The present study explored the development of second language (L2) Chinese learners' ability to negotiate requests in interactions. It investigated the effect of proficiency on learners' use of request strategies and internal modifications and on their sequential realization of requests in L2 Chinese. Twenty‐four American English learners of L2 Mandarin Chinese at three different proficiency levels completed a three‐scenario role‐play task. The scenarios were kept low in imposition and social distance but variable in power relations. Each participant interacted with a native speaker interlocutor who assumed different roles in those scenarios. Baseline data were provided by 10 native speakers (NSs) of Chinese. A total of 102 role‐plays were coded for request strategies, internal modifications, and supportive moves, as well as the sequential placement of supportive moves in pre‐, insert, and postexpansions. Situational variations as reflected in role‐play production were considered alongside. The results showed that learners across proficiencies had the same range of pragmatic strategies as in NSs' repertoire, but they showed a general incompetence in employing internal modifications. Learners' ability to delay the requests improved with increasing proficiency, but learner production in general did not show the same level of situational variations as observed in the NS data.

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The present study investigates the role of proficiency in the development of second language (L2) Chinese learners’ ability to negotiate refusals of invitations and offers in conversational interactions. Fifty-four American English learners of L2 Mandarin Chinese at three proficiency levels, and 22 native speakers, completed a four-item naturalized roleplay task. Findings suggest positive effects of proficiency on L1 American English L2 Chinese learners’ production of refusals at both actional and interactional levels, though different aspects of their pragmatic competence may not develop in parallel. NSs and learners across proficiency levels had access to a similar range of refusal strategies, but learner production showed a more target-like context-specific combination of refusal strategies with increasing proficiency. The effect of proficiency can also be observed on learners’ acquisition of sequential organization of refusals, in terms of delay and discourse patterns, in various context. Nevertheless, it is still unclear at what point along the developmental trajectory learners are sociopragmatically competent enough to show consistent orientation towards the hearer in their refusals as NSs do.

This study investigates the role of proficiency in the acquisition of conventional expressions as a pragmalinguistic resource in second‐language (L2) Chinese. One hundred and four undergraduates, including 57 learners of Chinese as a foreign language at 3 levels of university instruction and 47 native speakers completed an aural–oral discourse completion task presented in Chinese. Native‐speaker responses show that there are conventional expressions associated with specific situations and learner responses show that learners are increasingly able to produce the expressions as proficiency increases. En route to mastering the conventional expressions, learners develop sociopragmatic competence that allows them to produce the same speech‐act and content as native speakers in the same situations, thus creating contexts for the conventional expressions. Interlanguage analysis of learner production also reveals that learners attempt the pragmatically conventional expressions prior to full mastery, using key words of the expressions called lexical cores.