Learning Korean honorifics through individual and collaborative writing tasks and written corrective feedback

Hyejin Cho; YouJin Kim

doi:10.1515/applirev-2018-0075

Article

Learning Korean honorifics through individual and collaborative writing tasks and written corrective feedback

Hyejin Cho and YouJin Kim

Published/Copyright: May 31, 2019

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From the journal Applied Linguistics Review Volume 13 Issue 1

Abstract

To date, the majority of task-based instructed second language acquisition studies have investigated the effects of tasks on second language morphosyntactic development, and little attention has been paid to the effectiveness of dialogic tasks on the learning of pragmatics in classroom contexts (Plonsky, L. & Y. Kim. 2016. Task-based learner production: A substantive and methodological review. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 36. 73–97). The present study is a partial replication study of Taguchi and Kim (2016. Collaborative dialogue in learning pragmatics: Pragmatic-related episodes as an opportunity for learning request-making. Applied Linguistics 37. 416–437) and aims to compare learning outcomes between collaborative and individual task groups while written corrective feedback is provided.

Thirty-two high beginner learners of Korean from two classes participated in this study. Each class was randomly assigned to either a collaborative or an individual group to complete e-mail writing tasks. In the collaborative group, students wrote e-mails with a partner, whereas the individual group wrote e-mails independently to introduce their professors during study abroad using four types of Korean honorifics. Both groups received indirect corrective feedback on honorifics used during task performance. Written description tests (WDT) were designed to investigate the short-term and long-term learning of Korean honorifics in line with the instructional tasks. Students’ responses on the WDT were analyzed in terms of the number of suppliance and accurate production of each target feature. Students’ responses to teacher feedback were analyzed using the following categories: resolved correctly, resolved incorrectly, and unresolved.

The results showed that there was no significant difference in the production of target features during task performance when indirect WCF was provided to both conditions. Furthermore, both groups significantly outperformed in the immediate and delayed posttest than the pretest. However, the results found no difference in learning of Korean honorifics between the two groups.

Keywords: pragmatics; Korean as a foreign language; collaborative writing; written corrective feedback

Acknowledgements

We express our deep gratitude to Seyoung Park who helped us to collect the data.

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Appendix A: Sample treatment task

Scenario: You are studying in Korea as an exchange student and staying with a host family. You want to write an email to introduce your host mother to your Korean teacher. In your e-mail you must include all of the following information about your host mother.

Appendix B: Sample test item

For each person, personal information and their daily habits are given. Based on the information given, describe each person. You must include all the information.

Published Online: 2019-05-31

Published in Print: 2022-01-27

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Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/applirev-2018-0075

Keywords for this article

pragmatics; Korean as a foreign language; collaborative writing; written corrective feedback