difficult for other methods to measure.

The first step in conducting a case study is to clearly define the subject matter and the purpose of the study. This will help you determine which aspects of the topic should be studied and which aspects can be left out. It is also beneficial to study the literature that is relevant to the topic to gain a better knowledge of the subject and place the case study within a wider theoretical framework.

This case study was based on an open source platform that is the KMMLU leaderboard [50], and its Korean-specific benchmarks, HyperCLOVA X and LDCC-Solar (figure 1 below). The results of the test showed that L2 Korean students were highly susceptible to native models. They were more likely to select incorrect answer options which were literal interpretations. This was a deviation from the correct pragmatic inference. They also had a strong tendency to include their own words or "garbage" to their responses. This lowered the quality of their answers.

Moreover, the participants of this study were L2 Korean learners who had achieved level 4 in the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK) in their second or third year of university and were aiming for level 6 on their next attempt. They were asked to answer questions regarding their WTC/SPCC and understanding and pragmatic awareness.

The interviewees were presented with two situations, each involving an imagined interaction with their interactants and asked to choose one of the following strategies when making an inquiry. They were then asked to provide the reasoning behind their choice. The majority of participants attributed their pragmatism to their personality. For example, TS claimed that she was hard to get close to, and therefore did not want to inquire about the health of her interlocutors despite having a heavy workload, even though she believed that native Koreans would ask.