Study of Chinese Learners' Pedagogical Choices in Korean


In addition to learner-internal influences CLKs' understanding of their own resistance to change and the relationship advantages they had access to were important. Researchers from TS and ZL for instance mentioned their relationship with their local professor as the primary reason for their decision to stay clear of criticizing a strict professor (see example 2).

This article examines all local research on Korean published until 2020. It focuses on pragmatic fundamental topics like:

Discourse Construction Tests

The discourse completion test is a commonly used tool in pragmatic research. It has numerous advantages, but it also has some disadvantages. 슬롯 is one example. It is unable to account for cultural and individual variations. The DCT can also be biased and can lead to overgeneralizations. It should be carefully analyzed before being used for research or evaluation.

Despite its limitations, the DCT is a useful tool for investigating the relationship between prosody and information structure in non-native speakers. The ability to manipulate the social variables that are relevant to politeness in two or more steps could be a strength. This ability can aid researchers to study the role played by prosody in communicating across cultural contexts, a key issue in cross-cultural pragmatics.

In the field of linguistics the DCT has become one of the primary tools for analyzing learners' behavior in communication. It can be used to study various aspects, including the manner of speaking, turn taking and lexical choices. It can be used to evaluate the phonological difficulty of learners speaking.

Recent research has used an DCT as an instrument to test the skills of refusal among EFL students. The participants were given a list of scenarios and asked to choose the appropriate response from the options provided. The researchers found the DCT to be more effective than other refusal methods, such as a questionnaire or video recordings. However, the researchers cautioned that the DCT should be used with caution and should include other types of 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 could misrepresent how ELF learners respond to requests in real-world interactions. This issue calls for further studies of different methods of assessing refusal ability.

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 favored more direct and conventionally indirect requests and utilized less hints than email data.

Metapragmatic Questionnaires (MQs)

This study examined Chinese learners' pragmatic choices when using Korean. It employed various tools for experimentation including Discourse Completion Tasks, metapragmatic questions, and Refusal Interviews. The participants were 46 CLKs of upper intermediate level who answered DCTs, MQs, and RIs. They were also required to provide reflections on their assessments and refusals in RIs. The results revealed that CLKs were more likely to reject native Korean pragmatic norms, and their choices were influenced by four main factors: their personalities, their multilingual identities, their ongoing life histories, and relational benefits. These findings have implications for pedagogy for L2 Korean assessment.

First, the MQ data were analysed to identify the participants' choices in terms of their pragmatics. The data was categorized according Ishihara (2010)'s definition of pragmatic resistance. Then, the responses were compared with their linguistic performance in the DCTs to determine whether they reflected pragmatic resistance or not. Interviewees were also required to explain the reasons for choosing the pragmatic approach in certain situations.

The results of the MQs, DCTs and z-tests were examined using descriptive statistics and z tests. The CLKs were found use euphemistic terms such as "sorry" or "thank you". This was probably due to their lack experience with the target languages, leading to a lack of understanding of korean pragmatic norms. The results showed that the CLKs' preferences for either converging to L1 norms or departing from both L1 as well as L2 pragmatic norms varies according to the DCT situations. In the scenarios 3 and 12, CLKs preferred diverging from both L1- and L2-pragmatic norms, while in Situation 14 CLKs preferred a convergence to L1 norms.

The RIs also revealed that the CLKs were aware their pragmatic resistance in each DCT situation. The RIs were conducted one-to-one within two days after participants completed the MQs. The RIs were recorded and transcribing, and then coded by two coders from different companies. The coding process was an iterative process, in which the coders listened and discussed 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

The key problem in the field of pragmatic research is: Why do certain learners decide to not accept native-speaker norms? Recent research attempted to answer this question by using a variety of 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 first language and to complete the MQs in either 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 CLKs, on average, did not follow the patterns of native speakers in more than 40% of their responses. They did this even though they were able to create patterns that were similar to native speakers. They were also conscious of their own pragmatism. They attributed their actions to learner-internal factors such as their identities, personalities and multilingual identities as well as ongoing life histories. They also referred to external factors, such as relational affordances. They described, for example how their relations with their professors enabled them to function more easily in terms of the linguistic and cultural expectations of their university.

However, the interviewees expressed concerns about the social pressures and punishments that they might face if they flouted their social norms. They were concerned that their native interlocutors might perceive them as “foreigners” and think they were incompetent. This was a concern similar to the concerns 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 a useful model for official Korean proficiency tests. But it would be prudent for future researchers to reconsider their relevance in specific scenarios and in different cultural contexts. This will allow them to better comprehend how different environments could affect the practical behavior of L2 learners in the classroom and beyond. Moreover it will assist educators to create more effective methods for teaching and testing the korea's pragmatics. Seukhoon Paul Choi is principal advisor for Stratways Group, a geopolitical risk consultancy based in Seoul.

Case Studies

The case study method is an investigative technique that relies on participant-centered, deep investigations to explore a specific subject. This method utilizes multiple data sources like interviews, observations and documents to confirm its findings. helpful resources of investigation can be used to analyze complicated or unique subjects that are difficult for other methods to measure.

In a case study the first step is to clearly define the subject and the purpose of the study. This will allow you to determine which aspects of the topic must be investigated and which ones can be skipped. It is also useful to study the research to gain a broad understanding of the subject and place the situation within a larger theoretical framework.

This case study was built on an open-source platform called 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 extremely vulnerable to native models. They were more likely to choose incorrect answers that were literal interpretations of prompts, deviating from the correct pragmatic inference. They also showed a strong tendency to include their own words or "garbage" to their responses. This further reduced the quality of their responses.

Additionally, the participants in this case study were L2 Korean learners who had achieved level 4 on the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK) at the end of their second or third year at university and were hoping to achieve level 6 in their next attempt. They were asked to answer questions about their WTC/SPCC as well as understanding and pragmatic awareness.

The interviewees were given two scenarios, each of which involved an imagined interaction with their interactants and asked to choose one of the following strategies to use when making an inquiry. The interviewees were then asked to justify their decision. Most participants attributed their pragmatic opposition to their personalities. TS, for example said she was difficult to talk to and was hesitant to inquire about the health of her co-worker when they had a heavy work load, even though she thought native Koreans would.