ESL Korean Learners&#x02019; Decision- making Processes in Speech Act Performance

doi:10.65961/AJELT-2000-1-002

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Asian Journal of English Language Teaching ›› 2000, Vol. 10 ›› Issue (1) : 19-44. DOI: 10.65961/AJELT-2000-1-002

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ESL Korean Learners’ Decision- making Processes in Speech Act Performance

Jae-Suk Suh

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This paper investigated the ESL Korean learners’ decision-making processes involved in the realization of the speech act of requests with the use of immediate retrospection as a data-gathering method. In a study conducted with 30 upper- intermediate and advanced Korean learners of ESL, each learner was asked to participate in a discourse completion test (DCT), and immediately after the com- pletion of each item of DCT, to retrospect about what he/she had been doing and thinking when performing requests in a given item (situation). Content analysis of the retrospective verbal data was done, and six different categories were developed: assessment of situation, monitoring for appropriate sociolinguistic expressions, use of requesting skills, connection to personal life, cross-cultural comparison, and monitoring for language forms. The findings of the study sug- gested that the Korean learners were engaged in a variety of mental activities and underwent various, complex cognitive processes occurring in request realizations.

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Jae-Suk Suh. (2000). ESL Korean Learners’ Decision- making Processes in Speech Act Performance.Asian Journal of English Language Teaching , 10(1): 19-44. https://doi.org/10.65961/AJELT-2000-1-002

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