scholarly journals The Effect of Explicit Instruction on Pragmatic Competence Development; Teaching Requests to EFL Learners of English

2015 ◽  
Vol 199 ◽  
pp. 231-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shima Rajabia ◽  
Akbar Azizifara ◽  
Habib Gowhary
Keyword(s):  
Explicit Instruction ◽  
Competence Development ◽  
Pragmatic Competence ◽  
Efl Learners

Improving EFL learners' pragmatic awareness

2003 ◽  
Vol 141-142 ◽  
pp. 199-223
Author(s):  
Seran Doğançay-Aktuna
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Effective Communication ◽  
Pragmatic Competence ◽  
Main Claim ◽  
Advanced Level ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Linguistic Resources ◽  
Pragmatic Awareness ◽  
Language Classrooms

This paper overviews the ways in which EFL learners' pragmatic awareness can be developed in language classrooms through focused instruction and practice. It argues that effective communication requires awareness of the conventions governing language use and attention to the characteristics of the context and the interlocutors, besides linguistic resources. The main claim is that even though some pragmatics data that is based on native speaker norms might not provide relevant models for learners of English as a foreign or international language, these learners still need to become aware of crosscultural variation in norms of language use and learn how to consider social and contextual factors surrounding effective communication. After defining pragmatic competence and transfer, the paper discusses possible ways for integrating pragmatic consciousness-raising into language teaching and the problems involved in this endeavour. It then describes a course designed to raise pragmatic awareness in advanced level EFL learners as part of their TEFL training program. The underlying principles, materials and sample activities of the course are presented and learners' reaction to the course is discussed.

Developing a New Shadowing Procedure for Japanese EFL Learners

RELC Journal ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 003368822093762
Author(s):  
Yo Hamada
Keyword(s):  
University Students ◽  
Explicit Instruction ◽  
Corrective Feedback ◽  
Primary Study ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Japanese University ◽  
Speakers Of Other Languages ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Preliminary Study

Shadowing, a practice of repeating what one hears as simultaneously and accurately as possible, has been researched in the Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) field for years. The research findings have shown that shadowing contributes to English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners’ bottom-up listening skills, which leads to their overall listening comprehension skills. However, the accumulated research findings have not uncovered what aspects of bottom-up skills shadowing precisely contributes to. Thus, this study attempts to examine the aspects of bottom-up skills to which shadowing contributes and proposes a new shadowing procedure to compensate for the limitation of the current shadowing procedure. To this end, a preliminary study and a primary study were conducted. In the preliminary study, the bottom-up skill development through shadowing practice was precisely examined, using a 112-item bottom-up listening test. Thirty-six Japanese university students participated in the experiment and engaged in shadowing practice in eight lessons for a month. The result showed that shadowing practice was effective for developing the skill of identifying prominence in a speech, and word recognition skills but not effective for enhancing phonemic discrimination skills. In the primary study, to overcome the limitation of the shadowing procedure, a new shadowing procedure including three components of attention to output, corrective feedback, and explicit instruction was proposed. Twelve Japanese university students participated and engaged in the new shadowing procedure for three months. Their progress was assessed by a 32-item phonemic discrimination test, and the result showed that the new output-based shadowing procedure with explicit instruction and corrective feedback improved phonemic discrimination skills for intermediate level Japanese EFL learners.

scholarly journals News from the pragmatics classroom: Contrasting the inductive and the deductive approach in the teaching of pragmatic competence

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 529-561
Author(s):  
Karen Glaser
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Pragmatic Competence ◽  
Guided Discovery ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Quasi Experimental ◽  
Research Gap ◽  
Pragmatic Skills

Abstract While the role of pragmatic skills in a foreign or second language has been receiving increased attention both from a research and a language teaching perspective, there is still a lamentable scarcity of systematic empirical studies into the effectiveness of instructional methods in the teaching of pragmatics. Addressing this research gap, this article reports about a quasi-experimental study into possible differences between an explicit-inductive and an explicit-deductive instructional approach in the teaching of pragmatic skills in English as a Foreign Language (EFL), more specifically the teaching of offer refusals to 49 advanced adult EFL learners in Germany. The instruction consisted of three 90-minute lessons, which were spread out over the duration of a 15-week academic semester and designed according to the deductive principle and the inductive principle, respectively. While the deductive group was provided with metapragmatic rules directly at the beginning of the instruction, the inductive group only encountered such rules after engaging in language use and guided discovery. Production data was elicited by means of DCTs and role play in a pretest-posttest format. Effectiveness of instruction was operationalized by means of two indicators: Indicator 1 measured the increased usage of the strategies taught in class, while indicator 2 measured the approximation to a native speaker target. The results indicate that the gains in the inductive group surpassed those in the deductive group, suggesting that when situated within the explicit framework, inductive instruction is more effective in the teaching of pragmatic skills.

The Effect of Using Video Games on EFL Learners' Acquisition of Speech Acts of Apology and Request

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
pp. 1019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mahshid Shirazi ◽  
Seyyed Dariush Ahmadi ◽  
Ali Gholami Mehrdad
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Pragmatic Competence ◽  
Placement Test ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Post Test ◽  
Competence Test

This article presents a discussion about the inclusion of video game based pragmatic competence instruction as a facilitative tool to develop interlanguage pragmatic competence of Iranian EFL learners' acquisition of speech acts of apology and request. The question this article is intended to answer includes: whether using video game as a facilitative tool for developing interlanguage pragmatic competence have any effect on EFL learners’ acquisition of speech acts of apology and request or not. To answer this question, 40 Iranian intermediate EFL learners were selected via administering the Oxford Placement Test (OPT). Following the Jianda Liu pragmatic competence test (2004) that made test of apology and request speech acts were administered as the pre-test before the targeted speech acts were instructed to them for 8 sessions. The post-test of apology and request speech acts were then administered and data were analyzed via calculating ANCOVA and Mann-Whitney U test. The results indicated that the video game-based instructed EFL classroom showed positive progress in acquisition of apology and request speech acts.

The Effects of Communicative Pronunciation Instruction on Suprasegmental Performance in an EFL Context

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (10) ◽  
pp. 860
Author(s):  
Nasrin Shah Mohammad Nazari ◽  
Atefeh Sadat Mirsaeeidi
Keyword(s):  
Language Production ◽  
Explicit Instruction ◽  
Read Aloud ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Efl Context ◽  
Pronunciation Instruction ◽  
Picture Description ◽  
Based Instruction ◽  
Learned Features

This study investigated the effects of communicative suprasegmental instruction on Iranian EFL learners’ pronunciation performance. To this end, 24 pre-intermediate EFL learners were randomly assigned to two groups: the experimental group receiving communicative pronunciation instruction in which after receiving conventional explicit instruction students were given communicative tasks to practice learned features, and the control group receiving only conventional explicit exercise-based instruction. The learners’ pronunciations were assessed in controlled read-aloud and communicative picture-description/picture-driven contexts in terms of two suprasegmental features (i.e. compound words stress and interrogative intonation). The results of the study revealed that the explicit exercise-based instruction was significantly effective in controlled contexts but modestly effective in communicative picture-description and picture-driven tasks. On the contrary, communicative pronunciation instruction was not only significantly effective in the controlled context but also in communicative tasks. This finding reveals that communicative suprasegmental instruction is more effective than conventional explicit instruction in both controlled and communicative language production contexts. In the end, some pedagogical implications of the findings are also discussed.

scholarly journals The Impact of Discourse Marker Instruction on Fluency, Accuracy, and Complexity Improvement of Iranian Intermediate EFL Learners

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 152
Author(s):  
Ghader Asadzadian ◽  
Rashid Saad ◽  
Fereshteh Asadzadian
Keyword(s):  
Explicit Instruction ◽  
Corrective Feedback ◽  
Discourse Markers ◽  
Discourse Marker ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Writing Courses ◽  
English Major ◽  
The University ◽  
The Impact

The purpose of the study was to investigate the impact of discourse marker (DM) instruction on fluency, accuracy, and complexity improvement of Iranian intermediate EFL learner’s writing. To this aim, among the two hundred forth year English major learners in Dezful university, Iran, fifty of them who were in the intermediate level, based on the scoring system of the university, were recruited. They were given a topic to write before intervention. Then, the fifty participants passed through twenty-hour instruction on micro and macro DMs, based on Belles-Furtuno’s (2004) classification of discourse markers. The mentioned classification included both sentential and supra sentential markers. In the process of explicit instruction (EI) of DMs, they were given various exercises and activities to apply DMs and learn the function and usage of these units and input flood (IF) was performed along with corrective feedback (CF) with the help of the teacher with their mistakes and misunderstandings of DMs. After intervention, they were given another topic to write to examine if EI+IF of DMs could help them improve fluency, accuracy, and complexity of their writing. To quantify the results the Wolfe-Quintero (1998) method was used and it was unveiled that all the three components of writing improved after intervention, which practically means instruction of DMs could enhance learner’s writing in the three aspects. The findings can be used by teachers and syllabus designers to consider DMs as one of the most crucial components in writing courses.

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