Efectiveness of explicit pragmatic instruction in the ESO classroom: a focus on sociopragmatics when teaching requests

Abstract

The main objective of this study is to consider the effect of type of instruction in acquiring requests by ESO students in the EFL classroom. To accomplish this purpose we have studied how three groups of students (58 in total) attending fourth year secondary school have answered two Discourse Completion Tests (DCTs), which included eight situations designed to elicit the speech act of requests. Group A received explicit instruction and did two activities between the pre and post-test, group B received implicit instruction in the form of a viewing comprehension task, and in group C, the control group, no instruction was provided. We have examined the type of head act used and modifiers in the pre- and post-tests, taking into account the amount and appropriateness of these particles. Not only did we analyze the results from the pragmalinguistic perspective, but we also studied them from the sociopragmatic point of view, considering social distance, power and ranking of imposition. Results focusing on the respondents’ pragmalinguistic gains show that, prior to instruction, the most common head act was “can you…” and “can I…”, whereas, regarding modifiers, grounders, greetings and please were the most used ones and that, after instruction, participants improved the production of requests in terms of quantity. Yet, a deeper study has been carried out in situations number 3 and 6 in the pre-rest (situations 2 and 7 in the post-test) to ascertain whether learners’ sociopragmatic competence was already enhanced. We have counted the number of modifiers and examined not only their quantity but also their “quality” in terms of appropriateness and the outcome is that the most successful group in both situations was A. Generally speaking, findings from the present study show the benefits of both explicit and implicit instruction on learners’ pragmatic competence. All in all, the former type of instruction seems to be more effective not only in terms of the amount of pragmalinguistic formulae acquired, but, what is more important, in terms of appropriateness of both the request head act and the modifiers employed when they are analysed according to social distance, power and ranking of imposition