The Effect of Pragmatic Instruction on the Speech Act Awareness of Third Year Graduate Students of English
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Date
2014-04
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Abstract
Abstract
This study deals with the application of the pragmatics research to
EFL teaching. The study explored the effect of explicit pragmatic
instruction on the speech act awareness of third year EFL students at the
department of English university of Constantine1. The speech acts of
requesting and apologizing were selected as the focus of teaching.
Teacher-fronted discussions, cooperative grouping, role plays, and other
pragmatically oriented tasks were used to promote the learning of the
intended speech acts. A pre-test-post-test control group design was used.
The subjects included undergraduate students in their last year of study in
the field of applied language studies. A multiple choice pragmatic
comprehension test was developed in several stages and used both as a
pre-test and post-test to measure the effect of instruction on the pragmatic
awareness of the students. The results of the data analysis revealed that
students’ speech act comprehension improved significantly and that
pragmatic competence is not impervious to instruction even in EFL
settings.