Study of Chinese Learners' Pedagogical Choices in Korean

CLKs' awareness and capacity to tap into the benefits of relationships, as well as learner-internal elements, were important. For instance the RIs from TS and ZL both mentioned their relationships with their local professors as a major reason for them to choose to avoid criticising an uncompromising professor (see the second example).

This article reviews all local pragmatic research on Korean up to 2020. It focuses on pragmatic important topics such as:

Discourse Construction Tests (DCTs)

The discourse completion test is a common tool in the field of pragmatic research. It has numerous advantages, but also a few disadvantages. For instance the DCT cannot account for the cultural and individual variations in communication. Furthermore it is also the case that the DCT can be biased and could lead to overgeneralizations. It is important to carefully analyze the data before it is used in research or assessment.

Despite its limitations, the DCT is a useful tool for analyzing the relationship between prosody, information structure, and non-native speakers. The ability of the DCT in two or more stages to influence the social variables that are related to politeness can be a strength. This feature can help researchers to study the role played by prosody in communication across cultural contexts, which is a major issue in cross-cultural pragmatics.

In the field linguistics, DCT is among the most effective tools used for analyzing communication behaviors of learners. It can be used to examine a variety of issues such as politeness, turn-taking, and lexical selection. It can be used to evaluate the phonological complexity of learners their speech.

A recent study employed an DCT to assess EFL students' refusal skills. Participants were given a list of scenarios and were 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 the use of a questionnaire or video recordings. Researchers warned, however, that the DCT should be used with caution. They also recommended using other methods for data collection.

DCTs can be developed using specific linguistic criteria, such as form and content. These criteria are based on intuition and based on the assumptions of test designers. They aren't always correct, and they could misrepresent the way that ELF learners actually refuse requests in real-world interactions. This issue calls for further research on alternative methods of testing refusal competence.

In a recent research study, DCT responses to student inquiries via email were compared with the responses of an oral DCT. The results revealed that DCTs favored more direct and conventionally-indirect request forms and utilized less hints than email data.

Metapragmatic Questionnaires (MQs)


This study explored Chinese learners' pragmatic choices in their use of Korean using a variety of experimental tools, including Discourse Completion Tasks (DCTs), metapragmatic questionnaires, and Refusal Interviews (RIs). Participants were 46 CLKs with intermediate or higher ability who responded to MQs and DCTs. They were also asked to reflect on their evaluation and refusal performances in RIs. The results indicated that the CLKs often resisted native Korean pragmatic norms, and their decisions were influenced by four major factors: their personalities, multilingual identities, their ongoing life histories, and relational benefits. These findings have implications for pedagogy for L2 Korean assessment.

The MQ data were analyzed to determine the participants' choices in terms of their pragmatics. The data were classified according to Ishihara's (2010) definition of pragmatic resistance. Then, the selections were compared to their linguistic performance in the DCTs to determine if they were a reflection of pragmatic resistance or not. Additionally, the participants were asked to explain their choice of pragmatic behavior in a specific situation.

The results of the MQs and DCTs were then examined using descriptive statistics and Z-tests. The CLKs were found use euphemistic words like "sorry" or "thank you". This is likely due to their lack experience with the target languages, which led to a lack of understanding of the korean pragmatic norms. The results showed that CLKs' preferences for converging to L1 or diverging from both L1 and L2 pragmatic norms varied by the DCT situations. For instance, in Situations 3 and 12, the CLKs preferred to diverge from both L1 and L2 pragmatic norms, whereas in Situation 14 they favored a convergence to L1 norms.

The RIs also revealed the CLKs were aware of their pragmatic resistance in each DCT situation. The RIs were conducted one-to-one basis in the space of two days of the participants completing the MQs. The RIs were recorded and transcribed, and then coded by two coders from different companies. The coding was an iterative process in which the coders read and discussed each transcript. The results of the coding process were contrasted with the original RI transcripts, which provided an indication of how well the RIs were able to capture the fundamental behaviors.

Interviews with Refusal

The central problem in the field of pragmatic research is: Why do certain learners choose not to accept native-speaker norms? A recent study attempted to answer this question by employing a variety of research instruments, including DCTs MQs, DCTs and RIs. The participants were comprised of 46 CLKs, 44 CNSs and 45 KNSs from five Korean universities. The participants were asked to complete the DCTs and MQs either in their L1 or 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 the pragmatic norms of native speakers in more than 40% of their responses. They did this even though they were able to produce patterns that resembled natives. They were also aware of their pragmatic resistance. They attributed their decisions to learner-internal factors like their identities, personalities and identities that are multilingual, as well as ongoing life histories. They also referred external factors, like relationship benefits. They also discussed, for instance how their relationships with their professors allowed them to perform more comfortably in terms of the linguistic and social standards of their university.

However, the interviewees expressed concerns about the social pressures and punishments that they could be subjected to if they strayed from their local social norms. They were concerned that their native interactants might think they are "foreigners" and believe they are incompetent. This was a concern similar to the concerns voiced by Brown (2013) and Ishihara (2009).

These results suggest that native-speaker practical norms are not the default preference of Korean learners. They could remain useful as a model for official Korean proficiency tests. But it would be prudent for future researchers to reconsider their usefulness in particular situations and in various cultural contexts. This will allow them to better understand the effect of different cultural contexts on the pragmatic behavior and classroom interactions of L2 students. Additionally this will allow 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 consulting firm based in Seoul.

Case Studies

The case study method is a research method that focuses on in-depth, participant-centered investigations to explore a particular subject. This method makes use of multiple data sources including interviews, observations, and documents, to prove its findings. This type of investigation is useful for examining specific or complex subjects that are difficult to measure with other methods.

The first step in a case study is to define the subject matter and the purpose of the study. This will allow you to determine which aspects of the subject matter are crucial for investigation and which ones can be omitted. It is also beneficial to review the existing research to gain a broad understanding of the subject and place the case within a larger theoretical framework.

This study was conducted on an open source platform such as the KMMLU leaderboard [50] and its benchmarks that are specific to Korea, 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 select incorrect answers that were literal interpretations of the prompts, which were not based on accurate pragmatic inference. They also had a strong tendency to add their own words or "garbage" to their responses. 슬롯 lowered the quality of their responses.

The participants in this study were L2 Korean students who had attained level four in the Test of Proficiency in Korean TOPIK in their second or third university year and were aiming to attain level six on their next attempt. They were asked to respond to questions regarding their WTC/SPCC and comprehension and pragmatic awareness.

Interviewees were presented with two hypothetical situations that involved interaction with their co-workers and were asked to choose one of the strategies listed below to use when making a demand. Interviewees were then asked to justify their choice. The majority of the participants attributed their lack of a pragmatic response to their personality. TS for instance, claimed that she was difficult to approach and would not ask about the wellbeing of her colleague when they had a lot of work, even though she thought native Koreans would.