The LittleKnown Benefits Of Pragmatic

Study of Chinese Learners' Pedagogical Choices in Korean
In addition to learner-internal factors CLKs' understanding of the need to be pragmatic and the relationship advantages they had access to were crucial. For instance the RIs of TS and ZL both have cited their relationships with their local professors as an important factor in their pragmatic choice to avoid criticising an uncompromising professor (see example 2).
This article reviews all local pragmatic research on Korean published until 2020. It focuses on key pragmatic topics including:
Discourse Construction Tests
The test for discourse completion (DCT) is widely used in research that is based on pragmatic principles. It has numerous advantages, but it also has some disadvantages. The DCT is one example. It cannot account cultural and individual variations. The DCT can also be biased and can lead to overgeneralizations. As a result, it must be carefully analyzed before using it for research or assessment purposes.
Despite its limitations, the DCT can be a valuable instrument to study the relationship between prosody and information structure in non-native speakers. The ability to alter social variables relevant to politeness in two or more steps could be a benefit. This ability can aid researchers understand the role of prosody in communication across different cultural contexts, a major challenge in cross-cultural pragmatics.
In the field of linguistics DCT is among the most effective tools to analyze the communication habits of learners. It can be used to analyze numerous issues, like the manner of speaking, turn-taking and the choices made in lexical use. It can also be used to assess the phonological difficulty of learners their speech.
A recent study employed a DCT to test EFL students' ability to resist. Participants were presented with a range of scenarios to choose from, and then asked to choose the most appropriate response. The researchers found the DCT to be more effective than other refusal methods, such as videos or questionnaires. However, the researchers cautioned that the DCT should be used with caution and include other types of data collection methods.
DCTs are typically designed with specific linguistic criteria in mind, like the content and the form. These criterion are intuitive and are based on the assumptions of the test creators. They aren't always correct, and they could be misleading about the way ELF learners actually resist requests in actual interactions. This issue calls for further studies of alternative methods of assessing the ability to refuse.
A recent study has compared DCT responses to requests made by students via email with those obtained from an oral DCT. The results revealed that DCTs preferred more direct and conventionally-indirect request forms and used more hints than email data.
Metapragmatic Questionnaires (MQs)
This study investigated Chinese learners' decisions regarding their use of Korean using a variety of tools that were tested, including Discourse Completion Tasks (DCTs) Metapragmatic Questionnaires, Refusal Interviews (RIs). Participants were 46 CLKs at the upper intermediate level who answered MQs, DCTs and RIs. They were also asked for reflections on their evaluations and refusals in RIs. The results revealed that CLKs were more likely to reject native Korean pragmatic norms, and their choices were influenced by four primary factors that included their identities, their multilingual identities, ongoing life histories, and relationship advantages. These findings have pedagogical implications for L2 Korean assessment and teaching.
First, the MQ data were examined to determine the participants' pragmatic choices. The data were categorized according to Ishihara's (2010) definition of pragmatic resistance. Then, the responses were matched with their linguistic performance on the DCTs to determine whether they were a reflection of pragmatic resistance or not. Interviewees were also required to explain the reasons for choosing the pragmatic approach in certain situations.
The results of the MQs, DCTs and z-tests were analysed using descriptive statistics and z tests. The CLKs were discovered to use euphemistic words like "sorry" or "thank you". This was probably due to their lack of familiarity with the target languages, which led to an inadequate understanding of korean pragmatic norms. The results showed that CLKs' preferences for either converging to L1 norms or dissociating from both L1 and L2 pragmatic norms differed based on 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 a convergence to L1 norms.
just click the following internet site revealed that the CLKs were aware their pragmatism in every DCT situation. RIs were conducted on a one-to-one basis within two days of participants having completed the MQs. The RIs were recorded and transcribed by two coders independent of each other who then coded them. The coding process was iterative and involved the coders reading and discussing each transcript. The results of coding are compared with the original RI transcripts to determine whether they reflected the actual behavior.
Interviews for refusal
The central problem in the field of pragmatic research is: why do some learners decide to not accept native-speaker norms? A recent study sought to answer this question employing a variety of research tools, such as DCTs, MQs and RIs. Participants included 44 CLKs and 46 CNSs from five Korean Universities. The 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 reflect and discuss their responses to each DCT scenario.
The results showed that CLKs, on average, did not adhere to the pragmatic norms of native speakers in more than 40% of their responses. They did so even though they could produce native-like patterns. They were also conscious of their own pragmatism. They attributed their actions to learner-internal factors like their personalities, multilingual identities, and ongoing life histories. They also referred external factors, such as relational affordances. For example, they described how their relationships with professors led to more relaxed performance with respect to the linguistic and intercultural norms of their university.
The interviewees expressed their concern about the social pressures or penalties they might face when their social norms were violated. They were worried that their native interactants might think they are "foreigners" and believe that they are incompetent. This is similar to the concerns expressed by Brown (2013) and Ishihara (2009).
These findings suggest that native-speaker pragmatic norms are no longer the preferred choice of Korean learners. They could still be useful for official Korean proficiency testing. Future researchers should reassess the usefulness of these tests in various contexts and in particular situations. This will allow them to better understand the effect of different cultures on the pragmatic behavior and classroom interactions of L2 students. This will also assist educators to create better methods for teaching and testing Korean pragmatics. Seukhoon Paul Choi is principal advisor to Stratways Group, a geopolitical risk consultancy based out of Seoul.
Case Studies
The case study method is an investigational strategy that employs participant-centered, in-depth investigations to investigate a particular subject. This method makes use of numerous sources of information like interviews, observations and documents to support its findings. This kind of investigation can be used to examine unique or complex issues that are difficult to other methods of measuring.
The first step in a case study is to define the subject and the objectives of the study. This will help determine what aspects of the subject matter are crucial to study and which can be omitted. It is also helpful to study the literature to gain a general knowledge of the subject and put the issue in a wider theoretical context.
This study was conducted on an open source platform such as the KMMLU leaderboard [50] and its benchmarks that are specific to Korea, HyperCLOVA X and LDCC-Solar (figure 1 below). The results of the experiment showed that L2 Korean students were extremely vulnerable to native models. They were more likely to choose incorrect answer options that were literal interpretations of the prompts, thereby ignoring precise pragmatic inference. They also showed a distinct tendency of adding their own words or "garbage" to their responses. This lowered the quality of their responses.
Moreover, the participants of this study were L2 Korean learners who had reached level 4 on the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK) at their second or third year of university, and were aiming to reach level 6 on their next attempt. They were asked to respond to questions regarding their WTC/SPCC, as well as comprehension and pragmatic awareness.
Interviewees were presented with two scenarios which involved interactions with their interlocutors and asked to choose one of the strategies below to use when making a demand. They were then asked to explain the reasons behind their decision. The majority of participants attributed their pragmatic resistance to their personalities. For example, TS claimed that she was difficult to talk to, and she therefore was reluctant to inquire about her interactant's well-being with a heavy workload despite her belief that native Koreans would do so.