The effect of instruction on the development of pragmatic competence in the English as a foreign language context: A study based on suggestions

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the effects of instruction on the acquisition of pragmatic competence in the classroom setting, and specifically in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom. In particular, we examine the effects of instruction on learners' pragmatic development of a specific speech act, that of suggestions, with the goal of expanding the range of learning targets addressed in pragmatic interventional studies (Kasper and Rose, 2002). Apart from dealing with instructional effects, we also take into account the need to investigate various types of instruction in order to ascertain their effectiveness (Kasper and Rose, 2002). In this way, we analyse two different treatments (i.e. explicit and implicit) that have been operationalised on the basis of the principles underlying the paradigms of Focus on FormS and Focus on Form (Long, 1991, 1996, 1998; Doughty and Williams, 1998; Long and Robinson, 1998; Doughty, 2001). The aim of comparing both teaching approaches is to determine whether the two treatments are equally effective in developing learners' pragmatic competence regarding their production, awareness and confidence when judging the appropriateness of suggestions in different situations. Additionally, we are also concerned with issues related to research methodology and, bearing in mind findings from studies that observed task effects between oral and written production tasks (Houck and Gass, 1996; Sasaki, 1998; Safont, 2001), we have compared our learners' performance when making suggestions in two different tasks: an oral production task (i.e. phone messages) and a written production task (i.e. email).<br/>The results of the investigation indicate that, in comparison to the control group, both the explicit and implicit groups improved their pragmatic competence regarding their production, awareness and confidence when judging the appropriateness of suggestions in different situations. Moreover, comparing the explicit and implicit groups' performance in the post-test no statistical differences were observed between the two instructional treatments, which illustrates the effects of both explicit and implicit instruction to develop learners' pragmatic competence in the EFL classroom. The findings also show that the production task in which learners are engaged influences their use of suggestions, since there were task effects between the two production tasks employed in our study (i.e. phone messages and emails). In conclusion, the results obtained in this dissertation expand the scope of enquiry in the field of interlanguage pragmatics as well as outline practical pedagogical implications and open several lines of investigation to be examined in future research.