Five Pragmatic Lessons From Professionals Study of Chinese Learners' Pedagogical Choices in Korean

CLKs' awareness and capacity to draw on relational affordances 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 expressing criticism of a strict professor (see example 2).

This article reviews all local published pragmatic research on Korean until 2020. It focuses on practical important topics such as:

Discourse Construction Tests

The Discourse Completion Test (DCT) is a widely used instrument in pragmatic research. It has many advantages, but also some disadvantages. For instance it is that the DCT cannot take into account cultural and personal differences in communicative behavior. The DCT can also be biased and result in overgeneralizations. This is why it should be analyzed carefully before using it for research or for assessment purposes.

Despite its limitations, the DCT can be a valuable tool to study the relationship between prosody and information structure in non-native speakers. The ability to manipulate the social variables that are relevant to the manner of speaking in two or more steps could be a benefit. This characteristic can be utilized to study the role of prosody across cultural contexts.

In the field of linguistics, the DCT has emerged as one of the primary instruments for analyzing learners' behavior in communication. It can be used to analyze various issues, including politeness, turn-taking, and lexical choices. It can be used to determine the phonological complexity of learners speaking.

Recent research utilized a DCT as tool to evaluate the refusal skills of EFL students. Participants were given various scenarios and required to choose a suitable response from the choices provided. The researchers found the DCT to be more efficient than other methods of refusal, such as the use of a questionnaire or video recordings. However, the researchers cautioned that the DCT should be employed with caution and include other data collection methods.

DCTs can be designed with specific linguistic criteria, such as design and content. These criterion are intuitive and is based on the assumptions made by the test creators. They aren't always accurate, and they may be misleading about the way ELF learners actually resist requests in real-world interaction. This issue calls for more research on alternative methods of measuring refusal competence.

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

Metapragmatic Questionnaires (MQs)

This study looked at Chinese learners making pragmatic choices when using Korean. It employed various tools for experimentation such as Discourse Completion Tasks, metapragmatic questions and Refusal Interviews. Participants were 46 CLKs of upper-intermediate level who responded to MQs, DCTs and RIs. They were also asked to reflect on their evaluation and refusal performance in RIs. The results showed that CLKs often chose to resist native Korean norms of pragmatism. Their decisions were influenced primarily by four factors: their personalities and multilingual identities, their current lives as well as their relational affordances. These findings have pedagogical implications for L2 Korean assessment and teaching.

The MQ data was first analyzed to identify the participants' choices in practice. The data were categorized according to Ishihara's (2010) definition of pragmatic resistance. Then, 프라그마틱 were compared to their linguistic performance in the DCTs to determine if they reflected pragmatic resistance or not. 프라그마틱 무료 슬롯버프 had to explain the reasons for choosing an atypical behavior in certain situations.

The results of the MQs and DCTs were then analyzed using descriptive statistics and z-tests. It was found that the CLKs frequently resorted to euphemistic responses such as "sorry" and "thank you." This was likely due to their lack of experience with the target language, which led to an insufficient understanding of korea pragmatic norms. The results showed 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 preferred diverging from both L1- and L2-pragmatic norms, while in Situation 14, CLKs preferred convergence to L1 norms.

The RIs also revealed CLKs were aware of their pragmatism in every DCT situation. The RIs were conducted in a one-to-one manner within two days of the participants completed the MQs. The RIs, which were transcribed and recorded by two coders independent of each other who then coded them. The coding process was iterative and involved the coders reading and discussing each transcript. The results of the coding process were compared to the original RI transcripts, which gave an indication of how the RIs captured the underlying pragmatic behavior.

Refusal Interviews (RIs)

One of the major questions in pragmatic research is why some learners choose to resist the pragmatic norms of native speakers. A recent study sought to answer this question by employing a range of experimental tools, such as DCTs, MQs, and RIs. The participants comprised 46 CLKs, 44 CNSs, and 45 KNSs from five Korean universities. They were asked to complete the DCTs in their first language and complete the MQs in either their L1 or their L2. Then they were invited to attend a RI where they were required to think about their responses to the DCT situations.

The results showed that CLKs on average, did not conform to the norms of native speakers in more than 40 percent of their responses. They did this even though they could create native-like patterns. Furthermore, they were clearly aware of their pragmatic resistance. They attributed their choices to learner-internal factors like their identities, personalities and identities that are multilingual, as well as ongoing lives. They also referred external factors, like relationship advantages. For instance, they discussed how their relationships with professors facilitated more relaxed performance with respect to the intercultural and linguistic standards of their university.

However, the interviewees expressed concerns about the social pressures and consequences that they could face if they flouted their social norms. They were worried that their local friends might think they are "foreigners" and believe that they are unintelligent. This was a concern similar to the concerns expressed by Brown (2013) and Ishihara (2009).

These findings suggest that native-speaker pragmatic norms are not the norm for Korean learners. They could remain useful as a model for official Korean proficiency tests. Future researchers should reconsider the validity of these tests in different cultural contexts and specific situations. This will help them better understand the effects of different cultural environments on the pragmatic behavior and classroom interactions of L2 students. This will also help educators create better methods for teaching and testing Korean pragmatics. Seukhoon Paul Choi, principal advisor at Stratways Group in Seoul, is a geopolitical risk consultancy.

Case Studies


The case study method is a research method that employs intensive, participant-centered research to explore a particular subject. This method utilizes various sources of data including interviews, observations and documents to support its findings. This type of investigation can be used to study complicated or unique topics that are difficult for other methods to assess.

The first step in conducting a case study is to define the subject and the goals of the study. This will help determine which aspects of the subject matter are crucial to study and which could be left out. It is also helpful to review the existing literature to gain a general knowledge of the subject and put the issue within a larger theoretical framework.

This case study was based upon an open-source platform, the KMMLU Leaderboard [50], as well as its Korean-specific benchmarks HyperCLOVA X and LDCC Solar (figure 1 below). The results of this study revealed that L2 Korean learners were particularly dependent on the influence of native models. They were more likely to select incorrect answer options which were literal interpretations. This was a departure from the correct pragmatic inference. They also showed a distinct tendency to add their own text or "garbage" to their responses. This also lowered the quality of their responses.

Additionally, the participants in this case study were L2 Korean learners who had achieved level 4 in the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK) in their third or second year of university and were aiming for level 6 for their next test. They were questioned about their WTC/SPCC, pragmatic awareness and understanding and knowledge of the world.

The interviewees were presented two scenarios, each of which involved an imaginary interaction with their interactants and asked to choose one of the following strategies when making an inquiry. They were then asked to explain the reasons behind their decision. The majority of participants attributed their pragmatist opposition to their personalities. TS for instance stated that she was difficult to approach and would not inquire about the health of her co-worker when they had a heavy work load, even though she believed native Koreans would.