Does Direct Instruction Develop Pragmatic Competence? Teaching Refusals to EFL Learners of English

Abstract

Abstract-To achieve communicative competence, L2 learners' need to develop their pragmatic competence and this may be fostered with the help the learners receive from their teachers. This paper is an attempt to investigate the efficacy of explicit instruction of refusal at pragmatic level to four types of acts-invitations, suggestions, offers and requests. Adopting a pretest/posttest design as with treatment and control group, the two groups in this study were exposed to the treatment. Data collected by means of written Discourse Completion Test (DCT) as well as written self report suggest that the instructional approach resulted in gain in L2 pragmatic ability of the experimental group. The delayed posttest used in the study confirmed the findings. The findings may contribute to the interlanguage pragmatic pedagogy, especially in the EFL context and suggest that meta-pragmatic information the L2 learners received through pedagogy may lead to learners' L2 pragmatic development.

The Effect of Conversational Implicature Instruction on Developing TEFL Students’ Pragmatic Competence and Language Proficiency

“…Murray's study draws attention to the pedagogical implications of training ESOL teachers in pragmatic competence. Farahian, Rezaee, and Gholami (2012) investigated the effect of direct instruction of developing 64 intermediate university EFL students' pragmatic competence. Adopting a pretest-posttest design with a treatment group and a control group, data were collected by means of a written discourse completion test as well as self-report.…”

“…Successful conversations in the classroom will result in effective communication. Farahian et al (2012) highlighted that pragmatic competence development is a pre-requisite for the development of communicative competence. Thus, the use of conversational implicatures is inevitable for effective communication to take place.…”

“…This means that learners, especially advanced ones, need to be trained in using them. Fostering pragmatic competence among EFL learners could be one of the L2 teacher roles (Farahian et al, 2012).…”

Pragmatic Variations in Giving Advice in L2 by Malaysian Postgraduate Students: The Situational Effects

“…Therefore, one of the difficulties that non-native speakers encounter in the act of communication with other interlocutors from different socio-cultural backgrounds is intercultural misunderstanding (Rashidi & Ramezani, 2013). In this regard, pragmatic failure is claimed as the main reason of intercultural misunderstanding which is pertinent to the use of inappropriate speech (Farahian, 2012). Therefore, non-native speakers' pragmatic competence as the key constituents of intercultural communicative competence should be developed to lessen intercultural misunderstandings and the resultant pragmatic failure.…”

A Study of EFL Learners' (Meta) Pragmatic Learning through Explicit (Teacher Explanation) and Implicit (Foreign Film) Interventions: The Case of Compliment

“…They have also emphasized the use of technology-feature films and situational comedies, audio/visual materials and other forms of visual support--which helps teachers diversify their instruction in ways that greatly benefit their learners through raising their motivation. As nearly all the studies sound their uncertainty by postulating that other intervening variables might have affected the effectiveness of instruction (Eslami & Eslami-Rasekh, 2008;Sedeghi & Foutooh, 2012;Ishihara, 2010;Farahian, Rezaee & Gholami, 2012), more studies to investigate the impact of teaching techniques even to beginners before they develop pragmatic knowledge in second language seems necessary.…”