This paper aims to investigate Korean EFL learners’ pragmatic performance in request speech acts in comparison with native speakers of English. Written discourse completion tasks (WDCT) are used to examine how native and non-native speakers request in terms of request strategies, internal modifications, and external modifications. The results show that first, Korean learners had a higher frequency of inappropriate strategies than native speakers. Second, they lacked the quantity and variety of internal modifications both lexically and syntactically. However, regarding external modifications, their use of supportive moves was similar to that of natives in frequency and order. In addition, this study identified newly emergent supportive moves that are Korean-specific and detrimental to communication goals. The findings shed light on pragmatic instruction in the Korean EFL situation by providing research-informed data. Several pedagogical implications are suggested for application in teaching.

Yun, Sung Kyu & Jung, Woo-hyun. 2004. Request and Question Perspective in Interlanguage Pragmatics. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea, 12(2). This paper is an interlanguage pragmatic study of request and question perspective. It aims to explore whether there are any differences in request perspective between American English native speakers and Korean EFL learners. To this end, this study employed a Discourse Completion Test, which consisted of eight situations. Data were collected from three different groups: native speakers of English; Korean learners of English; native speakers of Korean. The results showed that the learners deviated from native pragmatic norms in the choice of perspective in a relatively systematic way. The same held even more obviously in the use of please in interacting with request perspective. It was also shown that the mismatch between the native and nonnative groups in perspective was an instance of pragmatic transfer. The results suggested that the notions of imposition and politeness operated differently in perspective between the native and nonnative groups. It is expected that this study will shed light on the phenomenon of interlanguage pragmatics and the aspect of pragmatic transfer, revealing how learners differ from native speakers with respect to request perspective and what causes the differences.