10 Pragmatic Tricks All Experts Recommend
Study of Chinese Learners' Pedagogical Choices in Korean
In addition to learner-internal factors, CLKs' awareness of pragmatic resistance and the relationship advantages they had access to were significant. For instance the RIs from TS and ZL both cited their local professor relationships as an important factor in their decision to avoid criticising the strictness of a professor (see the second example).
This article reviews all local pragmatic research on Korean published up to 2020. It focuses on key pragmatic issues such as:
Discourse Construction Tests
The test for discourse completion is a commonly used instrument in pragmatic research. It has numerous advantages, but it also has some disadvantages. For example, the DCT cannot take into account cultural and individual differences in communicative behavior. Furthermore, the DCT is susceptible to bias and could lead to overgeneralizations. It is essential to analyze it carefully before being used for research or assessment.
Despite its limitations the DCT is a useful instrument to study the relationship between prosody, information structure, and non-native speakers. The ability to alter social variables relevant to politeness in two or more steps can be a plus. This feature can help researchers study the role of prosody in communication across different cultural contexts, a major challenge in cross-cultural pragmatics.
In the field of linguistics DCT is one of the most useful tools to study the behavior of communication learners. It can be used to analyze various issues, including the manner of speaking, turn-taking and the use of lexical terms. It can be used to evaluate the phonological complexity of learners speaking.
A recent study employed a DCT to evaluate EFL students' ability to resist. Participants were given a set of scenarios to choose from and then asked to choose the most appropriate response. The authors found that the DCT was more effective than other measures to stop people from refusing such as a questionnaire or video recordings. Researchers warned, however, that the DCT must be used with caution. They also recommended using other data collection methods.
DCTs are often created with specific linguistic requirements in mind, like the content and the form. These criteria are intuitive and are based on the assumptions of the test developers. They are not necessarily precise, and they could misrepresent the way that ELF learners actually refuse requests in real-world interaction. This issue requires further research on different methods of assessing refusal ability.
In a recent study, DCT responses to student requests via email were compared to the responses from an oral DCT. The results showed that DCTs preferred more direct and conventionally-indirect requests and utilized hints less than email data.
Metapragmatic Questionnaires (MQs)
This study investigated Chinese learners' pragmatic decisions regarding their use of Korean through a variety of tools that were tested, including Discourse Completion Tasks (DCTs) as well as metapragmatic questionnaires and Refusal Interviews (RIs). Participants were 46 CLKs of upper-intermediate level who responded to MQs, DCTs, and RIs. They were also asked to provide reflections on their evaluations and their refusals to participate in RIs. The results showed that CLKs are more likely to resist native Korean norms of pragmatism. Their choices were influenced primarily by four factors: their personalities and multilingual identities, their current lives and their relational affordances. These findings have implications for L2 Korean assessment and teaching.
The MQ data was analyzed first to determine the participants' actual choices. The data were categorized according to Ishihara's (2010) definition of pragmatic resistance. Then, 프라그마틱 pragmatickr were matched with their linguistic performance in the DCTs to determine whether they showed a pattern of resistance to pragmatics or not. In addition, the interviewees were asked to justify their choice of pragmatic behavior in a given situation.
The results of the MQs and DCTs were then analyzed using descriptive statistics and Z-tests. The CLKs were discovered to employ euphemistic phrases such as "sorry" or "thank you". This could be due to their lack experience with the target languages, leading to a lack of knowledge of korean's pragmatic norms. The results revealed that CLKs' preference for converging to L1 norms or departing from both L1 as well as L2 pragmatic norms varies according to the DCT situations. In the scenarios 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 that the CLKs were aware of their own pragmatism in each DCT situation. The RIs were conducted one-to-one basis within a period of two days of participants completing the MQs. The RIs were recorded and transcribed, then coded by two coders who were independent. The code was re-coded repeatedly by the coders, re-reading and discussing each transcript. The results of the coding process are contrasted with the original RI transcripts to determine whether they reflected the actual behavior.
Refusal Interviews (RIs)
The key issue in research on pragmatics is: why do some learners refuse to accept native-speaker norms? A recent study attempted to answer this question by employing a range of experimental instruments, including DCTs MQs, DCTs, and RIs. Participants included 44 CLKs and 46 CNSs from five Korean Universities. Participants were asked to complete the DCTs and MQs in their L1 or L2 levels. They were then invited to an RI, where they were asked to think about and discuss their responses to each DCT situation.
The results showed that, on average, the CLKs disapproved of native-speaker pragmatic norms in more than 40% of their answers. They did so even though they could create native-like patterns. They were also aware of their pragmatism resistance. They attributed their choices to learner-internal factors such as their identities, personalities and identities that are multilingual, as well as ongoing life histories. They also referred to external factors, like relational benefits. For instance, they discussed how their relationships with professors helped facilitate an easier performance in relation to the intercultural and linguistic rules of their university.
The interviewees expressed their concern about the social pressures or penalties they could face when their social norms were not followed. They were concerned that their native friends would perceive them as "foreigners" and think they are unintelligent. This was a concern similar to the concerns expressed by Brown (2013) and Ishihara (2009).
These results suggest that native-speaker pragmatic norms are not the default preference of 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 various cultural contexts. This will help them better comprehend how different environments could affect the practical behavior of students in the classroom and beyond. This will also aid educators develop better methods for teaching and testing Korean pragmatics. Seukhoon Paul Choi is principal advisor to 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. It is a method that utilizes numerous sources of data to support the findings, including interviews and observations, documents, and artifacts. This kind of research can be used to analyze specific or complicated issues that are difficult to other methods of measuring.
In a case study the first step is to clearly define both the subject and the goals of the study. This will allow you to determine what aspects of the subject must be investigated and which ones can be skipped. It is also beneficial to read the research to gain a broad understanding of the subject and put the issue within a larger theoretical framework.
This case study was built on an open-source platform, the KMMLU Leaderboard [50] and its Korean-specific benchmarks HyperCLOVA X and LDCC Solar (figure 1 below). The results of this study showed that L2 Korean learners were highly vulnerable to the influence of native models. They were more likely to pick incorrect answer options, which were literal interpretations. This was a departure from a precise pragmatic inference. They also showed an unnatural tendency to add their own text or "garbage," to their responses, further reducing the quality of their responses.
Furthermore, the participants of this case study were L2 Korean learners who had attained level 4 in the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK) at their third or second year of university and were aiming for level 6 for their next test. They were asked to answer questions regarding their WTC/SPCC and understanding and pragmatic awareness.
The interviewees were given two scenarios, each involving an imaginary interaction with their interactants and asked to choose one of the following strategies to employ when making an inquiry. Interviewees were then asked to justify their decision. The majority of the participants attributed their pragmatism to their personalities. For instance, TS claimed that she was difficult to connect to, and she therefore refused to ask about her interactant's well-being with a heavy workload, even though she believed that native Koreans would do this.