The Effect of Explicit Metapragmatic Instruction on the Speech Act Awareness of Advanced EFL Students.

This study deals with the application of the pragmatics research to EFL teaching. The study explored the effect of explicit metapragmatic instruction on the speech act comprehension of advanced EFL students. The speech acts of requesting, apologizing, and complaining were selected as the focus of teaching. Teacher-fronted discussions, cooperative grouping, role plays, and other pragmatically oriented tasks were used to promote the learning of the intended speech acts. A pretestposttest control group design was used. The subjects included Iranian undergraduate students in their last year of study in the field of teaching English as a foreign language. A group of American students were used to provide the baseline for the study. A multiple choice pragmatic comprehension test was developed in several stages and used both as a pretest and posttest to measure the effect of instruction on the pragmatic comprehension of the students. The results of the data analysis revealed that students’ speech act comprehension improved significantly and that pragmatic competence is not impervious to instruction even in EFL settings. Introduction Holmes and Brown (1987) offer the example of a male student who attempted to compliment his teacher by saying, “You are wearing a very lovely dress. It fits you” (p. 525). The teacher found this compliment from a young male student inappropriate. However, research on language use shows that American speakers frequently compliment on looks and clothes (Manes and Wolfson, 1981; Wolfson, 1989). Textbooks also teach these types of compliments as one of the common ones used by American speakers of English. How could this student The Electronic Journal for English as a Second Language Home About TESL-EJ All Issues Books How to Submit Editorial Board Access Sitemap have known then, that this compliment may give unintended messages rather than showing his interest in using the language? How can a learner figure out the norms of appropriateness for various speech acts and different interlocutors in the target culture? [-1-] Sharifian (2004, p. 119) offers the following example from an Iranian student: An Iranian student at Shiraz University receives from her American lecturer the recommendation letter that she has asked him to write for her and then turns to him and says, “I’m ashamed.” Bewildered by the student’s response, the lecturer asks, “What have you done?!!!” This is an example of intercultural miscommunication from the use of a wrong illocutionary force indicating device for thanking. The expression used would be more appropriate when an offence is committed, rather than to show gratitude and appreciation. These are examples of pragmatic failure that L2 learners encounter when they are involved in the act of communication. Trying to get the meaning across, they may simply translate speech acts from their mother tongues to the second language. Pragmatic failure, unlike grammatical errors, often passes unchecked by the teacher or, worse, it is attributed to some other cause, such as rudeness. Examples like the above instigate us to assume that we ought to teach the rules of appropriate language use. Several studies (Bardovi-Harlig, 2001; Boxer & Pickering, 1995; Bouton, 1996; Kasper 1997) have shown that learners of high grammatical proficiency will not necessarily possess comparable pragmatic competence. Even grammatically advanced learners may use language inappropriately and show differences from target-language pragmatic norms. Bouton (1996) notes that the development of communicative competence should be the goal of language teaching. He proposes three major directions that researchers can take in order to further contribute to the theory of communicative competence: (1) the refinement of the study of speech acts as they occur in different cultures, (2) an investigation to determine the extent to which explicit instruction can increase the rate at which nonnative speakers develop different factors of their pragmatic competence, and (3) the contribution pragmatics can make to the presentation of different functions of a language in textbooks designed for second language learners. This study makes contribution in the second area, namely, effect of instruction on pragmatic competence. The aim of the present research is to show the possibility of teaching pragmatics in an EFL setting with the assumption that this problem can be overcome by giving the student the tools to make the processes of pragmatic decision-making explicit. It is claimed that helping students to make the process of pragmatic decision making explicit will help in successful communication and appropriate use of the second language and will hopefully promote cross-cultural understanding and appreciation. [-2-] Background of the Study This study is theoretically grounded in the area of Communicative competence, Pragmatics, Speech Act Theory, Second Language Acquisition Theory, and Interlanguage Pragmatics (ILP). Interlanguage Pragmatics is defined as the study of ‘learners’ use and acquisition of linguistic action patterns in a second language (Bardovi-Harlig, 1996; Kasper, 1999; Rose, 2000). Although pragmatic performance studies make up a relatively large amount of literature on interlanguage pragmatic, the literature on “interlanguage pragmatic development” lags far behind (Kasper, 1999, Kasper & Rose, 1999). As Schmidt (1993) puts it, “there has been little discussion of how pragmatic abilities are acquired in a second language” (p. 21). Rose (2000) mentions that there have been some cross-sectional studies (e.g., Siegal, 1994, 1996; Ellis, 1992; Bardovi-Harlig & Hartford, 1993) and a few longitudinal studies done recently which have investigated the effects of instruction on pragmatic development over a period of time (Bouton, 1994; Billmayer, 1990, House 1996). Schmidt (1993) for example has explored the role of “conscious awareness” in the acquisition of pragmatic competence. He concludes that the necessary condition for pragmatic learning to happen is attention to pragmatic information to be acquired. Kasper (1999) distinguishes between “observational” and “interventionist” studies of pragmatic ability within L2 classrooms. Observational studies focus primarily in classroom processes, either without a view to learning outcomes or with learning outcomes being analyzed as emerging in and through classroom interaction. Often but not always, the observed classrooms are authentic in the sense of not being specifically arranged for research purposes. Interventionist studies, on the other hand, examine the effect of a particular instructional treatment on students’ acquisition of the targeted pragmatic feature. According to Kasper (2001), opportunities for learning L2 pragmatics in foreign language setting, compared to second language environment, are much more restricted. Interventional studies (House, 1996; Wildner-Bassett, 1984, 1986) support that by metapragmatic instruction and discussion, students can make significant gains in pragmatic ability in FL classrooms. However more research needs to be done to shed light on the kind of instructional measures that are most effective for EFL contexts and other related issues to developmental pragmatics in impoverished L2 contexts. Relying upon Long’s (1996) and some other second language acquisition theorists, Kasper (1999) holds that in purely meaning-oriented L2 use, learners may not detect relevant input features, and that for achieving learners’ noticing, input should be made salient through “input enhancement.” It is believed that input enhancement will raise the learners’ consciousness about the target feature. Input enhancement is defined by Fukyua and Clark (1999) as an implicit instructional technique that provides no metapragmatic information. However, Takahashi (2001) proposes a much broader view of input enhancement. She distinguishes three different degrees and types of input enhancement: explicit teaching, featuring metapragmatic explanation about form-function relationships of the target structures; formcomparison, in which students compare their own speech acts realizations with those of native speakers; and form-search, in which students identify the target strategies in provided scenarios. [-3-] Most of the interventionist developmental studies with a focus on “input enhancement” have a component proposing that the target pragmatic feature be described, explained, or discussed and made as the object of metapragmatic treatment. According to Kasper, metapragmatic instruction might be combined with metapragmatic discussion with the active participation of students in various forms of teacher-fronted-format, peer work, small groups, role-plays, semi-structured interviews, introspective feedback, and metapragmatic assessment tasks. Some studies (e.g., House, 1996; Tateyama et al., 1997; Pearson, 1998) have shed light on the issue of metapragmatic instruction and compared it with other forms of instruction, like “implicit teaching,” and “practice conditions.” Kasper and Rose (2001) argue that effects of instruction on interlanguage pragmatic development, especially in the L2 classroom, have been explored “far less.” They go on and add that classroom research has only played a minor role in interlanguage pragmatics thus far. That is, different aspects of learning or teaching in L2 classroom is still awaiting for further research. Finally, Kasper (1999) calls for classroom research on pragmatics that combines process and produce perspectives. In response to such calls by Kasper (1999) and Kasper and Rose (2001) this study explores the effect of explicit metapragmatic instruction on the speech act comprehension of advanced Iranian EFL students. Methodology Participants All 66 Iranian EFL participants in this study were undergraduate students, participating as members of intact classes. The two groups (one control and one treatment) were fourth year students in the