The Effects Of Instruction On EFL Learners’ Pragmatic Development

L2learners’ pragmatic failures are common. Shall attention be paid to pragmatics in formal instruction? If so, how? Literature has abounded with research on the development of L2pragmatic ability. However, longitudinal studies examining effects of instruction are few and far between. Ishihara’s in2004is one exception in ESL classroom, which is the base of our study in EFL classroom. With giving and responding to compliments as the target item, we made an experimental study of the immediate and delayed effects of instruction in18non-English major freshmen. The teaching materials were prepared basing on the previous research findings and movie episodes with speech acts of giving and responding to compliments in American English. After the first lesson, learners were asked, with the help of our data collection form, to collect some complimenting conversations from American movies, which were integrated into the following three classes. Their role-play performance and awareness of giving and responding to compliments were measured by the specially designed tool during the process of instruction. Learners’ oral performance before the instruction, at the end of every lesson, and one month after the instruction was recorded by Wechat and then transcribed using the transcription conventions of Conversation Analysis. Still, there was written performance before the instruction, right after the instruction and one month after the instruction. As the instruction went on, learners made longer complimenting conversations, utilized most of the syntactic structures of compliments we had introduced, responded to compliments at will with all kinds of response strategies. A delayed test was made one month after the instruction, which found that most of them still gave and responded to compliments with appropriate topics, sentence patterns learned before and appropriate responses in longer conversations. By looking into the answers about the written questions asked before, during and right after the instruction, we learned that learners’awareness of giving and responding to compliments was becoming clearer and clearer, such as what the appropriate topics should be, how the gender and social status affect using this speech act in the U.S. With the previous research findings and movie episodes as teaching materials, our preliminary study supports the positive immediate and delayed effects of instruction in pragmatics in EFL classroom. With such results, the researcher is confident that Pragmatic instruction will merge into the mainstream of L2teaching and learning.