Developing EFL students’ pragmatic competence: The case of compliment responses

Alsuhaibani, Zainab

doi:10.1177/1362168820913539

“…In regards to assessment of the methodology, the post-test data results provided further evidence for pedagogical intervention being an effective tool in enhancing EFL learners' pragmatic and speech act abilities and is consistent with previous interlanguage research studies (Eslami-Rasekh et al, 2004;Kerber, 2020;Nguyen, Pham, & Pham, 2012). Furthermore, the teachability of pragmatic aspects of L2 through applying a 'pre-test/posttest' design is aligned with results from the following research (Alsuhaibani, 2020;Halenko & Jones, 2011;Khodareza & Lotfi, 2013;Rajabia et al 2015, Shark, 2019Yilmaz & Koc, 2020), in which learners were reported to have performed better in the post-test after the instruction phase. In addition, explicit instruction of requests to EFL learners was shown to be an effective tool in improving the students' pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic skills as was role play intervention (Fattah, 2018) and video-driven intervention in Alsmari's (2020) study of learner complaints.…”

supporting

confidence: 87%

The Effect of Explicit Instruction of Requests on Saudi EFL learners using a pre-test, post-test Approach

Qari¹

2021

AWEJ

3

1

0

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The aim of the current study is to test whether explicit instruction of various L2 request forms can be a useful measure in developing Saudi learners’ linguistic and pragmatic competences. This study is based on the results obtained from a previous research investigating interlanguage requests. The findings in that study suggested that the second language learners were not aware of some of the request strategies which were exclusively employed by the British English native speakers. The aim and the question of this study is to find out whether explicit instruction of request strategies will be effective in helping Saudi EFL learners gain linguistic knowledge and achieve pragmatic appropriateness in making requests in L2. Thirty female foundation year students participated in this study. They were all EFL learners studying at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The group underwent three phases of instruction: pre-test, instruction/intervention, and post-test. The first and last phases consisted of written questionnaires which were distributed right before and after the instruction phase. The results showed that in the third phase, the students demonstrated great progress in their understanding of request forms in L2. Their improvement was manifested by the learners’ acknowledgement of these forms as proper employment of request strategies in English, recognition of request function names, ability to assign correct functions to linguistic realizations and their overall understanding of the appropriate use of these forms dictated by the weightiness of different request situations.

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“…In regards to assessment of the methodology, the post-test data results provided further evidence for pedagogical intervention being an effective tool in enhancing EFL learners' pragmatic and speech act abilities and is consistent with previous interlanguage research studies (Eslami-Rasekh et al, 2004;Kerber, 2020;Nguyen, Pham, & Pham, 2012). Furthermore, the teachability of pragmatic aspects of L2 through applying a 'pre-test/posttest' design is aligned with results from the following research (Alsuhaibani, 2020;Halenko & Jones, 2011;Khodareza & Lotfi, 2013;Rajabia et al 2015, Shark, 2019Yilmaz & Koc, 2020), in which learners were reported to have performed better in the post-test after the instruction phase. In addition, explicit instruction of requests to EFL learners was shown to be an effective tool in improving the students' pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic skills as was role play intervention (Fattah, 2018) and video-driven intervention in Alsmari's (2020) study of learner complaints.…”

supporting

confidence: 67%

The Effect of Explicit Instruction of Requests on Saudi EFL learners using a pre-test, post-test Approach

Qari¹

2021

Preprint

0

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The aim of the current study is to test whether explicit instruction of various L2 request forms can be a useful measure in developing Saudi learners’ linguistic and pragmatic competences. This study is based on the results obtained from a previous research investigating interlanguage requests. The findings in that study suggested that the second language learners were not aware of some of the request strategies which were exclusively employed by the British English native speakers. The aim and the question of this study is to find out whether explicit instruction of request strategies will be effective in helping Saudi EFL learners gain linguistic knowledge and achieve pragmatic appropriateness in making requests in L2. Thirty female foundation year students participated in this study. They were all EFL learners studying at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The group underwent three phases of instruction: pre-test, instruction/intervention, and post-test. The first and last phases consisted of written questionnaires which were distributed right before and after the instruction phase. The results showed that in the third phase, the students demonstrated great progress in their understanding of request forms in L2. Their improvement was manifested by the learners’ acknowledgement of these forms as proper employment of request strategies in English, recognition of request function names, ability to assign correct functions to linguistic realizations and their overall understanding of the appropriate use of these forms dictated by the weightiness of different request situations.

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“…For instance studies conducted by Kim and Taguchi (2016) and Taguchi and Kim (2014) showed that tasks could be set for students to perform PDR-high or PDR-low speech acts by optimizing interaction between learner and learner under teacher's guidance in order to learn both sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic features (Kim & Taguchi, 2016;Taguchi & Kim, 2014). Some findings of the studies show that explicit or implicit teaching of pragmatic aspects may help learners to socialize or familiarize themselves to the aspects by the help of their teachers and their peers (Alsuhaibani, 2020;Lantz-Andersson, 2017;Sánchez-Hernández, 2018;Sydorenko, Daurio, & L. Thorne, 2017;Taguchi, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of pragmatic socialization in building learners’ pragmatic competence from English teachers’ perspectives

2021

pegegog

3

1

0

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This article provides empirical evidence regarding Indonesian EFL teachers' perceptions about pragmatic competence and the role of pragmatic socialization to develop learners' pragmatic competence. Considerable viewpoints were obtained by analyzing the data collected from 104 Indonesian EFL teachers using questionnaires and focus group interviews. While still maintaining the conventional way of teaching English, these teachers admitted the importance of socializing English pragmatics to their students. They indicated that EFL learners needed to learn the socio-cultural norms of the target language in order to communicate appropriately. Teachers viewed politeness essential for learners to understand that failure to meet the required action might break interpersonal relationships. Therefore, they agreed that language classrooms should utilize interactive strategic tasks that involved learner-learner and teacher-learner interactions to foster the presence of pragmatic socialization in the classrooms. Even though most teachers were unsure about how they would put their ideas in practice, it was evident that teachers perceived both explicit and implicit language socialization processes promising and worth implementing. Future research may investigate how teachers socialize English pragmatics to EFL learners in real classroom settings.

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Developing EFL students’ pragmatic competence: The case of compliment responses

Cited by 17 publications

References 32 publications

The Effect of Explicit Instruction of Requests on Saudi EFL learners using a pre-test, post-test Approach

The Effect of Explicit Instruction of Requests on Saudi EFL learners using a pre-test, post-test Approach

The Effect of Explicit Instruction of Requests on Saudi EFL learners using a pre-test, post-test Approach

The role of pragmatic socialization in building learners’ pragmatic competence from English teachers’ perspectives

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