5 Pragmatic Projects For Every Budget
Study of Chinese Learners' Pedagogical Choices in Korean
CLKs' awareness and ability to make use of relational affordances as well as the learner-internal aspects, were crucial. For instance, RIs from TS and ZL both have cited their relationships with their local professors as a major factor in their pragmatic choice to avoid criticising a strict professor (see example 2).
This article reviews all local pragmatic research on Korean published until 2020. It focuses on the practical fundamental topics like:
Discourse Construction Tests (DCTs)
The test for discourse completion is a common tool in pragmatic research. It has numerous advantages, but it also has some disadvantages. For instance, the DCT cannot take into account cultural and individual differences in communication. Additionally, the DCT is prone to bias and can lead to overgeneralizations. It should be carefully analyzed before it is used in research or evaluation.
Despite its limitations, the DCT is a useful tool for investigating the relationship between prosody and information structure in non-native speakers. The ability to manipulate social variables relevant to politeness in two or more steps could be a benefit. This ability can be used to study the impact of prosody in various cultural contexts.
In the field of linguistics, DCT is one of the most useful tools to analyze the communication habits of learners. It can be used to investigate various aspects that include politeness, turn taking, and lexical choice. It can be used to evaluate the phonological complexity of learners in their speech.
Recent research used the DCT as a tool to assess the ability to resist of EFL students. Participants were presented with a range of scenarios to choose from and then asked to select the most appropriate response. The researchers found the DCT to be more effective than other refusal methods like videos or questionnaires. Researchers cautioned, however, that the DCT must be used with caution. They also recommended using other data collection methods.
DCTs can be developed using specific language requirements, like form and content. These criteria are intuitive and based on the assumptions of test developers. They are not always accurate and may misrepresent the way ELF learners respond to requests in real-world interactions. This issue requires more study on alternative methods for testing refusal competence.
In a recent study, DCT responses to student requests via email were compared with those from an oral DCT. The results revealed that DCT was more direct and conventionally indirect request forms and made a less frequent use of hints than email data did.
Metapragmatic Questionnaires (MQs)
This study examined Chinese learners making pragmatic choices when using Korean. It employed various experimental tools such as Discourse Completion Tasks, metapragmatic questions, and Refusal Interviews. Participants were 46 CLKs of upper-intermediate proficiency who gave responses to MQs and DCTs. They were also asked for reflections on their assessments and their refusals to participate in RIs. The results showed that CLKs are more likely to reject native Korean pragmatism norms. Their decisions were influenced by four factors such as their personality and multilingual identities, their ongoing life experiences and their relational affordances. These findings have implications for pedagogy for L2 Korean assessment.
First, the MQ data were analysed to determine the participants' rational choices. The data was classified according to Ishihara (2010)'s definition of pragmatic resistance. Then, the selections were compared to their linguistic performance on the DCTs to determine if they showed a pattern of resistance to pragmatics or not. Additionally, the participants were asked to justify their choices of behavior in a specific situation.
The results of the MQs, DCTs and z-tests were examined using descriptive statistics and z tests. The CLKs were found use euphemistic terms such as "sorry" or "thank you". This was probably due to their lack experience with the target languages, leading to an insufficient understanding of korean pragmatic norms. The results showed that the CLKs' preference for converging to L1 norms or diverging from both L1 and L2 pragmatic norms varies according to the DCT situations. For instance, in Situations 3 and 12 the CLKs would prefer to diverge from both L1 as well as L2 pragmatic norms whereas in Situation 14, they favored converging to L1 norms.
The RIs also revealed that the CLKs were aware their own pragmatism in each DCT situation. The RIs were conducted one-to-one basis in the space of two days of participants completing the MQs. The RIs were recorded and transcribing, and then coded by two coders from different companies. The coding was an iterative process in which the coders discussed and read each transcript. pragmatickr.com coding results were then compared to the original RI transcripts, giving an indication of how well the RIs accurately portrayed the core behavior.
Interviews for refusal
One of the most important questions in pragmatic research is the reason why learners decide to rescind pragmatic norms that native speakers use. Recent research has attempted to answer this question by using a variety of experiments, including DCTs MQs and RIs. Participants comprised 46 CLKs and 44 CNSs from five Korean Universities. They were asked to perform the DCTs in their native language and complete the MQs either in their L1 or their L2. Then, they were invited to a RI where they were asked to consider their responses to the DCT situations.
The results showed that on average, the CLKs rejected native-speaker pragmatic norms in more than 40% of their responses. They did this even though they could create native-like patterns. They were also aware of their pragmatic resistance. They attributed their decisions to learner-internal factors like their identities, personalities, multilingual identities, and ongoing life experiences. They also mentioned external factors such as relational benefits. For instance, they discussed how their relationships with professors led to more relaxed performance in relation to the intercultural and linguistic rules of their university.
The interviewees expressed concerns about the social pressures and penalties they could face when their social norms were not followed. They were concerned that their local friends might perceive them as "foreigners" and believe they are incompetent. This concern was similar in nature to the one expressed by Brown (2013) and Ishihara (2009).
These results suggest that native speakers pragmatic norms aren't the default preference for Korean learners. They may still be useful as a model for official Korean proficiency tests. But it is advisable for future researchers to reassess their relevance in specific scenarios and in various contexts. This will help them better know how different cultures may impact the pragmatic behavior of students in the classroom and beyond. Furthermore it will assist educators to develop more effective methodologies for teaching and testing korea pragmatics. Seukhoon Paul Choi, principal advisor at Stratways Group in Seoul, is a geopolitical risk consulting.
Case Studies
The case study method is an investigative strategy that employs participant-centered, in-depth studies to study a specific subject. This method makes use of numerous sources of information including documents, interviews, and observations, to support its findings. This kind of investigation can be used to examine specific or complicated topics that are difficult for other methods to measure.
In a case study, the first step is to define the subject as well as 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 helpful to review existing literature related to the subject to gain a greater knowledge of the subject and place the case within a larger theoretical context.
This study was based on an open-source platform called the KMMLU Leaderboard [50] and its benchmarks for Koreans, HyperCLOVA X, and LDCC Solar (figure 1 below). The results of the study revealed that the L2 Korean students were particularly vulnerable to native models. They tended to select wrong answers that were literal interpretations of the prompts, deviating from the correct pragmatic inference. They also exhibited an inclination to include their own text, or "garbage," to their responses, which further hampered their response quality.
Moreover, the participants of this case study were L2 Korean learners who had reached level 4 on the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK) in 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 hypothetical situations which involved interactions with their counterparts and were asked to choose one of the strategies listed below to use when making demands. They were then asked to provide the reasoning behind their choice. Most of the participants attributed their pragmatic resistance to their personality. TS for instance stated that she was difficult to talk to and was hesitant to inquire about the health of her co-worker when they had a heavy work load despite the fact that she thought native Koreans would.