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Scaffolding is a contributing factor to the effectiveness of pragmatic instruction. Although there is a large body of research on the means of scaffolding in second language teaching, research on scaffolding in L2 pragmatic instruction, especially in online teaching, is still in its infancy. To bridge the gap, this study investigated the means of scaffolding (feedback, giving hints, instructing, explaining, modeling, and questioning) utilized by teachers to aid learners in producing pragmatically appropriate speech acts of request and refusal. The data from 18 hours of online pragmatic instruction to 21 intermediate EFL learners via the Skyroom platform showed that the most frequent means of scaffolding used by three teachers participating in this study were questioning and explaining. Employing questioning, teachers used display questions to guide learners toward the appropriate production of request and refusal. Moreover, explaining, as a means of scaffolding, helped learners establish connections between new pragmatic knowledge and their prior knowledge of the speech act. The other three means of scaffolding, including feedback, giving hints, and modeling, were characterized by almost the same rate of frequency. The least frequent means of scaffolding was found to be instructing. It can be concluded that teachers tend to use questioning as a means of scaffolding more frequently because pragmatic knowledge needs to be improved through interaction. The findings can help teacher educators heighten the teachers' knowledge of various means of scaffolding to enable them to employ different means of scaffolding instead of overusing questioning and explaining.

Nearly all multidimensional models of communication competence have pragmatic competence at their core. Proper assessment of second language (L2) pragmatics makes many demands on L2 teachers, both in terms of understanding the construct and in language test development. Therefore, being assessment literate helps teachers in developing effective tests geared toward educational outcomes. Despite the importance of assessment literacy (AL) for pragmatics, the field is still under-researched. Mindful of this fact and the significance of pragmatics in L2 learning and assessment, this study adopted the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) model of pragmatic competence to examine Iranian L2 teachers' AL for L2 pragmatics and linked the results to the Sociocultural Theory (SCT) for formulating theory-informed answers to the problems in the teachers' assessment of L2 pragmatics. Group interviews were run with 67 participants and then qualitative and quantitative content analyses were performed. The paper discusses the identified problems in the assessment of L2 pragmatics and offers recommendations for raising L2 teachers' AL for L2 pragmatics.

Though dynamic assessment (DA) has gained strong theoretical and empirical support over the last decades, second language (L2) practitioners have blamed it for its applicability in large classes. To ameliorate this limitation, peer-dynamic assessment (peer-DA), rooted in the conceptualization of zone of proximal development (ZPD), can be introduced and practiced as an alternative approach. Thus, this study aimed to investigate the effects of peer-DA on cultivating Iranian upper-intermediate EFL learners' interlanguage pragmatic (ILP) competence. Additionally, it was to disclose how peer-DA leads to improving the learners' ILP competence. To achieve these aims, a sample of 84 upper-intermediate EFL learners, including females was selected through a convenience sampling method at Iran Language Institute in Borujerd City, Iran. Then, a total of 37 EFL learners whose scores fell around the mean score were selected and randomly assigned to two groups, namely an experimental (n = 19) and a control (n = 18). Then, they went through a pre-test, interventions (lasting 16 one-hour sessions held two times a week), and a post-test. The experimental group's interactions were meticulously recorded. The collected data were analyzed through two independent samples t-tests, and the microgenetic development approach. Findings documented a statistically significant difference between the experimental group and control group concerning the gains of ILP competence on the post-test. Furthermore, the results of the microgenetic development analysis evidenced how the gradual, contingent prompts could lead to noticeable improvements in the learning of ILP features. These findings may have some pedagogical implications for different stakeholders.

Research into second language (L2) pragmatics has addressed a number of learner variables likely to implicate in speech act knowledge. Subscribing to the same line of research, the present study addressed the development and validation of a pragmatic learning strategy inventory (PRALSI), and the relationship between English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' pragmatic learning strategy (PLS) use and their speech act knowledge. A total of 245 Iranian English-major undergraduates, ranging in age from 19 to 31, participated in PRALSI's validation study. Of these, 117 further participated in the second phase of the study to unearth the relationship between PLS use and speech act knowledge, measured through a 24-item written discourse completion test (WDCT). Principal component analysis confirmed the 3-factor structure of PRALSI, comprising implicit, inductive explicit, and deductive explicit strategies. The inventory contains 41 strategies for the learning of three main aspects of pragmatic competence: speech acts, implicature, and conversational routines. Two one-way ANOVAs also showed strategy use, particularly the use of explicit strategies, to be positively correlated with speech act knowledge. The findings reveal the implications of the implicit/explicit learning dichotomy for pragmatic development and strategy use, and the potentially greater advantage explicit strategies offer for pragmatic knowledge.

In the poststructuralist view, just as language learners' sense of self-identity impacts their language learning choices, the learners' variable investment in social-cultural-political processes and discourse practices can dynamically influence their identity (re)constructions across time and space. This interpretive case study examined how 2 Iranian EFL learners' identity (re)positioning in a university context might influence their foreign/second language (L2) pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic requestive choices. The employed mixed-method data-collection procedure comprised an identity questionnaire, classroom observations, role plays, stimulated recalls, and diaries. Results indicated that the male learner with an L2-oriented identity was still under the influence of his L1 identity projections in his pragmatic choices. Although his pragmalinguistic choices in the third scenario grew increasingly L2-like, L1 appropriacy preferences still persisted in his pragmatic production. Surprisingly, however, the initially L1-identity female learner progressively demonstrated more openness towards renegotiating a newer L2-inclined social identity and employing more L2-like sociopragmatic norms. Further theoretical or pedagogical implications are discussed.

While aptitude has been seen to contribute to second language (L2) development, most studies have examined its contribution as a fixed trait, rather than viewing it as a dynamic, changing variable. There appears to have been little or no investigation of the role that aptitude plays in the development of L2 pragmatic ability. Therefore, this study sought to investigate the contribution of L2 learning aptitude as measured by Grigorenko et al.'s (2000) CANAL-FT ("The Cognitive Ability for Novelty in Acquisition of Language as Applied to Foreign Language Test") to L2 speech-act knowledge among 121 Iranian upper-intermediate to advanced level EFL learners. In addition, a multiple-choice discourse completion test (MDCT) comprising three common English speech acts (Derakhshan, 2014) was administered to the participants. A multiple regression analysis revealed that all five components of CANAL-FT were significant predictors of L2 speech-act knowledge. The aptitude for learning sentential inferences was the strongest predictor, followed by the ability to acquire the meanings of the whole passage. The other three components of aptitude, namely, comprehending the meanings of contextualized neologisms, acquiring the language rules, and learning the meanings of paired associates, were found to be moderate predictors of L2 speech act knowledge. These results appeared to underscore the benefits of obtaining aptitude data on learners as a means for better understanding the dynamics of L2 development in the area of pragmatics.

Although the effective role of instruction in developing L2 learners' pragmatic competence has been acknowledged in the literature, very few studies have investigated the effect of a specific language teaching method on the development of pragmatic competence. Thus, to address the existing gap, this study was conducted (1) to investigate the effectiveness of task-based instruction (TBI) on the development of pragmatic competence and (2) to see the effect(s) of information-gap, reasoning-gap, and opinion-gap tasks on the development of EFL learners' pragmatic production, metapragmatic awareness, and comprehension of implicature. To this end, 60 homogeneous intermediate EFL learners were selected and assigned to three groups randomly. The twenty members of each group received instruction on the three speech acts of request, refusal, and apology through one task type, i.e., in group #1, through information-gap, in group #2, through opinion-gap, and in group #3 through reasoning-gap tasks. The findings confirmed the positive effect of TBI on EFL learner's pragmatic competence. Also, learners in the information-gap task group outperformed the other groups on pragmatic production and metapragmatic awareness, but there was no significant difference among the groups regarding their comprehension of implicature. This study has implications for English language instructors, materials developers, and researchers.

Language knowledge is not limited to linguistic competence; cultural norms of a society affect the way people communicate. In fact, culture, tradition, and values are realized and manifested through language and the use of units known as speech acts. The current study sought to explore the strategies used by 200 native Iranian speakers of Persian, 50 American native speakers of English, and 48 Iranian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners in producing the speech act of congratulations through the social network of Instagram. Participants were asked to comment in response to the post and congratulate the celebrity for their birthday. The content analysis of the congratulations corpus led to the emergence of eight categories of congratulation strategies for Iranian native speakers of Persian (the most frequent one: "statement of congratulations," n = 80, 58.39%), nine categories for the American native speakers of English (the most frequent one: "use of address terms," n = 44, 30.34%), and seven categories for the Iranian EFL learners (the most frequent one: "statement of congratulations," n = 28, 47.45%). Moreover, the results of Chi-square indicated that the three groups were different with regard to certain categories of congratulation strategies. The results can have important implications for EFL teachers and learners as well as textbook developers.

As language acquisition research supports the value of the interactive scaffolded environment and awareness-raising communicative tasks for the development of pragmatic knowledge, the present study attempted to investigate the effect of Collaborative Translation Task (CTT) on learning and retention of request speech act strategies. The main objective of the study was to determine whether collaborative translation tasks, either from or to the target language, presented in a supportive expert-novice environment, might lead to more efficient learning and retention of pragmatic knowledge. For this purpose, an experimental study was designed with four experimental groups and one control group, receiving different types of treatment including CTTs, and structured input with and without explicit instruction. Three equivalent forms of discourse completion tasks (DCT) were given to 150 low-intermediate participants as a pre-test, a post-test and a two-month follow-up delayed post-test. The results of the study indicated that CTTs appeared to have enabled noticing and deeper processing of both pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic knowledge and resulted in improved learning and retention of pragmatic knowledge. The results also provide positive evidence for House's (2008) hypothesis that translation has the potential to raise pragmatic and cross-cultural awareness.

The main purpose of the present study is to propose a framework for implementing group dynamic assessment (DA) using students' smartphones for improving and assessing EFL learners' ability to produce well-formed and appropriate requests. This study focuses on five learner reciprocity moves during DA interactions to get deeper insights into the learners' development. During three treatment sessions, the participants of the DA style instruction were asked to make requests in response to a number of scenarios during mobile-mediated group interactions via WhatsApp. The DA group participants were prompted to revise and self-correct their incorrect requests by a sequence of incrementally-ordered hints from most implicit to most explicit based on the sociocultural framework. The analysis of learners' reciprocity moves during the three DA sessions revealed that learners became progressively more responsive to mediation for formulating correct requests and achieved a more agentive role to interact with the mediator. Analyzing learners' scores obtained from three testing occasions also revealed that mobile-mediated DA was significantly effective to promote the learners' knowledge of request strategies.

This study explores discourse markers (DMs) as they occur with compliment responses (CRs) in classroom interactions among Iranian learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). Using the tenets of conversation analysis, this paper draws on data from teacher-student interactions in several private language institutes in Iran. After audiorecording and transcription of the compliment-response exchanges, 148 DMs were identified within the responses. These sequences were analyzed to find out how DMs are combined with four distinct CR types; accept, mitigate, reject, and request interpretation. DMs were also identified and categorizedbased on their frequency of occurance and semantic features to allow comparison with previous findings. The results of this study revealed that Iranian EFL learners resorted to a limited number of DMs in responses to teacher-generated compliments, with "linking" DMs being the most favorable type. Moreover, some DMs were accompanied by a specific CR type which helped the formation of an intended illocutionary force by the complimentee. It was also observed that a DM or a combination of these markers can stand alone as a legitimate and functional response to compliments, which further reveals that DMs can contribute to both semantic and pragmatic meaning. These findings clearly suggest that explicit teaching of DMs in English language classes should be taken into consideration, as these linguistic elements can provide learners with important tools to convey their intended meaning more smoothly and effectively.

Recently, the field of instructed pragmatics has seen a shift of paradigm from the prevailing cognitive approaches to socially-oriented ones, revolving around the notions like collaborative dialogue and sociocultural theory. Drawing on the notion of collaborative dialogue, this study investigates the extent to which teacher's scaffolding and peers' collaborative dialogue assist EFL learners' to produce requests, apologies, and refusals. It also explores the effect of symmetrical and asymmetrical proficiency pairings during the participants' collaborative dialogue on the production of speech acts. To this end, three intermediate-level intact classes were randomly assigned to the teacher's scaffolding (TS), peers' collaborative dialogue (PCD), and control groups. The PCD group was also divided into symmetrical and asymmetrical pairs based on their pragmatic pretest scores. The treatment lasted for 11 sessions. Each session involved the metapragmatic instruction followed by pragmatic problem-solving tasks, with the TS group getting the teacher's scaffolding and the PCD group collaborating in pairs while doing the tasks. The ANOVA and independent samples t-test results of the post-test scores revealed the superiority of the PCD group over the TS group. Asymmetrical pairs were also found to outperform their symmetrical counterparts. The findings reveal the potentiality of peer mediators in L2 pragmatic acquisition and point to interlanguage pragmatic gains associated with an asymmetrical proficiency pairing.

This study explored how Iranian EFL learners and native English speakers conceptualized the impolite use of "please" in interaction. Moreover, attempts were made to examine whether Iranian EFL learners and native English speakers differ in using the impolite version of please in their communications. To this end, informal conversations of 20 Iranian EFL learners in pairs and small groups were recorded and transcribed. The impolite version of "please" in these conversations was compared with similar data from the Bergen Corpus of London Teenage Language (COLT). According to results, several functions of the 'impolite' "please" were found among Iranian EFL learners and native English speakers. Firstly, "please" was used to establish or confirm harmonious relationships between the speakers; it was used as rapport-strengthening impoliteness marker. Secondly, 'mock impoliteness' was conceptualized to bear positive meaning since it was interpreted as an amusing or entertaining remark. In teenagers' circles, entertainment skills whereby impolite "please" was employed were highly valued. Thirdly, participants adhered to 'repetition', 'reformulation', and 'escalation' in their interactions to show their creative impoliteness. Finally, it was concluded that certain functions of the impolite "please" were shared between the Iranian EFL learners and native English speakers, while some functions were not shared between these two groups.

The present study intended to investigate the possible effects of speech acts strategies on Iranian beginner and intermediate EFL learners' speaking ability. The first step in conducting this research was the administration of QPT [Quick Placement Test] as the homogenizing tool. It was administered to 180 beginners and intermediate EFL learners. After analyzing the results, 80 males and females as starters and 80 males and females as intermediate subjects were chosen. Then, the beginner and intermediate EFL learners were randomly divided into control and experimental groups (including 40 beginner male and 40 female EFL learners in each class). Next, a pretest of speaking was administered to all the participants and the experimental groups received speech act role play as treatment. However, the researcher did not use any treatment of speech acts in control groups. After ten sessions, the posttest was administered to all participants. The findings suggested that awareness raising on speech acts resulted in a better speaking ability as compared to the simply traditional teaching of speaking for Iranian intermediate and beginner EFL learners. Additionally, intermediate EFL learners' achievement in speaking was not in line with the beginner EFL learners' achievement in the corresponding group. Finally, it was found that gender does not interact with awareness raising on speech acts in such a way as to produce a statistically significant effect on the beginner and intermediate EFL learners' speaking ability.

Politeness strategies that speakers deploy when performing a speech act have been seen to be influenced by several factors among which gender and socioeconomic status are two prominent ones. The current study was an attempt to examine the relationship between gender and socioeconomic status (SES) on one hand, and choice of politeness strategies on the other. The focus was specifically on the realization of speech act of request in Persian (L1) and English (L2). The participants were 100 advanced-level Iranian EFL students. Based on their gender and responses to the socioeconomic status questionnaire, they were divided into four equal groups of twenty-five: 1. male-high; 2. male-low; 3. female-high; and 4. female-low. The data collection instruments were the English and Persian versions of a discourse completion test (DCT). The results revealed a significant relationship between gender and use of politeness strategies in speech act of request in L1 as well as L2. The findings, however, demonstrated no significant relationship between the participants' socioeconomic status and their use of politeness strategy neither in L1 nor in L2. This study can be another proof for Brown and Levinson's claim about the universality of politeness strategies.

Politeness is a phenomenon which is common to all cultures. Each culture has a different perception of what is polite and each language has various devices for expressing politeness. Besides, gender can be considered as an important variable in language use and research suggest that men and women use language differently. Speech acts is not an exception. Thus, this study investigates gender differences of EFL learners in making refusals. To analyze this, a DTC questionnaire consisting of fourteen situations was given to 100 students (50 male/50 female) asking them to write how they would make refusals for each situation. The results of the analysis indicated that both male and female students use substantially more indirect strategies than direct strategies in most cases. Although indirect strategies are preferred by these two groups, there still exists difference between male and female subjects in terms of the probability of indirectness. Female students' refusals tend to be more gentle and indirect than those of male students. Female students like to explain reasons, and they prefer to use detailed and specific response instead of a direct "no". By contrast, male students' refusals tend to be direct, brief and even blunt. Besides, male and female students have different tendency in four different refusing situations.

In Iran the age of learning English as a foreign language is decreasing yearly. It is obvious that learning English at a very early age is a most appropriate time to start. The investigation in this study is focused on the speech act of request. Instructional effects of learning request strategies are assessed in preschoolers who received instruction to find out whether the exposure to the foreign language learning enhances the development of request strategy use and brings about changes in their first language strategy use features. The data were collected from 10 preschool Iranian learners of English as a foreign language. The participants of the study took a two-semester speaking course in an academic setting in Iran. The study had a pretest and posttest design in which 10 conversations were used including polite request strategies of English to analyze instructional effects on the learners' first language after the posttest, by comparing and measuring the backward transfer against the pretest results. The oral task was in the form of role plays which were also utilized for communicative practice with the learners. The data were rated for the extent of a foreign language effect on the first language by experienced tutors and linguistic analyses were done to identify the foreign language components of request strategies features in the first language production. Results showed that frequent use of English request strategy features in the first language was an indication of L2 students' beneficial experience in their L1.

This study aimed at examining the possible effects of teacher motivational practices and student demotivation on the way Iranian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners produce request and refusal speech acts. Subsequently, four instruments were selected and administered to the participants under scrutiny. They were: (a) a Quick Placement Test, (b) the Motivational Orientation of Language Teaching classroom observation scheme, (c) the Post-Lesson Teacher Evaluation scale, and (d) a Discourse Completion Task. The analyses of the related data obtained from the targeted participants revealed significant differences between students in high and low motivation groups with respect to the production of request and refusal speech acts on the post-test scores. It was observed that various levels of demotivation dramatically influence the quality of request and refusal speech acts produced by the learners in their English classes. Alternatively, the findings demonstrated that teachers' motivational practices had a direct bearing on the learners' productions of the targeted speech acts. Notably, the results of the study may offer insightful benefits to textbook developers, EFL teachers, and stakeholders involved in the language teaching profession.

Pragmatic competence is considered one of the principal elements of second/foreign language learners' communicative language ability. However, in comparison to other components of communicative language competence, learners' pragmatic competence is far less researched. Of many components of this ability, ample research studies have been centered upon developing instruments in the field of interlanguage pragmatics that are mostly informed by the speech act framework. However, the assessment of conversational implicature, as other component of pragmatic ability, is under researched. In order to address this gap, the aim was to construct and validate a conversational implicature test. According to Grice's (1975) conversational maxims and Goffman's (1967) face management insights, a hypothesized model for conversational implicature was offered and examined. The procedures for validating the instrument included gathering information relating to content and construct validity of the test. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) through structural equation modeling (SEM) and differential group study were employed in support for the empirical evidence of construct validity. The developed test with 34-multiple-choice-item was distributed among 385 EFL university students who were at different proficiency levels. The results showed that the hypothesized model was fitted properly to the indexes based on CFA analysis. Furthermore, students with different English proficiency differed significantly in their comprehension of implicatures.

This quasi-experimental study adopted a pretest/posttest design to investigate the effect of instructional intervention in teaching polite refusal strategies explicitly on Iranian EFL learners' performance of the speech act of refusing. The participants, consisting of 24 male elementary EFL learners aged 12-18, responded to a discourse completion task (DCT) prior to and after they had been provided with explicit instruction concerning the polite performance of refusals in English. Adopting Brown and Levinson's (1987) politeness theory and Beebe, Takahashi and Uliss-Weltz's (1990) taxonomy of refusal strategies, the researchers found that the participants' refusal semantic formulas in the pretest contained a variety of impoliteness markers including directness, lack of mitigation, and terseness of responses. The pedagogical instruction was directed at eliminating these inappropriacy elements, addressing the lengthening and intensification of refusal semantic formulas, use of adjuncts to refusals, titles, honorifics, apologizing, etc. The participants' responses to the DCT in the posttest showed a high level of appropriacy in the semantic content of refusal utterances compared to their responses in the pretest. Furthermore, the findings demonstrated that significant differences existed in terms of the content, frequency and types of both refusal strategies and adjuncts to refusals between the pretest and posttest phases. In conclusion, the study revealed the positive effects of instructional intervention on the development of the pragmatic competence of learners with low linguistic proficiency levels.

The development of speech-act theory has provided the hearers with a better understanding of what speakers intend to perform in the act of communication. One type of speech act is apologizing. When an action or utterance has resulted in an offense, the offender needs to apologize. In the present study, an attempt was made to compare the apology strategies employed by Iranian EFL learners and those of English native speakers in order to find out the possible differences and similarities. To this end, a discourse completion test (DCT) was given to 100 male and female Iranian EFL learners and English native speakers. The respondents were supposed to complete the DCTs based on nine situations, which varied in terms of power between the interlocutors and level of imposition. This study employed Cohen and Olshtain's (1981) model to classify various types of apology strategies. The obtained results revealed some similarities along with some (statistically insignificant) differences between EFL learners and American English speakers in terms of their use of apology strategies. Furthermore, it was found that the illocutionary force indicating devices (IFIDs), such as request for forgiveness and an offer of apology were the strategies mostly employed by the Iranian EFL learners while taking on responsibility such as explicit self-blame, and expression of self-deficiency were found to be the strategies mostly used by English native speakers. In terms of gender, the male and female respondents more or less used the same apology strategies in response to the situations. The findings of the present research can be used by language teachers as well as sociolinguists.

The analysis of raters' comments on pragmatic assessment of L2 learners is among new and understudied concepts in second language studies. To shed light on this issue, the present investigation targeted important variables such as raters' criteria and rating patterns by analyzing the interlanguage pragmatic assessment process of the Iranian non-native English speaking raters (NNESRs) regarding the request speech act, while considering important factors such as raters' gender and background teaching experiences. For this purpose, 62 raters' rating scores and comments on Iranian EFL learners' requests based on six situations of specified video prompts were analyzed. The results of the content analysis of raters' comments revealed nine criteria, including pragmalinguistic and socio-pragmatic components of language, which have been noted by raters differently through six request situations. Among the considered criteria, politeness, conversers' relationship, style and register, and explanation were of great importance to NNESRs. Furthermore, t-test and chi-square analysis of raters' assigned rating scores and mentioned criteria across different situations verified the insignificance of factors such as raters' gender and teaching experiences on the process of EFL learners' pragmatic assessment. In addition, the results of the study suggest the necessity of teaching L2 pragmatics in language classes and in teacher training courses.

Attitude toward accepting target language culture or maintaining heritage culture referred to as acculturation attitude can determine language learners' pragmatic gains during an educational sojourn. To this end, the current study investigated the relationship between language learners' acculturation attitudes during an educational sojourn and the effectiveness of pragmatic instruction. Participants of the study were 52 Iranian postgraduate students of English education at a university in Australia. A discourse completion task was used to assess language learners' level of pragmatic competence. The adapted version of Berry's (2001) East Asian Acculturation Measure (EAAM) was also used to assess language learners' level of acculturation attitude toward Australian culture. The analysis of Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient (r) revealed that there is a strong positive relationship between acculturation attitude and effectiveness of pragmatic instruction. The pedagogical implications of the findings suggested encouraging and providing opportunities for language learners who are on an educational sojourn to immerse in target language culture to be able to develop their pragmatic competence to an optimal level.

This study investigated the potentials of face-to-face and computer mediated conversation (CMC) as two speaking modalities on students' engagement. To this end, 30 Iranian male intermediate EFL learners were selected on the basis of their performance on OPT (Oxford Placement Test) and assigned into the research groups. The progression of face- to- face and CMC groups from limited to elaborate engagement at verbal, paralinguistic and functional levels was assessed using transcription analysis in face-to-face group and chat log analysis in CMC group. The limited and elaborate student engagement indicators in two modalities were identified via Maxqda software. The results of Maxqda analysis indicated that limited engagement was associated with appeal for help, silence, pauses and hesitations, focus on syntax, involvement with procedural talk and L1 use. Respectively, elaborate engagement was associated with avoiding L1 use, focus on discourse, involvement with actual talk and strategic discourse management rather than pause and silence. Chi-square analysis on frequency of indicators of limited and elaborate engagements on verbal, paralinguistic and functional levels indicated that limited and elaborate engagements occurred with different proportions in face-to-face and CMC conversations. Teaching practitioners would benefit the findings of the study since the findings illustrate how students' engagement in learning evolves and how speaking modalities may impact the pattern of students' engagement over time. The finding also suggest one way for improving student engagement without over-intervening of teachers is using modalities such as forums where the teacher presence is limited and students have to manage the discourse themselves which in turn increases student engagement.

The significance of producing socially appropriate utterances, not just linguistically correct ones, has given rise to a plethora of studies on speech acts. In this regard, the performance of second and foreign language learners against the norms of the target language and the factors affecting them have yet to be thoroughly investigated. To contribute to this ongoing research, this study aimed to elicit pragmatic requestive features of Iranian EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners with respect to (a) request directness, (b) request perspective, (c) internal modification, and (d) external modification in eight social situations. This study also examined whether language proficiency and two contextual factors of social power and social distance affect Iranian EFL learners' requests in English. Participants were a total of 60 university students or graduates who had taken TOEFL in the past 2 years and were thus categorized into low and high proficiency levels. A Written Discourse Completion Test (WDCT) was employed to elicit requests. To achieve the objectives of this study, both descriptive statistics and two-way ANOVA were employed. The results showed a significant main effect for contextual factors; participants' choice of requestive features was affected by the two social factors of power and distance. Proficiency, however, did not have a significant effect on the pragmatic performance of participants. The findings of this study showed pragmatic development of participants on the one hand and some evidence of their underdeveloped pragmatic performance on the other hand, which makes explicit instruction a necessity.

This pragmatic study investigated the speech act of thanking as used by non-native speakers of English. The study was an attempt to find whether the pragmatic awareness of Iranian EFL learners could be improved through explicit instruction of the structure of the speech act of "Thanking". In fact, this study aimed to find out if there was a significant difference between the performances of EFL learners in using the speech act of thanking when they were taught through explicit instruction of speech acts compared with implicit instruction. To this end, 30 Iranian intermediate EFL learners at Pars language institute were chosen, and they were classified as experimental and control group. The researcher adopted a discourse completion test (DCT) to gather the necessary data. The results showed that those learners who were taught explicitly outperformed those to whom implicit instruction was used.

This study examined the teaching approaches and techniques that Iranian instructors utilize for teaching L2 pragmatics in their classroom practices. 238 Iranian instructors participated in this study. The data for this study were accumulated through questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. In terms of the instructional approaches, both the quantitative and qualitative results showed that instructors make use of inductive and implicit approaches more than other two approaches, deductive and explicit, to teach L2 pragmatics .With regard to the pragmatic consciousness-raising techniques, the results revealed that instructors mostly make use of conversation topics and also situations to raise learners' awareness of the speech act under study. In addition to this technique, instructors make use of field experience to give input to learners. Regarding the pragmatic communicative practice techniques, the quantitative and qualitative results showed that instructors mostly make use of role-play and pair- work techniques to engage learners to practice speech acts. Moreover, the results of the questionnaire and interview with regard to pragmatic corrective feedback techniques showed that instructors almost give feedback implicitly by reformulating learners' mistakes and repeating their errors On the contrary, instructors give less metalinguistic information and explain the inappropriate expressions to learners. In terms of culture teaching techniques, the results illustrated that instructors share their knowledge of what they hear or read about other cultures with their learners. The results of this study have some implications for language instructors.

Learning a foreign language requires students to acquire both grammatical knowledge and socio-pragmatic rules of a language. Pragmatic competence as one of the most difficult aspects of language provides several challenges to L2 learners in the process of learning a foreign language. To overcome this problem, EFL teachers should find the most effective way of teaching pragmatic knowledge to their students. Accordingly, the present study investigated the effect of explicit teaching of apology speech act, as an aspect of pragmatic competence, on the Iranian EFL learners' appropriate use of the mentioned speech act. In so doing, a total of 73 EFL students at intermediate and advanced levels participated in a pre-posttest design research with experimental and control group. Data were collected using a Discourse Completion Test (DCT). The selection of apologetic situations in DCT was based on two variables of social status and social distance. The results revealed that explicit instruction was a facilitative tool that helped students use the proper apology strategies in different situations. Moreover, it was found that L2 proficiency had a significant influence on overall appropriateness of speech act production.

The purpose of the present study was to compare the speech act of offering advice as realized by Iranian EFL learners and English native speakers. The study, more specifically, attempted to find out whether there was any pragmatic transfer from Persian (L1) among Iranian EFL learners while offering advice in English. It also examined whether Iranian EFL learners' perception of directness/indirectness in the realization of offering advice develops as a result of proficiency development. In order to achieve the objectives, a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) was used to collect the speech act of offering advice from among Iranian EFL learners and native English speakers. The findings indicated that Iranian EFL learners were not as balanced as native English speakers in the use of indirect use of offering advice. It was also observed that Iranian EFL learners had not acquired the pragmatic competence to offer native-like advice with regard to social power and social distance between interlocutors. The result also revealed that Iranian EFL learners and the native English speakers favored a number of similar strategies for the realization of offering advice, though there were differences in terms of frequency use of the speech acts of offering advice. Thus, this study showed evidence of pragmatics transfer.

This study explored the effects of explicit and implicit instructions in the development of EFL learners' speech acts of complimenting (Cs) and complimenting response (CRs). The participants in this research were 56 intermediate EFL learners from a language center, participating as members of intact classes that were divided into three groups of control, explicit instruction, and implicit instruction. They were asked to answer an open-ended Discourse Completion Test (DCT) to collect the primary data in the pre-test and post-test sessions. The items in the DCT included 12 situations based on which the participants were required to give or respond to compliments to evaluate their knowledge of Cs and CRs. Then their responses were collected, tabulated, and analyzed. The treatment including explicit and implicit instructions on pragmatic competence lasted for three weeks after which all groups were given the DCT in post-test to measure their pragmatic competence. The results of the study highlighted the effectiveness of both implicit and explicit instructions in developing EFL learners' speech acts of Cs and CRs. It seems that pragmatic instruction regardless of type speeds up the process of learning through consciousness rising and should be considered by language teachers as one of the ways in which EFL learners can most efficiently develop pragmatic competence.

Over recent years, pragmatic knowledge has been a major area of interest within the field of second language acquisition. Despite this, most studies available in the literature have only focused on testing and analyzing L2 learners' knowledge of speech acts such as request and suggestion structures. However, pragmatic competence stretches beyond these structures to encompass more significant issues including conversational implicatures, a key element in interactional conversations. This paper seeks to remedy the problem by analyzing the effects of explicit vs. implicit instructions of implicatures on developing intermediate EFL learners' pragmatic competence in a pre-test, post-test, and delayed-post-test equivalent-groups research design. The participants were 63 intermediate EFL learners randomly assigned into two experimental groups and a control group. The first experimental group received explicit instructions on conversational implicatures and the second one received implicit instructions. The results revealed that the explicit group outperformed the implicit group. Accordingly, explicit instruction had priority over implicit instruction leading to a significant increase in learners' pragmatic competence development. The results also indicated that explicitly instructed materials enjoyed significantly greater chances of retention after a one-week delay.

The linguistic scrutiny of any aspect of pragmatics is bound to considering carefully the context in which it is expressed. This becomes very glaring when the utterances that constitute discourse are viewed as performing social actions. In an EFL context like Iran, English language learners are in urgent need of raising their pragmatic awareness as they do not have regular access to an environment where the main language of communication is English. The major context for improving their pragmatic competence could be classroom. Thus, teachers need to cope with this issue which makes knowledge of speech acts more worthy of being dealt with. This research was an attempt to find out the effect of teacher's group feedback versus individual feedback on Iranian EFL learners' uptake of speech acts. To carry out the study, 32 pre-intermediate learners were chosen to take part based on convenient sampling through non-random grouping. To make sure that the learners were homogeneous, a Quick Placement Test (QPT) was administered before the treatment. Based on the design of the study, the learners were divided into two treatment conditions of individual and group feedback. The research was a quasi-experimental a pretest and a posttest of writing before and after the treatment to measure students' uptake of speech acts. Results of two paired-samples t-test and an independent samples t-test showed significant effect of individual feedback on learners' uptake of speech acts, while group feedback was not significant. It was also found that there was a significant difference between the effects of teacher feedback in groups vs. teacher feedback given to individual learners. The present research has significant implications. Tests can also focus more on promoting individual feedback among learners and teachers in washback effect. Teachers can also make principled decisions about the feedback condition that best boost leaner uptake in speech act.

This study deals with the application of the pragmatics research to EFL teaching. The need for language learners to utilize a form of speech acts such as request which involves a series of strategies was significance of the study. Although defining different speech acts has been established since 1960s, recently there has been a shift towards empirical studies which focus on perception and production of various speech acts by EFL or ESL learners. The present article reveals the researcher's interest in a set of strategies in which native speakers of target language use for performing speech activities. The study intended to enhance EFL learners' awareness of request speech act by teaching the materials used for speech acts. To achieve the aim, the teacher used some sorts of educational activities such as teacher-fronted discussions; role plays, cooperative grouping, and other pragmatically oriented tasks were used to increase the learning of speech acts. Discourse Completion Test was developed as a pretest and posttest to measure the effects of instruction on the pragmatic awareness of the students. The results revealed a significant difference between the pretest and posttest scores of the use of request speech act in experimental group.

This paper investigated the extent to which Iranian EFL students are aware of the appropriate use of request speech act in English speaking contexts in terms of formality, politeness and indirectness. A researcher made discourse completion test (DCT) including 16 scenarios was distributed among 130 advanced students in private English institutes in Ilam city. Results revealed that 90.5% of the participants adopted formal or highly formal requests, 88.5% requested politely and 67.2% performed indirect requests. In addition, the results of chi-square tests confirmed significant relationships between the three variables, meaning that those participants who were careful about using appropriate degrees of formality tended to act politely and preferably indirectly. The study, thus, led to certain implications for students, teachers, material developers and curriculum designers.

This study is an attempt to examine the possible effect that exposure to English has had on the use of refusal strategies in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners compared with those of non-English learners when refusing in their native language, Persian. The sample included 12 EFL learners and 12 learners of other academic majors including electronics, psychology, management, etc., who responded to a Persian Discourse Completion Task (DCT), adopted from Allami and Naeimi (2011), who has engaged in the speech act of refusal. The responses were coded according to the classification of refusal strategies as outlined by Beebe, Tahakashi and Uliss-Weltz (1990). The results indicated that non-English learners used the refusal strategies considerably more frequently than the EFL learners did, while the EFL learners utilized more adjuncts to refusals than the non-English learners did. However, the differences were not statistically significant. Furthermore, the first four most frequently used refusal strategies by both EFL and non-English groups were found to be "Non-performative statement" (in the case of direct strategies and in the form of "I can't"), "Statement of regret," "Excuse, reason or explanation" and "Attempt to dissuade interlocutor" (in the case of indirect strategies), and the most frequently used adjuncts to refusal strategies by both EFL and non-English groups were "Statement of positive opinions, feelings or agreement" and "Gratitude/Appreciation". Furthermore, gender differences were not statistically significant either. The results can be evidence that the effect of the second language (L2) on the native language (L1) might not be at work in the pragmatic aspects of language learning.

This research study empirically investigated the impact of study abroad context on L2 learners' pragmatic development compared with study at home group in Iran. For the study abroad group the participants were selected from the Iranian students who registered in a six-month program in language institutes in India (Mysore) and for the study at home group the participants were chosen from the language learners at the most outstanding language institute in Iran (Iran Language Institute) at the intermediate level. A Discourse Completion Task (DCT) including request and apology speech acts was used to measure the gains in the two groups. The DCT was administered one at the beginning as a pre-test and then at the end of the six months course as a post-test. Overall, the study revealed significant development in study abroad learners' pragmatic knowledge, whereas this change in at home group was meager. It was also found that a correlation governs the growth in apology and request proficiency in language learning. This comparative study moreover yielded this finding that gender is not a determining factor in the acquisition of pragmatic knowledge specifically in request and apology speech acts in language learning.

This study was set up to further investigate whether either of the instruction types, explicit vs. implicit, proves more efficient in ameliorating pragmatic performance of Iranian EFL learners. The speech act under investigation in this quasi-experimental study was refusal. Sixty Iranian learners of English as a foreign language participated in this study in which they were assigned to three groups of explicit, implicit, and control. All groups were exposed to conversations from "Spectrum" English books where refusals stood out. In the treatment groups it was intended to raise pragmatic awareness whereas in control group conversations acted as a source of English comprehension and production. The findings appear to prove the efficiency of explicit instruction over implicit one in boosting Iranian EFL learners' pragmatic performance.

The validity of speech act data taken from different kinds of elicitation instruments has been widely discussed in interlangauge and cross cultural pragmatics literature. In this study an attempt is made to evaluate and investigate data taken from two of the most popular speech act instruments namely, written DCT and closed role play. The responses of forty Iranian university students in their native language (Persian) were investigated across the speech act of request. The distinguishing feature of the study is using the same participants for the two methods; in this way we can have an account of intra-participant variations. The social status and distance of the participants were both equal. Differences were found in the length and content of the responses. Respondents to role play tended to have longer responses and it was mainly because of the longer and higher number of alerters and supportive moves used in the role play. In the written data we witnessed more direct strategies used in the request Head Acts. Likewise, modification devices used in the oral data had a softer tone and in terms of request perspective the oral data provided more impersonal responses while the requests in the written data were more hearer-oriented. Overall, it seems that the data gathered through role play is more natural than DCT. Finally it is discussed that the choice of data gathering instrument in pragmatics research is to a large extent dependent on the goals of the researcher and research questions.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the ability of the upper intermediate and the intermediate learners in keeping face in different complaint situations. Complaint is the expression of the speaker displeasure or annoyance as a reaction to a past or ongoing action, the consequences of which affect the speaker unfavorably (Olshtain & Weinbach, 1987). Brown and Levinson (1978) categorized complaints as Face-Threating Act. Forty learners were selected based on their scores on a proficiency test. They completed a Discourse Completion Test which included different complaint scenarios. Their responses were analyzed on the basis of four complaints categories of Olshtain and Weinbach (1987) and three complaint categories of De Capua's (1998). Then, their answers were compared with Brown and Levinson's (1978) politeness theory for the face keeping strategies. The findings revealed that the upper intermediate learners and the intermediate learners used different types of speech acts in each situation and that at low levels some degree of pragmatic awareness should be presented. The study provided some pedagogical implications for the field of EFL teaching and syllabus designing.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the pragmatic transfer Iranian EFL and ESL learners of English showed when complaining in English. The study aimed to find out if there exists any relationship between the amount of contact with English and pragmatic competence of both EFL and ESL groups as well as the relationship between the duration of stay in English-speaking countries and the pragmatic competence of complaining in the ESL group, living and studying abroad for some years. For this purpose, the data were gathered from four groups: twenty Iranian native speakers of Farsi and twenty English native speakers of English, as the baseline groups, as well as twenty EFL and twenty ESL learners, as the interlanguage data groups. The data were elicited through a personal information form and a DCT in which they were asked to answer six imaginative situations including complaint-required situations. The DCT data were examined to see to what extent the time spent with English and the duration of stay in target countries and the pragmatic competence of EFL and ESL respondents were related. The findings revealed no significant relationship between the amount of contact, the time spent abroad and the pragmatic competence of Iranian EFL and ESL learners.

The present study was designed to examine the ways power relations influence politeness strategies in disagreement. The study was an attempt to find out whether different power status of people influences the the choice of appropriate politeness strategies and speech act of disagreement by Iranian EFL learners, in a university setting. A Discourse Completion Test (DCT) was utilized to elicit the required data. The sample included 20 Iranian upper-intermediate EFL learners who were selected based on their scores on a proficiency test. The DTC consists of five scenarios in which the subjects are expected to disagree with two higher statuses and two with peers and one with a lower status. Selection of disagreement situations in DCT was based on relative power and status of people. The main frameworks used for analyzing data were the taxonomy from Muntigl and Turnbull (1995) for counting and analyzing the utterances of disagreement and Brown and Levinson' (1987) theory of politeness. It was found that EFL learners employ different kind of politeness strategies in performing this face threatening speech act. When performing the speech act of disagreement, they used more direct and bald on record strategies. The findings of this study provide some evidences for the relation between the type and frequency of disagreement and choice of politeness strategies associated with people with different power status. It concludes by arguing that the results can be closely related with learning contexts and textbook contents and some suggestions were put forward regarding the issue. It is also hoped that the findings of this study will provide some worthwhile knowledge into the teaching and training of communication skills in EFL courses. Furthermore, this study may reveal some cultural differences between Iranian societies and others.

The speech act of disagreement has been one of the speech acts that receives the least attention in the field of pragmatics. This study investigates the ways power relations influence politeness strategies in disagreement. In order to determine whether and to what extent the realization of the speech act of disagreeing and the of appropriate politeness strategies by Iranian EFL learners, in a university setting, across different proficiency levels (intermediate and upper-intermediate) differ in relation to people with different power status a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) was completed by 40 Iranian EFL learners who were placed at two different levels based on their scores on a proficiency test. The DTC consists of five scenarios in which the subjects are expected to disagree with two higher statuses, two with peers and one with a lower status. The selection of disagreement situations in DCT, borrowed from studies by Takahashi and Beebe (1993) and Liang Guodong and Han Jing (2005), were based on relative power and status of people. The taxonomy from Muntigl and Turnbull (1995) was employed for counting and analyzing the utterances of disagreement from the responses. The findings of this study provide some evidences for the relation between the learners' level of language proficiency and type and frequency of disagreement and choice of politeness strategies associated with people with different power status. In conclusion, it was argued that the results can be closely related to learning contexts and textbook contents. Finally some suggestions such as making learners aware of second language pragmatic rules and socio-cultural constraints on speech acts as well as grammatical rules in order to have a successful communication were put forward regarding the issue.

This study investigates the comprehension of indirect request speech act used by Iranian people in daily communication. The study is an attempt to find out whether different cultural backgrounds and the gender of the speakers affect the comprehension of the indirect request of speech act. The sample includes thirty males and females in Gachsaran (a city in the province of Kohgiloye va Boyerahmad in Iran) and thirty participants (males and females) in Farokhshahr (a city in the province of Chaharmahal va Bakhtiyari in Iran). A questionnaire is used to elicit data related to the responses used by each group. The questionnaire consists of twenty situations. The participants write their reaction to each situation. The results reveal that culture has significant effect on the interpretation of indirect request of speech act. But gender doesn't affect the comprehension of indirect request of speech act.

This paper reports the findings of a study designed to investigate the types of supportive discourse moves employed by Persian speakers in their Requestive Speech Acts. 372 respondents took a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) with six scenarios ranging from formal to informal degrees of Perceived Situational Seriousness, and returned 2232 Requestive Speech Acts (RSAs). The acts were then analyzed according to models proposed by Faerch and Kasper's (1989), Blum-Kulka, et al. (1989), and Scollon and Scollon (2001). Results, after analysis of the data, indicated that Persian speakers use external and internal discourse moves to negotiate face in RSAs. It was concluded that Perceived Situational Seriousness was the determining factor in the choice of the type and number of discourse moves in a given RSA. Three appendixes are included: (1) DCT for Data Collection; (2) Guide to Phonetic Symbols Used for Reporting Persian Examples; and (3) Participant Profile. (Contains 3 figures and 4 tables.)

The present paper explored how plays could contribute to pragmatic development when employed as a medium of implicit or explicit instruction. 80 undergraduate English-major students were divided into four experimental groups two of which were literary and two nonliterary. Implicit Literary, as one of the literary groups was exposed to typographically enhanced plays containing the speech acts of, refusal, apology, and request. Explicit Literary, the other literary group received the same speech acts and metapragmatic instructions on the acts as well. For the nonliterary groups, dialogs which contained the given functions served as the medium of instruction for either Implicit Nonliterary containing enhanced input or Explicit Nonliterary having input plus metapragmatic information. All participants took a Multiple- Choice Discourse Completion Test (MDCT) and a Written Discourse Completion Test (WDCT) both before and after the instruction. Analysis of the participants' performance on the pretest and posttest WDCT did not reveal any significant difference between the literary and nonliterary groups. Concerning the mode of instruction, explicit groups outperformed the implicit ones. Pre and posttest analyses of the participants' performance on the MDCT revealed no significant differences among the groups in terms of the four teaching conditions implying that EFL learners' knowledge of speech acts can be boosted by pragmatic instruction irrespective of the medium or mode of instruction.

This study deals with the application of the pragmatics research to EFL teaching. The study explored the effect of explicit metapragmatic instruction on the speech act comprehension of advanced EFL students. The speech acts of requesting, apologizing, and complaining 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 pretest posttest control group design was used. The subjects included Iranian undergraduate students in their last year of study in the field of teaching English as a foreign language. A group of American students were used to provide the baseline for the study. A multiple choice pragmatic comprehension test was developed in several stages and used both as a pretest and posttest to measure the effect of instruction on the pragmatic comprehension 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.

This study investigates the relative effectiveness of four types of input-enhanced instruction on the development of Iranian EFL learners' production of pragmatically appropriate and grammatically accurate suggestions. Over a 16-week course, input delivered through video clips was enhanced differently in four intact classes: (1) metapragmatic explanation (n = 21), (2) form-comparison (n = 21), (3) typographically enhanced input along with input flooding (n = 25) and (4) meaning-focused (n = 28). The four treatment groups were compared with a control group (n = 15) on pre-test and post-test performance, each test comprising two production tasks: leaving a message on an answerphone and sending an email. The results revealed that the treatment groups improved on the post-test in comparison to the pre-test, outperforming the control group. Although this improvement was significant for all four treatment groups on the email task, the form-comparison and the metapragmatic explanation groups performed significantly better than the other two treatment groups on the answerphone task. This study proposes that pedagogic treatment in this area of research is better operationalised by degree of input enhancement than by dichotomies such as explicit versus implicit or deductive versus inductive learning.