The effect of instruction on learning refusals in EFL learners

Abstract

The major aim of learning a second or foreign language is communication. In order to be a competent communicator, we must get familiar with the ingredients of speech and language. Speech acts are one of the principal elements and functional units of communication. In this realm, refusals play a key role. Due to their inherently face threatening nature, refusals are of an especially sensitive nature, and a pragmatic breakdown in this act may easily lead to unintended offence or breakdowns in communication. Refusals are also of interest due to their typically complex constructions. They are often negotiated over several terms and involve some degree of indirectness. While there are a great number of studies which examine certain speech acts, the amount of research on refusals is much more limited. The aim of this study is to investigate whether either of the instruction types, explicit vs. implicit, proves more efficient in improving pragmatic performance of Iranian EFL learners. For this reason, 45 male, military intermediate EFL learners all between19-25 years of age in a military language institute, in Tehran, Iran, were selected to participate in the study. A pretest/posttest design was adopted in this study. Having formed the three groups under investigation, (explicit, implicit and explicit-implicit) I measured all subjects’ pragmatic performance of L2 refusals through Discourse Completion Tests, DCTs. All groups were exposed to conversations from 'spectrum' English books which embody refusals. The findings proved the efficiency of explicit instruction over implicit one in increasing Iranian EFL learners' pragmatic performance.