Effects of pedagogical intervention on the development of pragmatic competence in adult learners of English as a foreign language (EFL)

Abstract

During the last several years, the growing interest in the teachability of pragmatics in a second or foreign language has been represented by a number of interventional studies that have examined either the possibility of teaching certain pragmatic features, or the effectiveness of specific teaching methods. This classroom-based project designed to investigate the teachability of pragmatics, focused on four intact classes at two different proficiency levels, using a quasi-experimental research design with the following structure: pretest - treatment - posttest - and delayed posttest. Participants were enrolled in a program of Foreign Languages at a university in Colombia. Two groups of students of basic English 2 (second semester) and two groups of students of intermediate English 1 (fifth semester) were the participants. The four groups received a written discourse completion test (WDCT) and a paired video-taped role-play (RP) as pretests. Results from the WDCT showed no significant differences between the two groups at each level, so the type of treatment (T1: pragmatics-based, and T2: institutionally imparted) was randomly assigned to the groups at each level. Treatment 1 provided learners with sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic information and practice of receptive and productive skills in the TL. The treatment lasted 20 hours distributed across three weeks, after which, all the participants received a post-test in the same two forms taken by the pretest. The comparison of paired samples between the pre-test and the post-test, and the comparison of multivariate means between groups at each level showed significant differences that confirmed the efficiency of the pragmatics-based instruction, although improvement was more evident in WDCT performance than in RP performance. The qualitative analysis indicated progress in the ability to perform the expected speech act, the use of typical expressions, and the amount of information given. Improvement was also salient in macrolevel cultural aspects such as the expression of appropriate levels of formality, directness and politeness for the realizations of requests, apologies and compliments, as measured by the WDCT and the RP. The delayed post-test suggests that the pragmatics-oriented instruction favored both retention and improvement for the WDCT, while for the RP, the main effect was retention.