The effect of instruction on learning refusals in EFL learners
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17722/jell.v3i1.43Keywords:
Pragmatic development, Pragmatic instruction, Refusals, Explicit instruction, implicit instructionAbstract
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.
References
Alcon Soler, E. & Martinez-Flor, A. (2008). Investigating Pragmatics in ForeignLanguage Learning, Teaching and Testing. Great Britain: Cromwell Press, Chapter 1).
Bardovi-Harlig, K. (2001). Evaluating the empirical evidence: Grounds for instruction in pragmatics? In: K. Rose & G. Kasper (Eds.) , Pragmatics in language teaching (pp. 13- 32). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Barron, A. 2003. Acquisition in interlanguage pragmatics: learning how to do things. Philadelphia, PA, USA: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Bouton, L. F. (1994b). Conversational implicature in a second language: Learned slowly when not deliberately taught. Journal of Pragmatics, 22, 157-167.
Brown, P., & Levinson, S. 1978/1987. Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Celce-Murcia, M., Dörnyei, Z., & Thurrell, S. (1995). Communicative Competence: A pedagogically motivated model with content specifications. Issues in Applied Linguistics, 6, 5-35.Cheng, W. 2003. Intercultural Conversation: A Study of Hong Kong Chinese. Philadelphia, PA, USA: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Ellis, R., (2008). The Study of Second Language Acquisition. Oxford University Press.
Fromkin, V., Rodman R. & Hymas, N. (2003). An Introduction to Language. United States: Thomson, (Chapter 5).
Goffman, E. 1967. Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-face Behavior. Garden City, NY: Anchor. Holtgraves, T. (1998). Interpreting Indirect Replies. Cognitive Psychology, 37, 1-27.
Holtgraves, T. (2005). Social Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, and Linguistic Politeness. Journal of Politeness Research. Language, Behaviour, Culture,1, 73-93.
House, J. (1996). Developing pragmatic fluency in English as a foreign language: Routines and met pragmatic awareness. Studies in Second Language Acquisition18, 225- 52.
Ishihara, N. & A. Cohen, (2010). Teaching and Learning Pragmatics. Longman: Pearson.
Ishihara, N., (2003). Identity and Pragmatic Performance of Second Language Learners.Paper Presented at the Annual Conference of the American Association for Applied Linguistics. Kawate-Mierzejewska, M. (2006). Request-refusal Interactions in Telephone Conversations. Tokyo: Kuroshio Publishers.
Kasper, G. (1997). Can pragmatic competence be taught? (NetWork #6) [HTML document]. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i, Second Language Teaching &Curriculum enter. Retrieved October, 26, 2001, from www.nflrc.hawaii.edu/NetWorks/NW06.
Kasper, G., & Schmidt, R. (1996). Developmental issues in interlanguage pragmatics. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 18, 149-69.
Kasper, G. & Rose, K. R. (1999). Pragmatics and SLA. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 19, 81-104.
Kasper, G., Rose, K.R. 2002. Pragmatic Development in a Second Language. Mahwah, NJ: Blackwell.
Kim, D., & Hall, J. K. (2002). The role of an interactive book reading program in the development of second language pragmatic competence. The Modern Language Journal, 86, 332-348.
King, K. A., & Silver, R. E. (1993). "Sticking points": Effects of instruction on NNS refusal strategies. Working Papers in Educational Linguistics, 9, 47-82.
Kubota, M. (1995). Teachability of conversational implicative to Japanese EFLlearners. IRLT Bulletin 9, 35–67
Kempson, R. M. (1996). Semantics, Pragmatics and Natural-Language interpretation. Blackwell.
Kondo, S. (2001). Instructional Effects on Pragmatic Development: Refusal by Japanese EFL Learners. Publications of Akenohoshi Women’s Junior College. 19. 33-51.
Martinez-Flor, A. & E. Uso-Juan, (2010a). Pragmatics and Speech Act Performance.Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Martinez-Flor, A. & E. Uso-Juan, (2010b). Speech Act Performance: Theoretical, Empirical and Methodological Issues. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
McLean, T. (2004). Giving Students a Fighting Chance: Pragmatics in the Language Classroom. TESL Canada Journal. 21(2). 72-92.
Morris, C. H. (1938). Foundation of the Theory of Signs. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Pütz, M. & Aertselaer, J. (2008). Developing Contrastive Pragmatics. Berlin: Sigurd Wendland.
Searle, J. (1975). Indirect Speech Acts in P. Cole and J. Morgan. New York: Academic Press.
Schauer, G. (2009). Interlanguage Pragmatic Development. New York: Continuum, (Chapter 2).
Tannen, D. (1985). Silence: anything but. In: D. Tannen, & Saville-Troike (Eds.), Perspectives on Silence (pp. 93-112). Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corporation.
Tateyama, Y. (2001). Explicit and implicit teaching of pragmatics routines: Japanese sumimasen. In: K. Rose, & G. Kasper. (Eds.) , Pragmatics in Language Teaching (pp. 200-222). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Thomas, J. (1995). Meaning in “interaction: An Introduction to Pragmatics. New York:Longman Group.
Turnbull, W. (2001). An Appraisal of Pragmatic Elicitation Techniques for the Socialsychological Study of Talk: The Case of Request Refusals. Pragmatics. 11(1). 31- 61.
Umale, J. (2011). Pragmatic Failure in Refusal Strategies: British versus Omani Interlocutors. Arab World English Journal. 2(1). 18-46.
Wishnoff, J. (2000). Hedging your bets: L2 learners’ acquisition of pragmatic devices in academic writing and computer-mediated discourse [PDF document]. University of Hawai'i, Working Papers in Second Language Studies, 19 (1), Fall 2000, pp. 119- 157. From http://www.hawaii.edu/sls/?link=working_papers
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2015 Journal of English Language and Literature
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
