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Study of Chinese Learners' Pedagogical Choices in Korean

In addition to the learner-internal aspects CLKs' awareness of the need to be pragmatic and the social ties they were able to draw from were crucial. Researchers from TS & ZL for instance mentioned their relationships with their local professors as a major factor in their decision to stay clear of criticizing a strict professor (see examples 2).

This article reviews all locally published practical research on Korean up to 2020. It focuses on the most important pragmatic topics including:

Discourse Construction Tests (DCTs)

The discourse completion test is a commonly used tool in the field of pragmatic research. It has many advantages however, it also has its disadvantages. The DCT, for example, is unable to account for cultural and individual differences. Additionally the DCT can be biased and may cause overgeneralizations. As a result, it should be analyzed carefully before using it for research or for assessment purposes.

Despite its limitations the DCT can be a useful tool for analyzing the relationship between prosody, information structure and non-native speakers. Its ability to manipulate social variables that affect the manner of speaking in two or more steps could be a plus. This feature can be used to study the impact of prosody in various cultural contexts.

In the field of linguistics the DCT is now one of the most significant tools to analyze learners' behavior in communication. It can be used to study various issues, including politeness, turn taking, and lexical selection. It can be used to evaluate the phonological difficulty of learners their speech.

A recent study utilized the DCT to test EFL students' refusal skills. Participants were given a list of scenarios and asked to choose the appropriate response from the options offered. The researchers found that the DCT was more effective than other measures to stop people from refusing such as a questionnaire or video recordings. The researchers cautioned that the DCT should be employed with caution. They also suggested using other data collection methods.

DCTs are typically designed with specific linguistic criteria in mind, like the content and the form. These criteria are based on intuition and based upon the assumptions of test designers. They are not always precise and could misrepresent the way ELF learners actually reject requests in real-world interactions. This issue calls for more study on alternative methods for testing refusal competence.

A recent study examined DCT responses to requests made by students via email versus those obtained from an oral DCT. The results revealed that DCT promoted more direct and conventionally indirect request forms and a lower use of hints than email data did.

Metapragmatic Questionnaires (MQs)

This study investigated Chinese learners making pragmatic choices when using Korean. It employed various experimental tools such as Discourse Completion Tasks, metapragmatic questions and Refusal Interviews. The participants were 46 CLKs of upper intermediate level who answered MQs, DCTs, and RIs. They were also asked to think about their evaluations and refusal performances in RIs. The results indicated that the CLKs were more likely to reject native Korean pragmatic norms, and that their choices were influenced by four main factors such as their identities, their multilingual identities, ongoing life histories, and relational benefits. These findings have pedagogical implications for L2 Korean assessment.

The MQ data were analysed to identify the participants' pragmatic choices. The data were categorized according to Ishihara's (2010) definition of pragmatic resistance. Then, we compared the choices with their linguistic performance on DCTs to determine if they were a sign of pragmatic resistance. Additionally, the participants were asked to explain their choices of behavior in a particular scenario.

The results of the MQs, DCTs and z-tests were analysed using descriptive statistics and z tests. The CLKs were found to employ euphemistic phrases such as "sorry" or "thank you". This could be due to their lack of familiarity with the target languages, leading to a lack of understanding of the korean pragmatic norms. The results revealed that CLKs' preferences for either converging to L1 norms or dissociating from both L1 and L2 pragmatic norms varied by the DCT situations. In Situations 3 and 12 CLKs favored diverging from both L1- and L2-pragmatic norms, while in Situation 14 CLKs favored convergence to L1 norms.

The RIs revealed that CLKs knew about their logical resistance to every DCT situation. RIs were conducted on a one-to-one basis within two days of the participants completing the MQs. The RIs were transcribed and recorded by two independent coders who then coded them. The coders worked in an iterative manner by the coders, re-reading and discussing each transcript. The results of the coding process were evaluated against the original RI transcripts, giving an indication of how the RIs accurately portrayed the core behavior.

Refusal Interviews (RIs)

A key question of pragmatic research is the reason why learners choose to resist native-speaker pragmatic norms. Recent research has attempted to answer this question with several experimental tools, including DCTs MQs and RIs. The participants consisted of 46 CLKs, 44 CNSs, and 45 KNSs 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 reflect on and discuss their responses to each DCT situation.

The results showed that CLKs, on average, did not follow the norms of native speakers in more than 40 percent of their responses. They did this even though they could create patterns that resembled native ones. They were also aware of their pragmatic resistance. They attributed their actions to learner-internal factors such as their personalities, multilingual identities, and ongoing lives. They also referred external factors, such as relational advantages. They outlined, for instance, how their interactions with their professors helped them to perform better in terms of the linguistic and social expectations of their university.

However, the interviewees also expressed concern about the social pressures and consequences they could be subject to if they violated their local social norms. They were worried that their native friends would think they are "foreigners" and believe that they are not intelligent. This concern was similar in nature to the concerns expressed by Brown (2013) and Ishihara (2009).

These findings suggest that native speakers' pragmatic norms are not the preferred norm for Korean learners. They may still be useful for official Korean proficiency tests. But it is advisable for future researchers to revisit their relevance in specific scenarios 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 from L2. This will also assist educators to create better methods for teaching and testing Korean 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 an investigative strategy that employs participant-centered, in-depth studies to study a specific subject. This method uses various sources of data, such as interviews, observations and documents, to support its findings. This kind of research is useful for examining unique or complex subjects that are difficult to measure with other methods.

The first step in conducting a case study is to define the subject and the goals of the study. This will help determine what aspects of the subject matter are crucial for investigation and which ones are best left out. It is also helpful to study the research to gain a broad knowledge of the subject and place the situation in a wider theoretical context.

This study was conducted on an open source platform that is the KMMLU leaderboard [50], and 프라그마틱 정품인증 its specific benchmarks for Korea, HyperCLOVA X and LDCC-Solar (figure 1 below). The results of the study revealed that L2 Korean learners were particularly susceptible to the influence of native models. They were more likely to choose incorrect answer options that were literal interpretations of the prompts, which were not based on precise pragmatic inference. They also exhibited a strong tendency to include their own text, or "garbage," to their responses, further reducing their response quality.

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

The interviewees were given two situations, each involving an imagined interaction with their interlocutors and were asked to select one of the following strategies to employ when making a request. Interviewees were then asked to justify their decision. The majority of participants attributed their pragmatist opposition to their personality. TS for instance, claimed that she was difficult to get along with and would not inquire about her interlocutor's well-being when they had a heavy work load, even though she thought native Koreans would.