The Pragmatic Awareness and Difficulties Facing Korean EFL

Learners

Alexander Walsh

Contents

1) Introduction

2) The Role of Pragmatics in Language

i. Defining Pragmatics

ii. Communicative Competency

iii. The Cooperative Principle

iv. Politeness Theory

v. Cultural Differences

vi. Speech Acts

3) To What Extent Can Pragmatic Theories be Applied to Korean Language Learners?

4) Pragmatic Difficulties for Korean EFL/ESL Speakers

i. Social Difficulties

ii. Academic Difficulties

iii. Business Difficulties

5) Can the Pragmatic Awareness of Korean EFL Students Be Improved?

6) Conclusion

7)

Contents

1) Introduction

As South Korea is increasingly becoming a major player on the global economic stage, its need to

communicate in English with global partners is intensifying. To meet this need, the South Korean

government is investing heavily in the English education of its youth with the ambition of developing a

nation capable and confident in communicating with global partners in the English language. According to

the English Curriculum provided by the South Korean Ministry of Education:

English, being the most widely used language, is playing an important role in the communication and bonding between people of different native languages. For elementary and secondary school students who must live in the future, the ability to communicate in English is an essential skill that they must learn at school. To contribute to the nation and society, to show leadership as a cosmopolitan citizen, and to enjoy a wide range of cultural activities, the ability to understand and use English is essential. The ability to communicate in English will act as an important bridge connecting different countries, and will be the driving force in developing our country, forming trust among various countries and cultures. (Ministry of Education 2008:41)

In order to successfully build the international relationships needed to achieve these goals, it is important

for Korean EFL speakers to be pragmatically aware and thus avoid potentially awkward or detrimental

cultural ‘faux pas’. This paper will consider the extent to which current theories of interlanguage pragmatic

competency can be applied to Korean EFL speakers, analyse the pragmatic needs of Korean EFL

learners, examine the difficulties which face Korean EFL speakers and offer suggestions as to how

pragmatic awareness can be improved by the Korean public education system.

2) The Role of Pragmatics in Language

The study of interlanguage pragmatics has “hovered on the fringes of SLA [second language acquisition]

research thus far” (Kasper 1996:145); this has resulted in its theoretical consideration often relying on

being a part of other ‘mainstream’ second language acquisition research. This section will bring together

the theoretical considerations to provide an overview of the development of interlanguage pragmatic

theory.

i. Defining Pragmatics

One of the most widely employed and accepted definition of pragmatics is that of Crystal:

Pragmatics is the study of language from the point of view of users, especially of the choices they encounter in using language in social interaction and the effects their use of language has on other participants in the act of communication (1985:240)

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This definition is important as it highlights the importance of how language is interpreted by both speakers

and hearers. Bublitz (2001) provides a further definition:

Linguistic pragmatics (from Greek pragma, activity/deed) is the study of communication principles to which people adhere when they interact rationally and efficiently in social contexts. Speakers/writers follow these principles to imply additional meaning to a sentence, and hearer/readers follow these principles to infer the possible meaning of an utterance out of all available options in a given context. Pragmatics describes the linguistic forms, action patterns and strategies that are used to imply and interpret, which enable interlocutors to comprehend the intended, but not uttered meaning. (Bublitz, 2001, p. 27)

This definition can be viewed as a development of Crystal’s (1985) above sentiments due to it’s

recognition of a set of ‘principles’ in language that both hearers and speakers are aware of and are

expected to follow (Gila 2007). Mey (2001) introduces a further aspect of pragmatics:

Pragmatics studies the use of language in human communication as determined by the conditions of society. (Mey, 2001:6)

Mey (2001) highlights how a speaker’s or hearer’s interpretation of communication can vary from

one society to another. In summary, these definitions offer three important concepts:

1) Both a speaker and hearer can interpret language differently;

2) There are a set ‘principles’ that we are expected to follow in language use;

3) These ‘principles’ can vary from one society to the next.

ii. Communicative Competency

Looking more specifically at the acquisition of language within the frame of Chomsky’s (1965)

notions of linguistic ‘competence’ and ‘performance’, Hymes (1972) develops the term

‘communicative competence’ to refer to the social appropriacy of what one says. Communicative

competency explains how a child does not only acquire knowledge of sentences and grammar, but

also the social appropriacy of language. Hymes (1972) explains that a child “acquires competence

as to when to speak, when not, and as to what to talk about to whom, when, where, in what

manner” (Hymes 1972:277-8). In a further development of communicative competency Canale &

Swain (1980) specify four other types of competency that they feel are necessary to achieve

communicative competency, these are:

1) Grammatical Competence – similar to Chomsky’s ‘linguistic competence’, it focuses on students’ grammatical and lexical capacity.

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2) Sociolinguistic Competence – refers to a students’ knowledge of the social context in which communication should take place.3) Discourse Competence – refers to a students’ knowledge of the meaning inferred by the interconnectedness of individual message in relationship to the whole.4) Strategic Competence – refers to the coping strategies a student would utilize to deal with initiating, terminating, maintaining, repairing and redirecting communication.(Li, 1995; Savignon, 2007; Richards and Rodgers, 2001; Richards 2006; Littlewood, 2005).

In their analysis of communicative competency both Hymes (1972) and Canale & Swain (1980)

offer important insight into what it means to be pragmatically aware when using language. More

specifically, Hymes (1972) identifies how a speaker of a foreign language must not only be

conscious of the vocabulary, sentences and grammatical structures, but must also be aware as to

when and how such language is used appropriately. Of Canale & Swain’s (1980) four types of

competency that make up communicative competency, three of them, namely sociolinguistic,

discourse and strategic are directly related to pragmatic awareness, they identify the need for

learners to be able to understand context, meanings and communicational strategies in order to be

communicatively competent and thus pragmatically aware.

iii. Speech Acts

Austin (1962), who many consider the ‘Father of pragmatics’ (Gila, 2007) developed the idea of

‘speech acts’. Austin (1962) describes how language is not only used to say things, but also to do

things. To explain this theory he develops three components of speech acts:

1) The locutionary act (the actual words that the speaker uses)

2) The illocutionary act (the intention or force behind the words)

3) The perlocutionary act (the effect the utterance has on the hearer)

(Austin, 1962)

Searle (1969, 1975, 1976) further developed speech act theory by distinguishing ‘indirect’ speech

acts from ‘direct’ speech acts. Indirect speech acts are those that utilise an illocutionary-force

indicating device, this is a less direct way of asking a person to perform a desired action. For

example, as a guest in another’s home, one would be unlikely to say “give me a drink” but might

instead say “I don’t suppose you have any cold water?” In relation to interlanguage pragmatics,

Searle (1969, 1975, 1976) identifies how such indirect speech acts require “mutually shared factual

background information of the speaker and hearer, together with an ability on the part of the hearer

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to make inferences” (Searle 1975:61). Searle goes on to distinguish between five overarching

classifications of speech acts:

1) Representatives – speech acts that commit the speaker to something that is true.

2) Directives – this is an attempt by the speaker to get the hearer to do something.

3) Commissives – commits the speaker to a future action.

4) Expressives – expresses the speaker’s attitudes and emotions.

5) Declarations – brings about a change in reality.

(Searle 1969, 1975, 1976)

Searle’s (1969, 1975, 1976) classification system has played an important role in pragmatic theory,

and has often been used as the basis for research on inter-language pragmatics (Gila, 2007).

Despite this, it has faced strong criticism, often from those with a more sociological inclination.

Levinson (1983) questions whether, due to the variety of speech acts, it is even possible to link

utterances to acts, or meaning with function. Rees (1992), in defence of the speech act, does

however point out that in actual fact, the theory “does not postulate a direct relationship between

sentence meaning and utterance act” (Rees 1992:23). Levinson (1983) is also critical of speech act

for not being able to account for situations in which an utterance is used neither as a direct or

indirect speech act, but as something else. Coulthard (1985) adds to this trend of criticism by

denouncing Searle’s (1975) theory of speech acts as being overly dependent on single-word verbs.

iv. The Cooperative Principle

Grice (1975) sees conversation as a ‘cooperative effort’ to serve a certain purpose and in doing so

developed his ‘cooperative principle.’ He writes:

Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purposed or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.

(Grice 1975:45)

As part of his ‘cooperative principle’ Grice (1975) identifies four conversational ‘maxims’:

1) Quantity – saying the correct amount

2) Quality – speaking the truth

3) Relation – having relevance in your speech

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4) Manner – be concise and non-ambiguous.

Grice (1975) describes how conversational implicature occurs when a speaker deliberately flouts a maxim.

This means they require the hearer to search for another meaning in their speech. It is also possible for

speakers to opt out of a maxim (by being unable to adhere to a maxim) and infringe a maxim (a non-

deliberate non-observance of a maxim). In relation to interlanguage pragmatics, a learner must know when

to observe maxims, when to flout maxims and when implicature is better than directness. If the rules

governing these maxims vary between languages, there is a potential result for misunderstandings

between native and non-native speakers of languages.

v. Politeness Theory

Politeness theory seeks to explain conventions of language use in relation to politeness, and how notions

of politeness can be culturally dependent. One of the most researched and discussed theories of

politeness is that of Brown & Levinson (1987) which Harris (2003) describes as having “attained canonical

status, exercised immense influence, and is still the model against which most research on politeness

defines itself” (Harris, 2003:27–28). Brown & Levinson’s (1987) politeness theory draws on the work of

Goffman (1967) of viewing politeness as a way of ensuring protective and defensive, or positive and

negative, face concerns, which are seen as universally valid social needs (Kasper, 1990). They suggest

that speakers will be more polite when the relative power over a speaker increases, the social distance

between the target and the speaker increases and the degree of imposition on the target increases. In

order to meet these face concerns Brown & Levinson (1987) propose that the value and weightiness of

power and distance will vary cross-culturally; if one is not aware of the differences it can explain

misunderstandings between native and non native speakers. Lakoff (1989) distinguishes between three

kinds of politeness:

1) Polite behaviour. This is when politeness rules are adhered too;

2) Non-polite behaviour. This is when one is not polite, but this is expected;

3) Rude behaviour. When one is not polite, but politeness is expected.

Kasper (1990) develops this further by distinguishing between motivated and unmotivated rudeness, or

rudeness that is due to ignorance of the expected norms. According to politeness theory, cultural

differences can be accounted for in terms of difference in the value that is assigned to distance, power and

imposition.

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vi. Cultural Differences

Hall (1976) distinguishes between high-context and low-context cultures. In “high-context”

cultures participants in social exchanges are expected to implicitly gather information from the

context of a situation, such as relational and hierarchical positions of the participants. Therefore, if

there is a misunderstanding it is the fault of the hearer. In low-context cultures, participants cannot

take anything for granted. Directness and accuracy of what is said are most of value. It is the

speakers fault if the hearer misunderstands the meaning. If a listener or speaker is expecting their

counterpart to use the context of a situation or vice versa, and they fail to, misunderstanding can

occur.

Kachru (1999) described how shared knowledge allows members of a culture to

communicate successfully by allowing them to encode and decode the meaning of spoken and

written acts. If a speaker or hearer does not have access to this shared knowledge it may be

difficult for a speaker to express themselves and a hearer to correctly understand them. If

members of different cultures do not have access to the same pool of shared knowledge,

communication can breakdown and misunderstanding occur.

These theories both demonstrate how, and explain why, pragmatics is such an important aspect of our

language use. However to understand the problems facing Korean learners it is important to evaluate the

extent to which these theories can be applied to the Korean EFL context. The next section will focus on the

application of these theories to the Korean EFL learner and speaker.

3) To What Extent Can Pragmatic Theories be Applied to Korean Language Learners?

According to Brown & Levinson’s (1987) model, politeness is dependent on relative power, social distance,

and degree of imposition. Thus, as the power of the listener increases, more politeness is needed to

communicate face threatening information and one would be more polite. Also, as the social distance

between the speaker and the listener increases, politeness should again increase. For example, one would

be more polite to someone who is socially distant than to someone who is socially close (Ambady & Koo,

1996). According to politeness theory, if the relative interpretation of these relationships is different

between cultures, it will result in different politeness strategies being utilised at different times.

Research by Amady & Koo (1996) sought to enhance our understanding as to whether Brown &

Levinson’s (1987) theory could be applied cross-culturally by looking at the politeness strategies of groups

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of Koreans and Americans. They found that there were three main types of politeness strategies used by

both groups of participants politeness strategies, these were:

1) other-orientation – attentive, concerned, seeking agreement, encouraging, polite, positive, professional

2) affiliation – open, affiliative, and joking

3) circumspection – uncertain, indirect, avoidant and apologetic

They found that both Americans and Koreans were more affiliative towards superiors and when delivering

good news. They also found that Koreans were more likely than Americans to use other-orientation (both

negative and positive strategies) depending on the status of the target; Americans on the other hand used

other orientated strategies when they delivered good news rather than bad news. Not only does this

support Brown & Levinson’s (1987) theory of politeness, but it suggests that Americans are more affected

by the content of the message, while Koreans are more affected by the their relationship with the target of

the message, thus corresponding with the work of Hall (1976) in suggesting South Korea is a high context

culture and American is a low context culture. Although the research by Amady & Koo (1996) does present

useful conclusions the nature of the research limits the generalisability of their findings due to the fact that

they failed to provide real life examples of individuals using any of the above politeness strategies. Their

research solely focuses on role plays in two sample groups, one being 30 Korean stockbrokers and the

other 30 Harvard University graduate students; the fact that these are far from being representative of the

populations as a whole and that the strategies used in these role play scenarios are unlikely to be the

same as those used in other very different social relationships, such as within the family or between

friends, means that there may either be other strategies used, or similar strategies used differently to

maintain politeness in other natural social situations in Korea. It also fails to answer whether the use of

other-orientation strategies, and the extent to which one is affect by the content of messages, vary

depending on the social situation and the level of this variation in Korea, and the possible pragmatic

difficulties this can cause Korean ESL learners.

Hatfield & Hahn (2011), in their analysis of Korean speech acts, illustrate how, in fact,

Brown & Levinson’s (1987) model needs to be developed further to deal with how Koreans

“actively build and manage expectations for behaviour in a relationship” (2011:1304). They argue

that Brown & Levinson’s (1987) model “fails to show how language use is not simply a reflection of

social context but in fact actively constructs the context itself” (2011:1304). To account for this

Hatfield & Lee (2011) constructed a model that accounts for the fact that Koreans do not simply

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choose an appropriate strategy based on the weight of a face-threatening act, but “actively build

and manage expectations for behaviour in a relationship” (2011:1304).

Hatfield & Hahn (2011) identify three of the most important factors in Koreans’ choice of

politeness strategies; firstly, age is seen as a critical factor. There are set lexical items that should

be chosen by a Korean speaker when a younger person is apologizing to an older person, this ties

in with Brown & Levinson’s (1987) ‘power’ category. Secondly, there is occupational status, when

someone of lower professional status speaks with someone of a higher professional standing

there are another set of lexical items that should be employed. This, again, fits in with Brown &

Levinson’s (1987) notion of ‘power’. Finally, there is the factor of intimacy or social distance. If

there is a close relationship between the social participants, tendencies in lexical choice change,

fitting in with Brown & Levinson’s (1987) notion of distance. However, contrary to Brown &

Levinson’s (1987) politeness theory and drawing on the work of Goffman (1967), where face is

seen as a projection of the individual, Hatfield & Hahn (2011) present examples of how Korean

speakers, when making apologies, actively choose how they wish to present themselves. In their

analysis of the dissolution of marital engagements they provided an example of how this leads to

cross-cultural misunderstandings:

In English, an expression such as cenum hal mali epssupnita ‘I have nothing to say’ is frequently the opposite of an apology. The person does not accept responsibility and refuses to say anything. However, in Korean, this is an expression indicating that words are insufficient to express the depth of regret and is similar to a set of apologies that indicate lacking a body, lacking face, or a wish for death (Hahn, 2006; Kim, 2008). We can see this is an apology by the response, coysonghatamyen ta yeyyo ‘Is it enough just to say sorry?’

(Hatfield & Hahn, 2011:1304)

Hatfield & Hahn (2011) conclude that Korean apology work can represent both themselves and the other

person in the interaction, that there is more than just weight involved in the choice of apology strategy as

they choose how they wish to represent both themselves and the other participant. This research provides

strong examples as to how there are social situations that require politeness theory to be further developed

in order to be applied to the Korean context. It does however leave a number of questions unanswered,

such as the methods used by Koreans to actively present themselves in social situations, and whether, if

these are memorized conventions, they can be adapted for use in cross-cultural social situations.

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In Holtgraves & Yang’s (1992) research on the request strategies of Americans and

Koreans they found the politeness of Korean requests were more dependent on power and

distance than American requests. Their results were also similar to Hatfield & Hahn’s (2011)

research in that there was evidence of power and distance affecting politeness strategies in South

Korea and the United States. Their research (1990) also provided support for the idea of South

Korea as a negative politeness culture (polite strategies are preferred) and the United States as a

positive politeness culture (less polite strategies are preferred). Holtgrave & Yang (1992), in

agreement with Hatfield & Hahn (2011), concluded that Brown & Levinson’s (1987) theory needs

to be developed to take into account interpersonal features of situations. This is particularly

necessary when analysing collectivist cultures such as that of South Korea, as, in such cultures,

people tend to be more sensitive to the situational context than those from individualist cultures.

Holtgraves & Yangs’s (1992) research did not involve any interaction between participants, but

relied on their imagined perception of a given stimulus or a forced scenario role play, given

Hatfield & Hahn’s (2011) conclusions that perceptions of face and the corresponding social

strategies used are built up throughout the course of interaction it could be that participants would

use different strategies when faced with real social situations, especially if communicating with an

English speaker, whereas when faced with imaginary scenarios the participants gave what they

thought were the culturally correct answers.

Kim (2008) sought to compare the use of speech acts of South Korean learners of English

and Australians by comparing the use of ‘sorry’ with ‘미안하다’ (the infinitive form of the verb,

hereby Romanised as ‘mianhada’). Kim (2008) found that, although in most dictionaries

‘mianhada’ is listed as a direct translation of ‘sorry’, because ‘mianhada’ includes the speaker

expressing his responsibility, the consequent speech act will differ. The research also found that

‘mianhada’ is usually followed by compensatory utterances rather than an expression of

responsibility due to the fact the expression already contains notions of accountability. Kim (2008)

also demonstrates how ‘I’m sorry’ can be seen as what Searle (1975) describes as an ‘indirect’

speech act as it involves the speaker’s thoughts and feelings. ‘Mianhada,’ on the other hand, is a

‘direct’ speech act (see page 3) as it is expressing responsibility. Although Kim (2008) offers a

useful comparison of ‘sorry’ and ‘mianhada’ the research technique used to support this

comparison involved participants completing a discourse from an imaginary scenario, asking

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participants to complete such a task is unrealistic as it does not allow participants to take into

account factors affecting their relationship with the imaginary social participant, factors such as

how long they have known each other, disagreements in the past, knowledge of one’s personality

are amongst a huge number of social variables that can affect the use of ‘Mianada’ and thus the

level of responsibility one assumes, which in turn would affect the extent to which ‘Mianhada’ is

seen as a direct speech act.

Based on the research discussed here it should be possible to identify examples of the

specific pragmatic difficulties that face Korean EFL speakers in their communicational acts.

Identifying such difficulties would help support the research and provide students and curriculum

developers with actual real life examples of the benefits of improving students’ pragmatic

awareness.

4) Interlanguage Pragmatic Difficulties for Korean EFL/ESL Speakers

i. Social Difficulties

Further to the identification of ‘mianhada’ as an indirect speech act, Kim (2008) demonstrates how different

apology techniques result in misinterpretations between Australians and South Koreans. For Koreans

Australia is a very popular destination for those looking to study and live in an English speaking country,

and so presents an important example of the interlanguage pragmatical problems faced by of Korean EFL

speakers. One example Kim (2008) provides is how, due to the literal translation in dictionaries from

‘mianhada’, South Korean learners of English presume that sorry expresses one’s responsibility, resulting

in a failure to say ‘sorry’ when they hear bad news. This can be interpreted by English speakers as not

caring about the bad news. Kim (2008) also identifies how South Koreans often use non-verbal means of

apologising, for example in response to a minor offense a Korean speaker will often smile, representing a

wish for the conflict to be resolved quickly, something Australian English speakers could interpret as

making a joke out of a conflict and/or lead to them doubting the sincerity of the speaker’s apology. Further

to this, Kim (2008) explains how, when a speaker and hearer are deemed to have a close relationship, a

Korean speaker will often use silence to apologise as the speaker should be able to understand the

hearer’s apologetic feeling from the social context.

Relating to my experiences in Korean public education, such exercises are exemplified in

schools. Misunderstandings can often occur on occasions when native English speaking teachers

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become frustrated with their students. The teacher may expect a verbal apology; however the

student is more likely to stare at the ground in silence with the presumption that the teacher can

interpret their silence and lack of eye contact as an apology due to the social context. This often

leads to a misinterpretation of the teachers’ and students’ conduct. Pragmatic misunderstandings

such as these can easily lead to conflicts of intended meanings. Such situations can affect a

Koreans ESL speaker’s ability to effectively communicate with native English speakers.

ii. Academic Difficulties

Several studies have explored the speech acts used by American native speakers of English and Korean

non-native speakers of English in academic contexts. Research by Choi (1997) looks at the difficulties

faced by Korean students in Australia when addressing their professors orally and found that many of their

participants were affected by negative pragmatic transfer of Korean speech conventions in three respects.

The first negative transfer they identified was that the participants applied Korean levels of speech based

on age and social status to English speech, one example of this was using very formal speech when

making requests of their professors, and then feeling very awkward when the professor replied with similar

speech patterns, as this is not something older people in Korea are likely to do. Secondly, the Korean

students also felt uncomfortable when a younger peer used more informal (or intimate) speech patterns

towards them. Finally, they found that Korean students addressed teachers by their title no matter how

intimate their relationship. This negative transfer could result in pragmatic misunderstandings for Korean

students, opening up the possibility for Korean students’ opportunities to develop good interpersonal

relationships with peers and teachers being negatively impacted. In fact, many of the participants not only

reported that they had encountered difficulties in developing close relationships with their Australian peers,

but were aware that these difficulties were due to language limitations and culturally different speech

forms.

Research by Murphy & New (1996) evaluates the speech acts used by Koreans when

expressing disapproval of a grade to a professor. They found that the Koreans were more critical

than American native speakers and even referred to the Koreans speech acts as aggressive,

inappropriate and lacking respect. In his analysis of emails written to Australian professors to

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complain about grades, Park (2008) identifies how the emails of Korean students are often

inappropriate and could be deemed offensive by their Australian professors. Park (2008) identifies

how Korean students often include advice to their professors, and are even critical or sarcastic,

and given the context, could be interpreted as threatening. Such findings are particularly

interesting as the strategies displayed would also be deemed offensive in Korean culture,

especially strategies such as criticizing a superior. These results provide an insight into how

Korean EFL speakers can develop misled beliefs regarding the English language resulting in

communicational problems.

iii. Business Difficulties

Park et al (1998) compared the rhetorical strategies for complaints in international business letters written

by Koreans and Americans and found that native English speakers were indirect and linear, that they

tended to impersonalise a problem, whereas native Korean speakers tended to be indirect and non-linear,

containing more emotional expressions. This could result in negative responses from clients, and rather

than a situation being alleviated, it could well result in the amplification of the problem.

Koo et al (2003) looked at the potential for misinterpretations in business caused by differences in

the relational concerns (a person’s focus and motivation to use and respond to motivational cues) and,

drawing on the work of Hall (1983) differences in directness and indirectness in the work place. Koo et al

(2003) find that that these differences are amplified in the workplace making cross-cultural

misunderstandings of one’s meaning extremely common.

This research demonstrates the interlinking of language and culture; it explains how, without

access to cultural knowledge, language alone can result in a Korean EFL speaker entering into

communicational situations that can inadvertently result in misunderstanding and conflict. With this in mind

the next section will go on to look at whether the pragmatic awareness of Korean EFL speakers can be

improved.

5) Can the Pragmatic Awareness of Korean EFL Speakers Be Improved?

The pragmatic difficulties faced by Korean EFL speakers demonstrate not only room for improvement, but

also, if Korea is going to meet its target of having a workforce capable of successfully communicating with

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native English speakers, a need for improvements in the pragmatic awareness of Korean EFL speakers.

Kasper & Schmidt (1996) suggest that “there is every reason to expect that pragmatic knowledge should

be teachable,” a notion supported by Jianda (2006) who states “studies show that interlanguage pragmatic

knowledge is teachable”. There is a lack of research conducted looking at the effects of taught pragmatics

on EFL learners as the majority of studies focus on L2 use rather than development (Kasper & Schmidt

1996). However the research that has been conducted does indicate it to be an effective method to

improve students’ pragmatic choices. Research by Olshtain & Cohen (1990) tracks students being given

three 20 minute classes on apology strategies in English, the results show in an increase in the likelihood

of the students choosing apology strategies similar to those of native speakers. The results of other

research have shown that the teaching of pragmatics requires more than simply providing learners with

communicative activities, as Porter (1986:218) explains “communicative activities in the classroom will

provide valuable production practice for the learner, but they will not generate the type of sociolinguistic

input that learners need”. This is suggestive of the fact that language teachers need to directly teach

pragmatics as part of a course.

Ellis (1994), Takahashi & Roitblat (1994) conclude that the development of pragmatic

competence depends on providing learners with sufficient and appropriate input, which mainly

comes through teacher talk time or instructional materials (Hill, 1997). Kasper (1997) points to the

benefits of providing authentic input through videos and movies or activities that engage students

in social roles that they are likely to encounter outside of class such as role play, simulation and

drama.

Eslami-Rasekh (2005) has developed a number of stages that could be used to raise

students’ pragmatic awareness in a classroom setting:

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Awareness Raising

Make learners consciously aware of differences between native and target language speech. This can be done through teacher presentation or student discovery.

Motivation

Translation activities can be used to create intrigue amongst the students as to how culture and language are interrelated. Could also present and share examples of cross cultural miscommunications.

Providing a Focus

Present a discourse excerpt or target speech act that will be studied

Students Collecting Data

Students observe and record native speaker data, they can analyse the target speech act from the data.

Although Eslami-Rasekh (2005) presents a viable method of introducing pragmatics to EFL

students it is questionable as to how easily it could adopted in to a Korean classroom. In her

analysis of the problems faced by China in the teaching of pragmatic competency in EFL

classrooms, Jianda (2006) identifies a number of issues that China needs to overcome, all of

which are issues that South Korea faces should they aim to increase students’ pragmatic

competency:

1) Teacher Centred Classrooms – Public school EFL classrooms in Korea maintain a traditional teacher centred approach. This limits the students’ exposure to communicative activities, although Kasper (1997) notes even teacher centred classroom discourse offers opportunities for pragmatic learning.

2) Non-Native Teachers – The majority of EFL teachers in Korea are Non-native speakers, so they cannot draw on native speaker intuitions and cannot serve as direct models (Rose, 1994). This can also lead to apprehension to the teaching of pragmatics.

3) Instructional Materials – Public school text books do not contain any pragmatic awareness raising material, and it could be difficult for non-native speakers of English to determine appropriate materials.

4) Instructional Methods – The traditional teaching methods employed that still focus on grammar translation could inhibit the development of pragmatic awareness.

5) Tests – If materials aimed at increasing students’ pragmatic awareness are to be introduced into the syllabus, they will need to be in the public tests, and as yet there are no established testing methods.

(Jianda, 2006)

Rose (1994:155) concludes that “if pragmatic competence is to be dealt with successfully in EFL

settings, methods and materials must be developed which do not assume or depend on the NS

intuitions of the teacher.” There are also more specific issues South Korea faces in order to

comprehensively increase students’ pragmatic awareness. A major issue would be motivating the

students to want to increase their pragmatic awareness. The majority of students study English as

a core subject that they must pass in order to enter higher educational institutes. Given that

entering the higher educational institutes involves almost no contact (if any at all) with native

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Awareness Raising

Make learners consciously aware of differences between native and target language speech. This can be done through teacher presentation or student discovery.

Motivation

Translation activities can be used to create intrigue amongst the students as to how culture and language are interrelated. Could also present and share examples of cross cultural miscommunications.

Providing a Focus

Present a discourse excerpt or target speech act that will be studied

Students Collecting Data

Students observe and record native speaker data, they can analyse the target speech act from the data.

English speakers outside of the classroom, students are unlikely to see the benefit of spending

time improving their pragmatic ability. Time is also a critical issue in South Korea, only this year the

South Korean Ministry of Education increased the academic term time for public schools by 4

weeks over the course of the year in order to provide teachers with enough time to prepare

students for the University Entrance Examinations. Due to these time constraints teachers are

likely to be resistant to adding any more work into an already full curriculum, especially if, as

identified by Jianda (2006), the extra work is not within their immediate skill set. Korean teachers

would need training as to how pragmatics can be taught, which could prove both expensive for the

Ministry of Education and time consuming for the teachers. Given these issues it could be

challenging to convince both teachers and students that there is a need for pragmatics to be

introduced into the national curriculum, this is especially apparent considering that although the

research and views above state that students pragmatic competency can be increased, there is

very little research that demonstrates either the extent to which taught pragmatic courses will

actually increase students pragmatic awareness and what the best way of going about increasing

pragmatic competency is, as Kasper writes “the issue is not whether or not but how to teach

[pragmatics]” (Kasper 1996:147). If the Ministry of Education were to consider financing and

developing a course of taught pragmatics they would very likely want to know the answer to these

questions.

6) Conclusion

The identification of pragmatic difficulties faced by Korean EFL speakers in social, academic and business

contexts demonstrates the need for improvement in the pragmatic awareness of Korean EFL learners.

Current research has verified that pragmatic awareness can be improved through classroom instruction,

however there is little research focusing on how it could be incorporated into the teaching methods, styles

and materials of the Korean EFL classroom. Korea has set out to have a work force ready to communicate

with business and academic partners in English; if they are to meet this objective research must be carried

out to investigate the most efficient way to improve Korean English speakers’ pragmatic awareness. If

pragmatics is to be taught in public education it will be necessary to have a reliable way of testing students’

pragmatic competency. Currently, there are a lack of tests available which would allow the objective

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assessment of learners’ pragmatic proficiency (Jianda, 2006) and there is little research available as to the

reliability of academic pragmatic competency examinations, so research identifying reliable testing

methods would be necessary. South Korea currently has a very strict multiple-choice reading

comprehension and grammar focused examination system for assessing students’ English ability. To allow

the introduction of taught pragmatic awareness programmes into the English syllabus it is likely that the

means of testing would have to fit into the current testing system, and thus there is an immediate needs for

research to be carried out in this area. The Ministry of Education is also likely to want to know the extent to

which a taught course of pragmatic competency can increase students’ pragmatic awareness, and so

there is a need for further, more detailed research how much time is needed in the classroom to make

significant improvements in students’ pragmatic awareness.

The research discussed has indicated that there are pragmatic issues currently facing Korean EFL

speakers that are detrimental to their ability to effectively communicate with native English speakers. It has

also indicated that these issues could be addressed through taught pragmatic awareness programmes. If

the South Korean government wishes to create a nation capable of successfully communicating with native

English speakers a focus on increasing the pragmatic awareness of EFL students would certainly help

them reach this goal.

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