The effect of explicit teaching of apologies on Persian EFL learners’ performance: When e-communication helps

Abstract

The present study was conducted to examine the effect of explicit teaching of the speech act of apology on learning and recognition of Persian EFL learners with the help of e-communication through exchange of e-mails. The participants of the study consisted of 60 upper-intermediate EFL learners majoring in English Literature and Translation who were divided into two groups: a) the explicit teaching group and b) the implicit teaching group. Accordingly, instruction on various apology situations was provided and the experimental group was asked to have e-communication through e-mail exchanges with their instructor during the semester. The study consisted of a pretest and a posttest which was considered to be quasi-experimental. The independent variable was the explicit teaching of speech acts and the dependent variable was learning success of the participants. After the treatment, the participants were given a posttest. The Analysis of the results revealed that the learners in the explicit teaching group who participated in e-mail exchanges gained significantly in terms of pragmatic proficiency required for strategies of apology. And the use of explicit teaching of apology involving them in e-communication exchanges significantly enhanced the pragmatic awareness of Persian EFL learners.

Teaching Apology Formulas at the Discourse Level: Are Instructional Effects Maintained over Time?

“…From the above results we can claim that implementing pedagogical intervention in the EFL classroom had a positive effect on both the amount and type of apology formulas used by learners immediately after being engaged in the instructional treatment. These findings therefore confirm previous ILP research supporting the fact that instruction does make a difference in the pragmatic realm (see Jeon and Kaya 2006;Takahashi 2010;Taguchi 2011Taguchi , 2015 for a review), and are in line with previous studies that have particularly examined the teachability of the speech act of apologies in FL settings (Eslami-Rasekh et al, 2004;Eslami-Rasekh and Eslami-Rasekh, 2008;Eslami-Rasekh and Mardani, 2010;Birjandi and Derakhshan, 2013;Simin et al, 2014;Derakhshan and Eslami-Rasekh, 2015).…”

“…Finally, Simin et al (2014) investigated the role of instruction in developing learners' pragmatic awareness on recognition and production of Alicia Martínez-Flor DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10. 12795/elia.2016.i16.02 apologies with the help of e-communication through exchange of e-mails.…”

“…More specifically, all of them have targeted pedagogical instruction on Iranian EFL learners (Eslami-Rasekh et al, 2004;Eslami-Rasekh and Eslami-Rasekh, 2008;Eslami-Rasekh and Mardani, 2010;Birjandi and Derakhshan, 2013;Simin et al, 2014;Derakhshan and Eslami-Rasekh, 2015). Eslami-Rasekh et al (2004) conducted a pre-test/post-test design with a control group to examine the effect of explicit metapragmatic instruction on learners' comprehension of apologies.…”

“…Thus, it appears that the instruction implemented following a discursive approach positively affected learners' apology performance, as they had the opportunity to learn how sociopragmatic and politeness aspects influence the co-construction of an apology sequence. The study by Simin et al (2014), which focused on the development of learners' awareness and production of apologies with the help of e-communication through exchange of e-mails, also showed that after instruction, learners' e-mails were more elaborated and involved a combination of strategies to apologise appropriately and effectively.…”

The Evaluation of Iranian EFL Learners’ Interlanguage Pragmatic Knowledge through the Production of Speech Acts

“…The fact that Iranian EFL learners have continually faced with the challenges to communicate in L2 and they have mostly failed in their daily interactions have inspired SLA researchers to explore the status of EFL learners' L2 pragmatic competence in EFL classroom and examine learners' pragmatic knowledge development (Rajabi & Farahian, 2013;Simin et al, 2014). Moreover, the research literature in pragmatic performance has shown that the studies done (Alfattah, 2009;Jebahi, 2013;Gu, 2014) were mostly intercultural in nature and compared the pragmatic performance of native speakers with non-native speakers with regard to the realization of speech acts strategies focusing on learners' pragmalinguistic knowledge.…”