The Reasons Why Pragmatic Is The Most Sought-After Topic In 2024

Study of Chinese Learners' Pedagogical Choices in Korean

CLKs' awareness and capacity to tap into the benefits of relationships and learning-internal factors, were significant. For instance, RIs from TS and ZL both cited their local professor relationships as an important reason for them to choose to avoid criticising an uncompromising professor (see example 2).

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

Discourse Construction Tests (DCTs)

The discourse completion test is a commonly used tool in pragmatic research. It has many strengths however, it also has some drawbacks. For instance, the DCT cannot take into account the cultural and individual variations in communication. The DCT can also be biased and can lead to overgeneralizations. As a result, it should be analyzed carefully prior to using it for research or assessment purposes.

Despite 슬롯 , the DCT can be a valuable tool to study the relationship between prosody and information structure in non-native speakers. Its ability to manipulate social variables relevant to politeness in two or more steps can be a strength. This characteristic can be utilized to study the impact of prosody in different cultural contexts.

In the field of linguistics the DCT has emerged as one of the most significant tools to analyze learners' communication behaviors. It can be used to study various aspects, including the manner of speaking, turn taking and lexical choice. It can also be used to assess the phonological difficulty of learners' speech.

A recent study employed an DCT to evaluate EFL students' refusal skills. The participants were given a list of scenarios and asked to select an appropriate response from the options offered. The researchers found the DCT to be more effective than other methods for refusing like a questionnaire or video recordings. However, the researchers warned that the DCT should be employed with caution and include other types of data collection methods.

DCTs can be designed with specific linguistic criteria, such as the form and content. These criteria are intuitive and based on the assumptions of test creators. They aren't always accurate, and they may be misleading about the way ELF learners actually resist requests in actual interactions. This issue calls for further research on alternative methods of assessing refusal competence.

A recent study examined DCT responses to requests made by students via email versus those obtained from an oral DCT. The results showed that DCTs preferred more direct and conventionally-indirect request forms and utilized more hints than email data.

Metapragmatic Questionnaires (MQs)

This study examined Chinese learners' decisions regarding their use of Korean using a variety of experimental tools, such as Discourse Completion Tasks (DCTs), metapragmatic questionnaires, and Refusal Interviews (RIs). Participants were 46 CLKs with upper-intermediate ability who provided responses to MQs and DCTs. They were also required to provide reflections on their evaluations and refusals in RIs. The results showed that CLKs were more likely to reject native Korean pragmatic norms, and their choices were influenced by four primary factors such as their identities, their multilingual identities, ongoing lives, and their relational affordances. These findings have pedagogical consequences for L2 Korean assessment.

The MQ data was analyzed in order to identify the participants' actual choices. The data were classified according to Ishihara's (2010) definition of pragmatic resistance. Then, we compared the choices made by the participants with their linguistic performance on the DCTs in order to determine if they were indicative of resistance to pragmatics. Interviewees also had to explain why they chose the pragmatic approach in certain situations.

The results of the MQs, DCTs and z-tests were analyzed with descriptive statistics and z tests. The CLKs were discovered to use euphemistic words like "sorry" or "thank you". This could be due to their lack experience with the target languages, leading to an insufficient understanding of the korean pragmatic norms. The results showed that CLKs' preferences to diverge from L1 and L2 norms or to move toward L1 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 further revealed that the CLKs were aware their own pragmatism in each DCT situation. The RIs were conducted in a one-to-one manner within two days of the participants had completed the MQs. The RIs were recorded and transcribed by two independent coders, were then coded. The coders worked in an iterative manner by the coders, re-reading and discussing each transcript. The results of the coding process are contrasted with the original RI transcripts to determine how well they captured the underlying pragmatic behavior.

Refusal Interviews (RIs)

A key question of pragmatic research is the reason why learners are hesitant to adhere to pragmatic norms that native speakers use. A recent study attempted to answer this question by employing a variety of research 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 either in their L1 or L2 levels. 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 more than 40% of their answers. They did this even though they were able to produce patterns that were similar to native speakers. They were aware of their practical resistance. They attributed their actions to learner-internal aspects such as their personalities and identities that are multilingual, as well as ongoing lives. They also referred external factors, like relationship affordances. For instance, they outlined how their relationships with professors led to an easier performance in regards to the intercultural and linguistic standards of their university.

The interviewees expressed their concern about the social pressures or consequences they could face when their social norms were not followed. They were worried that their native friends might view them as "foreignersand believe that they are unintelligent. This concern was similar in nature to the one expressed by Brown (2013) and Ishihara (2009).

These findings suggest that native speakers pragmatic norms aren't the preferred norm for Korean learners. They may still be a useful model for official Korean proficiency tests. Future researchers should consider reassessing the applicability of these tests in various contexts and in particular situations. This will help them better understand the impact of different cultures on the pragmatic behavior and classroom interactions of L2 students. This will also aid educators develop better methods for teaching and testing Korean pragmatics. Seukhoon Paul Choi is principal advisor for Stratways Group, a geopolitical risk consulting firm based in Seoul.

Case Studies

The case study method is a method that employs deep, participatory investigations to study a specific subject. This method uses numerous sources of information like interviews, observations and documents, to support its findings. This type of investigation is ideal for studying specific or complex subjects that are difficult to measure with other methods.

In a case study, the first step is to define the subject and the goals of the study. This will help determine what aspects of the subject are important to study and which can be omitted. It is also beneficial to review the existing research to gain a broad understanding of the subject and place the case within a larger theoretical framework.

This study was based on an open source platform that is the KMMLU leaderboard [50], and its Korean-specific benchmarks, HyperCLOVA X and LDCC-Solar (figure 1 below). The results of the study revealed that L2 Korean learners were highly dependent on the influence of native models. They tended to choose wrong answers that were literal interpretations. This was a departure from a precise pragmatic inference. They also exhibited a strong tendency to add their own text or "garbage," to their responses, further detracting from their quality of response.

The participants in this study were all L2 Korean students who had reached level four on the Test of Proficiency in Korean TOPIK in their second or third year of university and were hoping to achieve level six on their next attempt. They were questioned about their WTC/SPCC, pragmatic awareness, understanding and their perception of the world.

The interviewees were presented two scenarios, each of which involved an imagined interaction with their interactants and were asked to select one of the following strategies to use when making a request. They were then asked to explain the reasons behind their decision. Most of the participants attributed their rational opposition to their personalities. For instance, TS claimed that she was difficult to talk to, and so she refused to ask about the health of her interlocutors despite having the burden of a job despite the fact that she believed that native Koreans would do so.