Acquisition Of Speech Act Set In The EFL Classroom Setting

The relationship between grammatical and pragmatic proficiency of EFL/ESL learners remains a controversial issue. Some researchers hold that they do not affect each other (Olshtain and Blum-Kulka, 1985:321), while others report a certain relationship between them, although the nature of the relationship is not clear (Trosborg, 1987. Takahashi & Beebe, 1987. etc.).This study is an attempt to probe into this question by investigating the role of grammatical ability in Chinese EFL learners' acquisition of pragmatic ability to perform the speech act set of gift offering and accepting (G.O.A.). In addition, the issues of pragmatic transfer and the effect of pragmatic instruction in the Chinese classroom settings are examined.54 students participated in the study, who were divided into two groups representing two grammatical levels according to the scores they got in a grammar test. Each subject was required to write two letters in Chinese and English respectively, in which the G.O.A. is embedded. They also answered a questionnaire asking for their basis of their writing. Thus, three types of data are collected. They were: (1) the Chinese letter describing Chinese G.O.A. conventions, (2) the English letter describing English G.O.A. conventions, and (3) responses to the questionnaire.The major findings of the study are (a) there is no pragmatic development in the subjects to perform the speech act set G.O.A. with the grammatical increase; (b) the subjects' grammatical ability influences the verbal presentation of their pragmatic knowledge about G.O.A.; (c) Chinese G.O.A. influence on English mainly manifestsitself on the offering stage but not on the accepting stage; and (d) classroom pragmatic instruction hardly plays any role in helping subjects achieve the pragmatic knowledge about G.O.A.Thus it can be concluded that the relationship between grammatical and pragmatic proficiency can be conceptualized as follows: grammatical proficiency helps the external realization of pragmatic proficiency, but not the acquisition/learning of it; the former can be said to be the necessary condition for the latter. It, therefore, can be further argued that pragmatic knowledge should be taught separately from grammatical knowledge with explicit and systematic instructions. In the light of this conclusion, the way of pragmatic instruction in Chinese classrooms needs improvement, as it was not proved helpful for learners in the speech act set G.O.A.