The Effect of Interventionist Instructions of English Conversational Implicatures on Iranian EFL Intermediate Level Learners’ Pragmatic Competence Development (original) (raw)
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US-China Education Review, 2016
The current study aimed at investigating the effect of training undergraduate teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) students in interpreting conversational implicatures on developing their pragmatic competence and language proficiency. The instruments of the study included a test of pragmatic competence and a test of language proficiency. The findings of the study revealed the effect of explicit instruction in conversational implicatures on developing TEFL students' pragmatic competence and language proficiency. The findings also revealed a significant positive correlation at the level of 0.730 between the participants' pragmatic competence and language proficiency. The findings were discussed in light of previous literature and contextual factors and implications for English as foreign language (EFL) classroom pedagogy were highlighted.
PRAGMATIC KNOWLEDGE OF CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURE AND PRESUPPOSITION BY YEMENI EFL LEARNERS
Ahmed Al Khadhmi, 2022
The purpose of this study aimed at investigating the pragmatic knowledge of the Yemeni Non-Native Speakers of English (YNNSs) in comprehending Conversational Implicature (CI) and presupposition in the Target Language (TL). The study followed a quantitative analytical approach. For the purpose of attaining the required data for this study, forty (YNNSs) of English were involved. For collecting data from the participants a twenty-item questionnaire was used in CI and presupposition targeting the Yemeni learners of English to recognize their pragmatic knowledge in English. The data collected was analyzed by using the Likert scale (1932).The study found that the Yemeni NNSs' knowledge of the pragmatic concepts of CI and presupposition was not high with the average score of the correct answers to the questions about CI was55.5%while the average score of presupposition was61.5% which is higher than CI. In addition, this study revealed that the Yemeni NNSs found more difficulties in recognizing the pragmatic intents of contextual utterances rather than of lexical triggers. This study recommends that teaching pragmatics should not be limited to textbooks and language classes, as they may not be sufficient in providing an opportunity to encounter and apply non-linguistic pragmatic standards.
2013
This study aims to investigate the effect of explicit and implicit instructions on developing pragmatic competence among Iranian intermediate EFL learners using speech act of complaint. To homogenize participants, Nelson (Fowler & Coe, 1976) test was administered, and a homogeneous sample comprised of 33 males and 9 females were selected from a population of 90 at the intermediate level. Then the homogenized sample was randomly assigned to two experimental groups, A and B. After that, learners were given a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) pre-test. The two groups were under the explicit and implicit instructions of the instructor, separately, at Masjed.I.Soleiman (MIS) Oil Company for 14 sessions. Having been exposed to the treatments, the two groups took a similar post-test to see whether learners learned complain strategies appropriately. The results of three t-tests indicated that there was a significant difference between the performances of both experimental groups on pre and po...
The Scientific Journal of Cihan University –Sulaimaniya, 2022
This study investigates the pragmatic failure of Kurdish EFL learners in the performance of conversational implicature. This study is based on a quantitative research method, and an MCQ is used as a tool to collect the necessary data. 35 fourth-year students (24 female, 11 male) from the English Language Department, Cihan University/Sulaimaniya participated in this study. It is found that the main reason of pragmatic failure is because of the learners’ limited language proficiency and that they cannot fully recognize when the relevance maxim is violated. It is also found that they do not quite understand the act of face management. The results demonstrated that Kurdish EFL learners lack the pragmatic knowledge needed to perform conversational implicature. To avoid future pragmatic failure the learners need to be more proficient in the target language with a deeper insight of the socio-cultural norms of the target language. Key words: Pragmatic Failure, Kurdish EFL learners, Conversational Implicature, Performance
Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2015
Pragmatic competence is one of the aspects of language that provides many challenges for EFL learners. L2 learners need to develop their pragmatic competence in order to use language appropriately according to the socio-cultural norms of the L2 community. And, this may be achieved through treatment they receive from their teachers. The issue explored in this study was the investigation of the effect of explicit instruction of pragmatic level on appropriate performance of request speech act across two proficiency levels with regard to two social variables of status and distance. To this end, pre-posttest design with experimental and control group was administered. Data were collected using a Discourse Completion Test (DCT). The selection of requestive situations in DCT was based on two mentioned social variables. The results revealed that explicit instruction is a facilitative tool to develop L2 learners' pragmatic competence. Moreover, it was found that L2 proficiency influence on overall appropriateness of speech acts production. The findings of the current study have some implications for teachers, text book writers and curriculum designers.
Comprehension of conversational implicature in an Iranian EFL context: A validation study
Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies, 2018
Pragmatic competence is one of the major components of second/foreign language learners’ communicative language ability. However, in comparison to other components of communicative language competence, learners’ pragmatic competence is far less researched. Of many aspects of pragmatic competence, a large body of research has been focused on developing instruments in interlanguage pragmatics informed by the speech act framework. However, the assessment of other aspects of pragmatic knowledge, namely, conversational implicature still lags behind. As an attempt to address the gap, this study aimed to develop and validate a test of conversational implicature. A hypothesized model of conversational implicature, based on Grice’s (1975) conversational logic paired with Goffman’s (1967) insights regarding face management, was proposed and tested. The validation process included collecting evidence supporting content and construct validity of the test. Empirical evidence for construct validi...
Pragmatic competence, as one of the main components of communicative competence, ought to be given sufficient attention by the foreign language instructors and students. Recently, a surge of interest in interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) has been witnessed. The studies on explicit and implicit instruction on Iranian EFL students' production of two pragmatic aspects of apology and request have been few. Thus, the aim of this study was exploring the potentially facilitative impacts of explicit and implicit instruction on Iranian EFL students' production of two pragmatic aspects frequently used in daily conversations, namely the speech acts of apology and request. For this purpose, forty homogenized upper-intermediate Iranian EFL learners were randomly divided into one experimental and one control group. They took part in an English-medium conversation course which lasted for eight sessions in which ILP academic situations were presented to the students of the experimental group in the explicit way, while the control group received the same instruction and materials through the implicit method. Following the treatment, the participants received the same validated academic Multiple-Choice Discourse Completion Test (MDCT) of ILP. The results indicated that teaching pragmalinguistic features explicitly could improve the interlanguage pragmatic knowledge of the participants in the experimental group.
The Impact of Instruction on Iranian Intermediate EFL Learners‘ Production of Requests in English
Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 2010
The present study investigated the extent to which two instructional paradigms-explicit vs. implicit instruction-affect learners' ability to use the speech act of request in English. Ninety homogenous adult Iranian intermediate EFL learners attending a language school in Isfahan, Iran, were randomly assigned to three groups: Explicit Group (EG), Implicit Group (IG) and Control Group (CG)). A pre-test was given to the three groups to measure the participants' ability to use requests prior to any treatment. Then, all the groups were exposed to short conversations (audio and script) including certain requests. However, while the EG received explicit and deductive instruction by means of direct awareness-raising tasks and metapragmatic explanations, the IG was provided only with typographical enhancement of the request strategies in focus. The students in the CG did not receive any instruction. The results of the post-test, administered after the treatment, indicated that both explicit and implicit instruction exert a significant effect on the learners' production of request strategies in English. It was also found that participants who received explicit instruction outperformed those in the implicit group; however; the observed difference was not statistically significant. Accordingly, it can be claimed that an implicit and unobtrusive method such as input enhancement can be as effective as explicit instruction which requires the execution of various awareness-raising tasks and explanation of metapragmatic information. Index Terms-explicit language instruction, implicit language instruction, pragmatic development, speech acts, requests I. INTRODUCTION A few decades ago research in interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) focused mainly on the interaction norms employed in different languages and cultures. Mostly, such research aimed at comparing second language (L2) learners' speech act realization with those of native speakers (Kasper, 1989). More recently, however, research findings indicate that there are considerable differences between L2 learners and native speakers with regard to their perception and production of speech acts (Bardovi-Harlig, 2001). Accordingly, the linguistic area of pragmatics in the context of second language acquisition (SLA) has witnessed a surge of interest in studies that examine L2 learners' pragmatic competence in their interlanguage. More specifically, research in the last decade has focused on the role of instruction in pragmatic development (for reviews, see Martinez
Journal of Language …, 2012
To date, a number of studies have investigated the speech act of suggestion. However, most of these studies have focused on the productiona sociolinguistic perspectiverather than the acquisition of this speech act. The study reported in this article aimed to compare the effects of implicit versus explicit instruction and feedback in the development of pragmatic competence of Iranian EFL learners of English in terms of the speech act of suggestion. The participants of this study consisted of 100 intermediate EFL learners of English who were randomly assigned to four experimental groups and a control group. Each experimental group participated in two twenty-minute successive sessions. The first experimental group received explicit instruction and explicit feedbacks, the second experimental group received explicit instruction and implicit feedbacks and the remaining two experimental groups were taught using implicit-explicit and implicit-implicit instruction and feedbacks, respectively. Data were collected using an immediate post-test as well as a delayed post-test which was administered a month after the post-test. Results of the study showed that the explicitexplicit method of instruction has a much better influence on Persian EFL learners. However, the results also demonstrated that the students tend to forget the instructed materials after four weeks. It follows from the results of this study that the development of pragmatic competence in terms of suggestion speech act is a complex process which proceeds in a non-linear fashion.
2018
The present study investigated the effect of pragmatic eliciting tasks on EFL pre-intermediate learners speaking proficiency. Thus this study aimed at comparing the English language learners who practiced pragmatic eliciting tasks and the ones who used traditional speaking activities such as questions and answers, discussion, etc. In doing so, 40 learners out of 80 were selected through Oxford Quick Placement Test (OQPT) with the band score of 30 to 39. Then they were non-randomly divided into two equal experimental and control groups through convenience sampling method. Both groups took a teacher-made pre-test on speaking proficiency and the scores were recorded. The experimental group received pragmatic eliciting tasks including explicit uses of pragmatic functions of speech (i.e., greeting, thanking, etc.) while the control group received these pragmatic tasks implicitly. Finally, both groups took a posttest which was the modified pre-test. Data were analyzed through independent ...