The Effect of Different Types of Instruction and Feedback on the Development of Pragmatic Proficiency: The Case of Pragmatic Markers

Research in English Language Pedagogy

مقاله 7، دوره 1، شماره 1، آذر 2013، صفحه 72-83   

نوع مقاله: Original Article

نویسنده

Saeedeh Shafee Nahrkhalaji^*

Department of English, Islamic Azad University, Najafabad Branch PO Box 517,

چکیده

The necessity of conducting more studies addressing the development of pragmatic
profciency and strong pragmatic awareness for English language learners has
made the role of instruction and feedback in teaching pragmatic knowledge of
utmost importance. The present study evaluates the relative effectiveness of four
types of instruction for teaching some pragmatic markers including topic change
markers, mitigation markers, interjections and hybrid basic markers to 75
advanced Iranian learners of English: explicit instruction only, explicit instruction
with metalinguistic feedback, structured input instruction only, and structured in-
put instruction with metalinguistic feedback. Treatment group performance was
compared with control group performance on pre-tests, post-tests and follow-up
tests that contained an open-ended discourse completion test and a multiple-choice
pragmatic listening comprehension test. The results of the data analysis revealed
that students› ability to comprehend and produce pragmatic markers improved
significantly in treatment groups and that pragmatic interlanguage is permeable
to instruction in EFL settings. However, there were statistically significant
differences among the four treatment groups regarding awareness of different
pragmatic markers and their appropriate use. These findings give us some useful
insight on the teachability of pragmatic markers and the role of instruction and
feedback in the classroom to develop pragmatic competence of EFL learners.

کلیدواژه‌ها

Pragmatic proficiency؛ Pragmatic markers؛ explicit instruction؛ Structured input instruction؛ Metalinguistic Feedback

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