Ten Things Everyone Misunderstands About The Word "Pragmatic"
Study of Chinese Learners' Pedagogical Choices in Korean
In addition to the learner-internal aspects CLKs' understanding of their own resistance to change and the relational affordances they could draw on were significant. The RIs from TS & ZL for instance were able to cite their relationships with their local professors as a key factor in their pragmatic decision to avoid criticizing a strict professor (see the example 2).
This article reviews all locally published practical research on Korean up to 2020. It focuses on key pragmatic issues such as:
Discourse Construction Tests (DCTs)
The test for discourse completion is a common tool in pragmatic research. It has numerous advantages, but also a few disadvantages. For example, the DCT cannot take into account cultural and individual variations in communication. The DCT can also be biased and can lead to overgeneralizations. Therefore, it is important to analyze it carefully before it is used 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. The ability to manipulate the social variables that are relevant to politeness in two or more steps could be a benefit. This characteristic can be utilized to study the impact of prosody in different cultural contexts.
In the field of linguistics, the DCT has become one of the most important tools for analyzing learners' behavior in communication. It can be used to examine various issues such as politeness, turn-taking, and lexical choice. It can be used to evaluate the phonological complexity of learners' speech.
pragmatic kr employed a DCT to test EFL students' ability to resist. Participants were presented with an array of scenarios and asked to select an appropriate response from the options provided. The authors discovered that the DCT to be more efficient than other methods of refusal like the use of a questionnaire or video recordings. The researchers cautioned that the DCT must be employed with caution. They also suggested using other data collection methods.
DCTs are typically developed with specific linguistic criteria in mind, such as the content and the form. These criteria are based on intuition and is based on the assumptions made by the test developers. They may not be accurate, and they may misrepresent the way that ELF learners actually reject requests in real-world interactions. This issue requires further research on different methods to assess refusal ability.
In a recent research study, DCT responses to student inquiries via email were compared to the responses of an oral DCT. The results showed that DCTs preferred more direct and conventionally indirect request forms and utilized less hints than email data.
Metapragmatic Questionnaires (MQs)
This study investigated Chinese learners' pragmatic choices when using Korean. It used a variety of experimental tools including Discourse Completion Tasks, metapragmatic questions, and Refusal Interviews. Participants were 46 CLKs at the upper-intermediate who participated in DCTs, MQs, and RIs. They were also asked to provide reflections on their evaluations and refusals in RIs. The results showed that CLKs frequently chose to resist native Korean pragmatic norms, and their decisions were influenced by four main factors such as their personalities, their multilingual identities, ongoing life histories, and relational affordances. These findings have pedagogical implications for L2 Korean assessment and teaching.
The MQ data was analyzed first to determine the participants' practical choices. The data were categorized according to Ishihara's (2010) definition of pragmatic resistance. Then, we compared their choices with their linguistic performance on the DCTs to determine if they are indicative of pragmatic resistance. Interviewees also had to explain the reasons for choosing an atypical behavior in certain situations.
The results of the MQs and DCTs were then analysed using descriptive statistics and z-tests. The CLKs were discovered to employ euphemistic phrases such as "sorry" or "thank you". This is likely due to their lack of familiarity with the target languages, leading to a lack of understanding of the korean pragmatic norms. The results showed that CLKs' preferences to diverge from L1 and 2 norms or to be more convergent towards L1 varied depending on the DCT circumstances. For instance, in Situations 3 and 12 the CLKs would prefer to diverge from both L1 and L2 pragmatic norms whereas in Situation 14, they favored converging to L1 norms.
The RIs showed that CLKs knew about their pragmatic resistance to each DCT situation. The RIs were conducted one-to-one within two days after the participants completed the MQs. The RIs were recorded and transcribed by two coders independent of each other and then coded. The coding process was iterative by the coders, re-reading and discussing each transcript. The results of the coding process are evaluated against the original RI transcripts to determine how well they reflected the actual behavior.
Interviews with Refusal
The most important problem in the field of pragmatic research is: Why do some learners choose not to accept native-speaker norms? A recent study sought to answer this question using a variety of experimental tools, including DCTs MQs, DCTs, and RIs. The participants were comprised of 46 CLKs, 44 CNSs and 45 KNSs from five Korean universities. They were required to complete the DCTs in their first language and to complete the MQs either in their L1 or L2. They were then invited to an RI, where they were asked to think about and discuss their responses to each DCT scenario.
The results showed that CLKs on average, did not conform to the patterns of native speakers in more than 40% of their responses. They did this even though they could create native-like patterns. They were aware of their practical resistance. They attributed their decisions to learner-internal factors such as their personalities and identities that are multilingual, as well as ongoing lives. They also referred to external factors, such as relationships and affordances. For instance, they discussed how their relationships with professors led to a more relaxed performance in regards to the intercultural and linguistic rules of their university.
The interviewees expressed concern about the social pressures and penalties they could face when their social norms were violated. They were worried that their native interactants might perceive them as "foreigners" and believe that they are incompetent. This concern was similar in nature to the concerns expressed by Brown (2013) and Ishihara (2009).
These results suggest that native-speaker practical norms are not the default preference of Korean learners. They may still be useful as a model for official Korean proficiency tests. Future researchers should reassess the usefulness of these tests in different cultural contexts and in specific situations. This will help them better understand the effect of different cultural contexts on the behavior of students and classroom interactions of L2 students. This will also help educators create better methods for teaching and testing Korean pragmatics. Seukhoon Paul Choi is principal advisor at Stratways Group, a geopolitical risk consultancy based in Seoul.
Case Studies
The case study method is an investigative technique that employs participant-centered, in-depth investigations to explore a specific subject. It is a method that makes use of multiple data sources to support the findings, including interviews or observations, documents and artifacts. This kind of research is useful for examining specific or complex subjects which are difficult to assess using other methods.
The first step in a case study is to clearly define the subject and the objectives of the study. This will help determine what aspects of the subject matter are essential to study and which can be omitted. It is also beneficial to study the literature that is relevant to the topic to gain a better understanding of the subject and to place the case study within a wider theoretical framework.
This case study was based upon an open-source platform called the KMMLU Leaderboard [50], along with its benchmarks for Koreans, HyperCLOVA X, and LDCC Solar (figure 1 below). The results of this study showed that L2 Korean learners were highly susceptible to the influence of native models. They tended to choose wrong answer options which were literal interpretations. This was a departure from the correct pragmatic inference. They also had a strong tendency to include their own text or "garbage" to their responses. This also lowered the quality of their answers.
The participants of this study were all L2 Korean students who had achieved level four in the Test of Proficiency in Korean TOPIK in their second or third year of university and were hoping to attain level six on their next attempt. They were asked to respond to questions regarding their WTC/SPCC, as well as pragmatic awareness and comprehension.
Interviewees were presented with two hypothetical situations which involved interactions with their counterparts and were asked to choose one of the strategies below to use when making an offer. They were then asked to provide the reasons behind their decision. The majority of participants attributed their pragmatist opposition to their personality. For example, TS claimed that she was hard to get close to, and she therefore refused to ask about the well-being of her friend with an intense workload despite her belief that native Koreans would do this.