Notes

What A Weekly Pragmatic Project Can Change Your Life
Study of Chinese Learners' Pedagogical Choices in Korean

CLKs' awareness and capacity to tap into the benefits of relationships and learner-internal elements, were important. For instance the RIs of TS and ZL both mentioned their relationships with their local professors as a significant factor in their pragmatic choice to avoid expressing criticism of the strictness of a professor (see the example 2).

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

Discourse Construction Tests (DCTs)

The discourse completion test (DCT) is widely used in pragmatic research. It has many advantages, but also some disadvantages. The DCT is one example. It is unable to account for cultural and individual variations. Furthermore the DCT is prone to bias and could result in overgeneralizations. It is essential to analyze it carefully before it is used for research or assessment.

Despite its limitations the DCT is a valuable tool for analyzing the relationship between prosody, information structure, and non-native speakers. The ability of the DCT in two or more stages to manipulate social variables related to politeness can be a strength. This ability can be used to study the impact of prosody in different 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 investigate a variety of issues that include politeness, turn-taking, and lexical selection. It can also be used to assess the phonological complexity of learners' speech.

A recent study utilized the DCT to test EFL students' ability to resist. Participants were presented with various scenarios and asked to choose the appropriate response from the choices provided. The researchers found that the DCT was more efficient than other methods of refusal that included a questionnaire as well as video recordings. However, the researchers cautioned that the DCT should be used with caution and include other data collection methods.

DCTs can be designed with specific language requirements, like design and content. These criteria are intuitive and based upon the assumptions of test designers. They aren't always exact and could be misleading in describing how ELF learners respond to requests in real-world interactions. This issue calls for further studies of alternative methods of assessing refusal competence.

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 favored more direct and traditionally indirect request forms and used less hints than email data.

Metapragmatic Questionnaires (MQs)

This study explored Chinese learners' pragmatic choices in their use of Korean using a variety of tools that were tested, including Discourse Completion Tasks (DCTs) as well as metapragmatic questionnaires and Refusal Interviews (RIs). The participants were 46 CLKs of upper intermediate level who answered MQs, DCTs, and RIs. They were also asked to consider their evaluations and refusal performance in RIs. The results indicated that the CLKs frequently chose to resist 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 advantages. These findings have pedagogical implications for L2 Korean assessment and teaching.

First, the MQ data were analyzed to determine the participants' choices in terms of their pragmatics. The data were classified according to Ishihara (2010)'s definition of pragmatic resistance. Then, we compared the choices made by the participants with their linguistic performance on DCTs in order to determine if they were indicative of resistance to pragmatics. Additionally, the participants were asked to explain their decision to use pragmatic language in a given scenario.

The results of the MQs, DCTs and z-tests were examined using descriptive statistics and z tests. The CLKs were found employ euphemistic phrases such as "sorry" or "thank you". This could be due to their lack of experience with the target languages, leading to an inadequate understanding of the korean pragmatic norms. The results showed that CLKs' preference for converging to L1 or departing from both L1 as well as L2 pragmatic norms differed based on the DCT situations. For example, in Situation 3 and 12, the CLKs preferred to diverge from both L1 and L2 pragmatic norms, whereas in Situation 14 they preferred converging to L1 norms.

The RIs also revealed that the CLKs were aware of their pragmatism in every DCT situation. The RIs were conducted on a one-to-one basis in the space of two days of participants having completed the MQs. The RIs were recorded and transcribing, and then coded by two independent coders. The coding process was iterative by the coders, re-reading and discussing each transcript. The coding results were then compared to the original RI transcripts, which provided an indication of how well the RIs accurately portrayed the core behaviors.

프라그마틱 슬롯 (RIs)

A key question of pragmatic research is why some learners decide to rescind native-speaker pragmatic norms. Recent research has attempted to answer this question with several experiments, including DCTs MQs and RIs. Participants comprised 46 CLKs and 44 CNSs from five Korean Universities. They were asked to complete the DCTs in their first language and to complete the MQs in either their L1 or their L2. Then, they were invited to attend a RI where they were asked to consider their responses to the DCT situations.

The results showed that on average, the CLKs resisted native-speaker pragmatic norms in over 40% of their responses. They did this despite the fact that they were able to create patterns that were similar to natives. They were aware of their practical resistance. They attributed their choice to learner-internal factors such as their identities and personalities as well as multilingual identities. They also spoke of external factors like relational benefits. For instance, they outlined how their relationships with professors led to a more relaxed performance with respect to the intercultural and linguistic norms of their university.

However, the interviewees expressed concern about the social pressures and punishments that they might be subjected to if they strayed from their local social norms. They were worried that their native interactants might perceive them as "foreigners" and think they are not intelligent. This was a concern similar to the concerns expressed by Brown (2013) and Ishihara (2009).

These findings suggest that native speakers' pragmatic norms are not the norm for Korean learners. They may remain useful as a model 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 allow them to better understand the impact of different cultures on the pragmatic behavior and classroom interactions of students in L2. This will also assist educators to develop better methods for teaching and testing Korean pragmatics. Seukhoon Paul Choi, principal advisor at Stratways Group in Seoul, is a geopolitical risk consulting.

Case Studies

The case study method is a research method that employs in-depth, participant-centered investigations to study a specific subject. This method utilizes numerous sources of information, such as documents, interviews, and observations to prove its findings. This type of investigation is ideal for studying complicated or unique subjects that are difficult to measure with other methods.


In a case study the first step is to define the subject and the purpose of the study. This will allow you to determine which aspects of the subject matter are essential to study and which could be left out. It is also helpful to review existing literature related to the subject to gain a greater understanding of the subject and to place the case study in a broader theoretical context.

This case study was built on an open-source platform, the KMMLU Leaderboard [50] along with its benchmarks for Koreans, HyperCLOVA X, and LDCC Solar (figure 1 below). The results of the study showed that L2 Korean students were extremely vulnerable to native models. They were more likely to select incorrect answer options, which were literal interpretations. This was a deviation from the correct pragmatic inference. They also had a strong tendency of adding their own text or "garbage" to their responses. This lowered the quality of their responses.

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

Interviewees were presented with two hypothetical situations that involved interaction with their interlocutors 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 example said she was difficult to talk to and refused to ask about the wellbeing of her colleague when they had a lot of work, even though she thought native Koreans would.

My Website: https://list.ly/idptq48