• 제목/요약/키워드: pragmatic competence

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Learners' Sociolinguistic Behavior: In Search of Four Major Sources of Pragmatic Errors

  • 서재석
    • 영어어문교육
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    • 제7권1호
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    • pp.35-48
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    • 2001
  • One of the areas of second language acquisition that enjoyed popularity in recent years is interlanguage pragmatics. The main reason for this popularity lies in the critical role of pragmatic competence in appropriate use of a target language. The aim of this paper was to examine L2 learners' pragmatic behavior in their speech act performance and determine main sources causing pragmatic difficulty. Four major sources of pragmatic errors were identified: linguistic proficiency, L1 transfer, waffling and teaching activities. Each source was discussed with empirical evidence in some detail, and teaching suggestions were provided for developing learners' pragmatic competence in EFL classrooms.

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Meanings of Communicative Competence in Different Learning Contexts

  • Jung, Woo-Hyun
    • 영어어문교육
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    • 제16권4호
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    • pp.19-38
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    • 2010
  • This study surveyed L2 learners' needs for different components of communicative competence. It aimed to determine what abilities the learners strongly need to achieve communicative competence in different learning contexts. It also examined gender differences in the learners' need for phonological competence. A total of 359 students participated in this study, divided into three learner groups: high school, vocational college, and university students. The data were collected via a questionnaire, which was based on Bachman's (1990) framework of language competence. The study drew some important findings: (a) The vocational trainees expressed a stronger need for illocutionary competence than the high school students and for sociolinguistic competence than the high school and the university groups; (b) The high school and the university groups equated grammatical, textual, illocutionary, and strategic competences in their needs with lesser attention to sociolinguistic competence; (c) To the high school and the university groups, pragmatic competence was assessed higher than organizational competence; (d) Female students showed greater sensitivity to pronunciation ability than did male students. On the basis of these results, pedagogical implications are discussed, along with some helpful suggestions.

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Practice through Interaction: Asking Someone to Do Something in English

  • Suh, Jae-Suk
    • 영어어문교육
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    • 제11권4호
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    • pp.49-77
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    • 2005
  • This paper has an aim to examine English native speakers' requests, and offer an instructional technique to develop EFL students' pragmatic ability. For this purpose, English-speaking native speakers' requests were collected in six different face-threatening situations, and analyzed in three ways: directness levels, internal modification and sequence of request. The analysis of requests showed that they were realized mainly through conventionally indirect level in most situations, were internally modified frequently through the use of downgraders, and had a certain sequence of utterances realizing a request. On the basis of these findings, two kinds of interactional activities (Jigsaw and pair work) were provided as sample activities to promote EFL students' pragmatic knowledge about the appropriate ways of making requests given the fact that pragmatic errors can be more serious and more problematic than grammatical errors in social interaction.

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Effects of Instructional Intervention in Low-Level College Students' Learning of Request Acts

  • Yang, Eun-Mi
    • 영어어문교육
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    • 제12권2호
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    • pp.215-235
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    • 2006
  • This paper explores the effects of two different methods of instruction for 106 low-level Korean learners of English at a college in learning request expressions. Both of the methods contained the focus-on-form and function characteristics, while the degree of explicitness for input enhancement was differentiated. Abundant email samples written by English native speakers for the input were provided and email writing practice for the output was proceeded for both groups of the students in the treatment sessions. The numbers of target forms used in pretest and posttest results were compared quantitatively: The tests included email writing and open-ended Discourse Completion Test (DCT). The results indicated that the target pragmatic features were slightly better learned under the condition of relatively high degree of explicit instruction with metapragmatic information, even though the difference was statistically insignificant. In addition, the students' use of request strategies both in email and DCT was affected positively by the treatment with email input and output. That is, the students applied the request strategies they learned through email into their oral production (open-ended DCT) as well as their email writing. Further study on the output effect of target features in advancing pragmatic competence is suggested.

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A Corpus-based Analysis of EFL Learners' Use of Discourse Markers in Cross-cultural Communication

  • Min, Sujung
    • 영어어문교육
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    • 제17권3호
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    • pp.177-194
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    • 2011
  • This study examines the use of discourse markers in cross-cultural communication between EFL learners in an e-learning environment. The study analyzes the use of discourse markers in a corpus of an interactive web with a bulletin board system through which college students of English at Japanese and Korean universities interacted with each other discussing the topics of local and global issues. It compares the use of discourse markers in the learners' corpus to that of a native English speakers' corpus. The results indicate that discourse markers are useful interactional devices to structure and organize discourse. EFL learners are found to display more frequent use of referentially and cognitively functional discourse markers and a relatively rare use of other markers. Native speakers are found to use a wider variety of discourse markers for different functions. Suggestions are made for using computer corpora in understanding EFL learners' language difficulties and helping them become more interactionally competent speakers.

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A Study of Comparing Speech Act Data from Two Differing Data-gathering Instruments

  • Suh, Jae-Suk
    • 영어어문교육
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    • 제13권3호
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    • pp.77-97
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    • 2007
  • To compare data on the speech act of requests from two different methods, a study was conducted in which both native and non-native speakers of English participated as subjects, and data were collected by means of actual e-mail writing and DCT (discourse completion test). The analysis of requests from the two different data-gathering methods showed that despite some similarities, considerable differences existed between e-mail and DCT requests in several important aspects of requests such as amount of talk, directness level, downgraders and supportive moves which play an important role in making a given request sound less imposing and more polite. Also it was shown that requests of non-native speakers differed considerably from requests of native speakers in terms of the four aspects of requests across type of data-gathering methods. Based on the findings, some suggestions were made for both further research and L2 classrooms.

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A Study of Apology Strategies between Genders in EFL College Students

  • Shim, Jae-Hwang
    • 영어어문교육
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    • 제15권2호
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    • pp.225-243
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    • 2009
  • This study investigates the use of different speech act of apology strategies between male and female EFL college students by comparing the components of intensity, stylistic competence, and semantic formulas. The data was collected from 37 participants who were studying freshmen English reading course at the Department of English Education of C University in Seoul. Most students were English majors taking pre-teacher course of teaching English for secondary school students. The participants were divided into two gender groups of male and female. The discourse completion test (DCT) which was revised from the speech act of apology by Olshtain and Cohen (1990) was provided with the participants after the researcher explained the speech act of apology in ten situations. The speech act of apology depends on situation variables: social solidarity, severity of offense, and social status. The results show that in the preference of intensity, male and female have almost the similar ratio in high (female: 24.7%, male 24%) and low intensity (female: 75.3%, male: 76%). In the use of stylistic competence, male group (21%) expresses more diversely formal features than female group (12%), while female (87%) use more informal features than male (66%). Most of participants show a limitation in the use of speaking four types of semantic formulas: expression of apology (APOL), acknowledgment of responsibility (RESP), offer of repair (REPR), and promise of forbearance (FORB). As nonnative speakers, the participants cannot conduct the semantic formula in some situations regardless of the tasks provided. The results suggest that English teachers should recognize pragmatic variations in which students feel difficulty in appropriate speaking strategies on apology. This study also contributes to teaching learners the strategies and speaking patterns in the course of various apology situations.

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A Corpus-based Analysis of EFL Learners' Use of Hedges in Cross-cultural Communication

  • Min, Su-Jung
    • 영어어문교육
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    • 제16권4호
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    • pp.91-106
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    • 2010
  • This study examines the use of hedges in cross-cultural communication between EFL learners in an e-learning environment. The study analyzes the use of hedges in a corpus of an interactive web with a bulletin board system through which college students of English at Japanese and Korean universities interacted with each other discussing the topics of local and global issues. It compares the use of hedges in the students' corpus to that of a native English speakers' corpus. The result shows that EFL learners tend to use relatively smaller number of hedges than the native speakers in terms of the frequencies of the total tokens. It further reveals that the learners' overuse of a single versatile high-frequency hedging item, I think, results in relative underuse of other hedging devices. This indicates that due to their small repertoire of hedges, EFL learners' overuse of a limited number of hedging items may cause their speech or writing to become less competent. Based on the result and interviews with the learners, the study also argues that hedging should be understood in its social contexts and should not be understood just as a lack of conviction or a mark of low proficiency. Suggestions were made for using computer corpora in understanding EFL learners' language difficulties and helping them develop communicative and pragmatic competence.

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EFL Learners' Use of the Modals and Quasi-Modals of Obligation and Necessity

  • Min, Sujung;Lee, Jongbok
    • 영어어문교육
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    • 제18권3호
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    • pp.191-206
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    • 2012
  • This study examines the use of the modals and quasi-modals of obligation and necessity, which involves the layering of must, should, have (got) to, got to, and need to in a corpus of cross-cultural communication between EFL learners. The study compares the EFL learners' corpus with a sub-corpus of ICE-GB in terms of token counts and semantic/functional distributions because International Corpus of Standard varieties of English serves as common reference points for international comparison of varieties of English. The results showed that must, should, and have to were the main players in both the corpus of EFL learners and that of native speakers. However, some discrepancy exists between EFL learners' corpus and the native speakers' corpus in the use of the modals and quasi-modals of obligation and necessity. Compared to the corpus of native speakers, the corpus of EFL learners was distinctively different in the relative unpopularity of have to and in the comparative popularity of must particularly for root meaning. Suggestions were made for using computer corpora in understanding EFL learners' language use. And pedagogical implications were made for teaching English modality considering the current usage of the modals and quasi-modals in Standard varieties of English and helping the students develop pragmatic competence.

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임상술기능력평가와 교과목간의 학업성취도 분석을 통한 소아치과학의 교육과정 평가 (Evaluating Course of Pediatric Dentistry on Correlation Analysis between Dental Students' Achievements of Subjects and OSCE)

  • 방재범;임재영;박재홍
    • 대한소아치과학회지
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    • 제40권4호
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    • pp.253-259
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    • 2013
  • 본 연구는 졸업시점의 치의학전문대학원생 79명을 대상으로 소아치과학 OSCE(Objective Structured Clinical Examination)성적과 이전까지 이수한 소아치과학 교과목들 성적간의 관계를 분석함으로써 소아치과학 교육과정 운영을 평가하고 발전적 시사를 도출하는 데에 목적이 있다. 소아치과학이론 교과목은 이전 이수과목인 임상전단계실습 성적(r = 0.449, p = 0.000), 이후 이수과목인 임상실습성적(r = 0.437, p = 0.000)과 상관관계가 있었다. 하지만 졸업시점의 OSCE성적은 단지 임상전단계실습 과목 성적(r = 0.302, p = 0.003)과 상관관계를 보였다. 이는 OSCE 신뢰도가 Cronbach's ${\alpha}0.733$을 고려하면 OSCE 자체 문제보다는 교육과정 상에 있어서 임상실습 교과목 운영에 문제가 있음을 추론할 수 있다. 치과대학병원에서 교수의 특진을 선호하고 학생들에 의한 진료를 기피하는 진료 현장에서 학생들에 대한 직접적인 지도와 피드백을 통해 임상역량을 강화하기 위해서는 학생 지도를 위한 교수 수 확보와 같은 교육여건이 마련되어야 한다. 또한 이론적 지식 및 술기교육이 임상진료 현장에서 잘 적용되고 심화되기 위해서는 교육과정에 대한 보다 구체적인 평가와 함께 임상실습 단계에 있어서도 기본적 술기에 대한 지속적인 교육과 평가가 점검되도록 하는 실질적 개선 방안이 모색되어야 한다.