Study of Chinese Learners' Pedagogical Choices in Korean

CLKs' understanding and ability to tap into the benefits of relationships as well as the learner-internal aspects, were crucial. For instance the RIs from TS and ZL both cited their local professor relationships as an important reason for them to choose to avoid expressing criticism of the strictness of a professor (see example 2).

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

Discourse Construction Tests (DCTs)

The discourse completion test is a common tool in pragmatic research. It has many advantages, but also some disadvantages. The DCT, for example, is unable to account for cultural and individual variations. Additionally, the DCT is susceptible to bias and can result in overgeneralizations. It is important to carefully analyze the data before being used for research or evaluation.

Despite its limitations, the DCT can be a useful 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 benefit. This feature can be used to study the effect of prosody across cultural contexts.

In the field linguistics, DCT is among the most effective tools to study the behavior of communication learners. It can be used to study various aspects, including politeness, turn taking, and lexical selection. It can be used to evaluate the phonological complexity of learners' speech.

A recent study utilized a DCT to evaluate EFL students' refusal skills. Participants were presented with various scenarios and were asked to select an appropriate response from the choices provided. The researchers discovered that the DCT to be more efficient than other methods of refusal, such as videos or questionnaires. However, the researchers cautioned that the DCT should be employed with caution and include other methods for collecting data.

DCTs can be designed with specific linguistic criteria, such as design and content. These criteria are based on intuition and based on the assumptions of the test creators. They may not be accurate and may misrepresent the way ELF learners respond to requests in real-world interactions. This issue requires more research on alternative methods of assessing refusal competency.

In a recent research study, DCT responses to student inquiries via email were compared with the responses from an oral DCT. The results revealed that DCT promoted more direct and traditionally indirect request forms, and a lesser use of hints than email data did.

Metapragmatic Questionnaires (MQs)

This study investigated Chinese learners' pragmatic choices when it comes to using Korean by using a range of experimental tools, such as Discourse Completion Tasks (DCTs) Metapragmatic Questionnaires, Refusal Interviews (RIs). Participants were 46 CLKs of upper-intermediate proficiency who gave responses to MQs and DCTs. They were also asked to reflect on their evaluation and refusal performance in RIs. The results revealed that CLKs are more likely to reject native Korean pragmatism norms. from this source were influenced by four factors that included their personalities and multilingual identities, their current life histories, as well as their relational affordances. These findings have implications for pedagogy for L2 Korean assessment.

The MQ data was analyzed first to identify the participants' practical choices. The data was categorized according Ishihara (2010)'s definition of pragmatic resistance. Then, the responses were compared to their linguistic performance in the DCTs to determine whether they were a reflection of pragmatic resistance or not. The interviewees were asked to justify their choice of pragmatic behavior in a given situation.

The findings of the MQs and DCTs were then analyzed using descriptive statistics and z-tests. The CLKs were found to employ euphemistic phrases such as "sorry" or "thank you". This was probably due to their lack experience with the target languages, leading to an inadequate understanding of korean pragmatic norms. The results showed that the CLKs' preferences for either converging to L1 or diverging from both L1 and L2 pragmatic norms varies according to the DCT situations. For example, in Situation 3 and 12, the CLKs preferred to diverge from both L1 and pragmatic norms while in Situation 14 they favored a convergence to L1 norms.

The RIs also revealed that CLKs were aware of their pragmatic resistance in each DCT situation. RIs were conducted on a one-to-one basis within two days of participants completing the MQs. The RIs were recorded and transcribed, then coded by two coders from different companies. The coders worked in an iterative manner, with the coders re-reading and discussing each transcript. The coding results are then evaluated against the original RI transcripts to determine if they captured the underlying pragmatic behavior.

Refusal Interviews (RIs)

A key question of pragmatic research is the reason why learners are hesitant to adhere to pragmatic norms that native speakers use. A recent study attempted to answer this question by employing a variety of research tools, such as DCTs MQs, DCTs and RIs. The participants comprised 46 CLKs, 44 CNSs, and 45 KNSs from five Korean universities. They were asked to perform the DCTs in their native language and complete the MQs in either their L1 or their L2. Then, they were invited to attend a RI where they were asked to reflect on their responses to the DCT situations.


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 though they could produce native-like patterns. They were aware of their practical resistance. They attributed their choice to learner-internal variables such as their identities and personalities as well as multilingual identities. They also referred to external factors, such as relationships and affordances. For example, they described how their relationships with professors helped facilitate an easier performance with respect to the intercultural and linguistic standards of their university.

The interviewees expressed their concern about the social pressures and penalties they could be subject to if their local social norms were not followed. They were concerned that their native interlocutors might view them as "foreignersand consider them ignorant. This worry was 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 useful for official Korean proficiency tests. However, it is prudent for future researchers to reassess their applicability in specific situations and in different cultural contexts. This will help them better understand the impact of different cultures on the pragmatic behavior and classroom interactions of students in L2. Furthermore it will assist educators to create more effective methods to teach and test 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 an investigative technique that relies on participant-centered, deep investigations to explore a specific subject. It is a method that utilizes numerous sources of data to help support the findings, such as interviews and observations, documents, and artifacts. This type of investigation is ideal for studying complicated or unique subjects which are difficult to assess using other methods.

The first step in a case study is to define the subject and the objectives of the study. This will allow you to identify which aspects of the topic are important to investigate and which aspects can be left out. It is also beneficial to review existing literature related to the topic to gain a better knowledge of the subject and to place the case study in a broader theoretical context.

This 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 vulnerable to native models. They were more likely to choose incorrect answer options that were literal interpretations of prompts, deviating from the correct pragmatic inference. They also exhibited a strong tendency to add their own text or "garbage," to their responses, further detracting from the quality of their responses.

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

Interviewees were presented with two scenarios involving an interaction with their co-workers and asked to choose one of the strategies below to use when making demands. Interviewees were then asked to justify their choice. Most of the participants attributed their pragmatism to their personality. TS for instance said she was difficult to approach and was hesitant to ask about the wellbeing of her colleague when they had a lot of work, even though she believed native Koreans would.