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This study focuses on the Interlanguage Pragmatic (ILP) competence levels of Grade 11-TVL Caregiving students and the factors influencing these levels. Additionally, it aimed to develop an ILP Reinforcement Model to enhance the ILP Competence of the said students. The study employed a mixed-method research design and utilized an Oral Discourse Completion Task (ODCT) to assess the ILP Competence of the participants. The findings revealed that the students excelled in Expressive speech acts, achieving an overall ILP competence rating of 5, indicating "Excellence." In Directives, Commissives, and Assertives, they received an overall rating of 4, signifying a "Good" level of competence. Various teaching methods were employed to aid in assessing their ILP competence, with the combination of the Grammar Translation Method (GTM) and the Explicit Scaffolding Technique (SCT) emerging as the most effective instructional and assessment method. Furthermore, an ILP Reinforcement Model was developed to address identified gaps in the study. This model comprises five stages: Pragmalinguistic Input, Instructional Methods, Pragmatic Filter, Learner's Developing System, and Pragmalinguistic Output. Its primary goal is to establish a connection between pragmalinguistic input and practical application in real-world scenarios for Grade 11 TVLCaregiving students, with a focus on speech acts of Directives, Commissives, and Assertives. A noteworthy finding from the study underscores the importance of a balanced approach to teaching ILP, which fosters a comprehensive and immersive learning environment for the students. This holistic approach involves not only addressing the technical aspects of ILP but also integrating sociocultural and pragmatic dimensions to provide a more effective and contextually relevant ILP education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study analyses the impoliteness of criticism over social status and distance, incorporating the concept of "levels of imposition." Criticism as a fundamental speech act is commonly used by people in the modern era, either in the digital world or the real world. It usually contains impoliteness if it embodies negative behavior, conveying criticism. This study belonged to an interlanguage pragmatics study and used forty participants from English language learners having Javanese backgrounds. It also applied the role play technique to take data to be analyzed using mixed method analysis. The data showed that the criticizer performed various impoliteness strategies in criticism, considering familiar and unfamiliar relationships in different social status levels. They mainly performed bald-on-record impoliteness and adhered to other strategies such as negative, positive, and mock politeness. Besides that, delivering criticism in high intonation was also perceived as a part of impoliteness. Therefore, it suggested conducting another research concerning paralinguistics and impoliteness in various communication contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the speech acts most frequently performed by learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) through the Dialogue Annotation and Research Tool (DART), a semi-automatic annotation tool. The study used learner corpus research and an English as the first language (L1) speaker corpus as a reference to compare the speech acts performed by the EFL learners. The study involved 90 EFL learners of four nationalities. A spoken learner corpus was built with the dyadic interlanguage English conversation register. The most frequently performed speech acts were generally different for the English L1 speakers and the EFL learners. The speech acts labeled as correctSelf, referProcess, expressNonAwareness, and stateReason were in the top 10 for EFL learners, whereas they were not in the top 10 for the English L1 speakers. This difference was caused by three factors: the English proficiency of the EFL learners, the frequently used formulaic phrases, and the task requirements. Moreover, the corpus annotation has a problem with unrecognized speech acts, primarily due to the redundancies and fragments in the learner discourses. The findings of this study reveal the complementary relationship between grammatical and pragmatic performances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interlanguage pragmatic studies predominantly focus on teaching and learning English as a second or foreign language. However, there is a substantial research gap in understanding the interlanguage characteristics of those learning English as a second language, particularly within the Saudi context. To bridge this critical gap, this paper undertakes a comprehensive examination of the interlanguage pragmatic competence exhibited by a cohort of 51 High Achievers (HAs) juxtaposed with 48 Low Achievers (LAs). A Discourse Completion Test (DCT) and the Scale-Response Questionnaire (SRQ) were administered to elicit request utterances. The paper concludes that HAs tended to use a wide range of linguistic forms in using mitigated request expressions significantly compared to LAs’ performance. Regarding the influence of contextual variables, HAs showed more awareness of both social power and distance compared to LAs. In conclusion, there is a robust connection between language proficiency and the pragmatic competence of request acts among Saudi learners.

The present study explores the development of pragmatic marker (PM) use by children and adult L2 English learners in two learning contexts: study abroad (SA) and at home (AH). The study involved a group of 35 Catalan/Spanish girls (aged 11 to 13) learning English AH (n = 16) and abroad in Ireland (n = 19), and a group of 16 adult students aged 19–31 learning English in the UK and Ireland (n = 10) and at their home university in Barcelona (n = 6). To test their pragmatic development, the use of PMs was prompted through pre-test and post-test semi-structured interviews. The results indicated an effect of both age and context on PM development. Children in the SA context increased their use of some PMs, whereas their peers who remained at home did not show any development. Regarding the adults, both SA and AH participants increased their use of specific PMs. These findings shed some light on a topic that has not received scholarly attention in the field of L2 pragmatics: the development of PM use by children. Additionally, they contribute to the very small body of longitudinal studies on the development of PM use during SA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a heuristic approach to studying the strategies of refusal employed by advanced Japanese learners of Spanish as a foreign language when compared with those of native speakers of Spanish and of Japanese. It examines responses of refusal to requests, invitations, offers, and suggestions while observing the linguistic phenomena of pragmatic transfer used by the speakers. We administered a discourse completion to elicit refusal strategies from participants. The data include 1101 strategies employed in 432 responses formulated by 54 participants comprising advanced Japanese learners of Spanish, native speakers of Spanish, and native speakers of Japanese We found that linguistic ability among Japanese learners correlated positively with pragmatic transfer. The findings demonstrate how cultural priming and the degree of freedom with which learners prompt their responses are interrelated within their mental pragmatic interface in given situations.

The purpose of this study was to examine the pragmatic competence of writing request emails by Chinese learners of Japanese (CLJs). The study focused on the features of the external modification devices and framing moves of request emails by CLJs when compared to emails by native speakers of Japanese (NSJs). Data were collected from 104 CLJs and 53 NSJs, using an Electronic Writing Discourse Completion Test questionnaire. One-way ANOVA results showed that as the CLJs' levels of proficiency in Japanese increased, their use of external modification devices and framing moves tended to increase. In addition, a Fisher's exact test showed that as the CLJs' proficiency increased, a distinct statistical difference only existed in the use of individual framing moves, but not in that of individual external modification devices. This study provides conceptual categories and utterances used in both external modification devices and framing moves for teaching email communication to CLJs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focused on how interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) is manifested in a multicultural environment. Learners’ ability to make requests has received considerable attention in ILP research because requests are intrinsic face-threatening acts. The question this study aimed to address was to what extent a culture has an impact on the direct and indirect level of request strategies. The data were collected from thirty participants (fifteen males and fifteen females) representing five nationalities (Russian, Indonesian, Pakistani, Jordanian, and Hungarian) and studying at the University of Pannonia. The Discourse Completion Test (DCT) developed by Hendriks (2002) was used as an instrument, containing different situations to which the participants had to respond. The linguistic and cultural background of the participants was identified using an online tool, namely the Language History Questionnaire. The participants’ responses were then recorded and transcribed. The direct and indirect levels of the requests were analyzed by categorizing the head act and the internal (syntactic and lexical) and external modifiers. The data showed that the participants generally used more indirect strategies in making requests (86.2% indirect, 13.8% direct), especially those from Indonesia. Participants from Pakistan were the most direct in making requests. Moreover, they used more external modifiers than other participants to compensate for their directness.

Numerous language-learning variables play a crucial role in students' pragmatic competence development. However, amongst many of these variables, factors like age, gender, and proficiency level have not been extensively researched. Specifically, domains like Motivation and its role in pragmatic development are understudied. This study aims to explore EFL learners' pragmatic Motivation in a study abroad context. A quantitative research design was adopted for this study. Data were collected from 160 university students through a general pragmatic motivation questionnaire and a speech acts-specific motivation questionnaire focusing on request, refusal, and apology speech acts. After collecting and analyzing the data, this study revealed interesting findings on students' pragmatic motivation, which was used to make pedagogical conclusions. Plain Language Summary: Pragmatic Motivation in a Study Abroad Setting Given the challenges of enhancing students' communicative competence because pragmatic motivation is required, there is a need to investigate students' pragmatic motivation while learning a language. This was the objective of this study. We used a mixed-method research design to implement the study through questionnaires. After analyzing the data, the study revealed relationships between pragmatic motivation and specific-speech-act-motivation. Other novel findings of the study were used to make pedagogical conclusions on the topic. The conclusions add to ongoing scientific discussions on pragmatic motivation in foreign language teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study was driven by the most recent research trend of interlanguage pragmatics, which regards communication as a complex phenomenon and considers a learner's ability to produce social actions in extended discourse. It investigated the interactional structure of offers in natural conversations by nine Saudi learners of English (SEFL) when interacting with a British English native speaker. Conversations were recorded during a dinner attended by three to four friends. Comparable sets of data were collected from native speakers of Saudi Arabic (SA) and British English (BE). Both quantitative and qualitative analysis revealed that the three cultural groups in this study did not get involved in intricate negotiations of offers during the conversation among friends; however, this was not necessarily to the same degree. The SEFL learners' interactional tools were not native-like. They showed more limited interactional resources and a pattern of direct offers by using elliptic forms or conveying the offer nonverbally. A possible pragmatic transfer was observed in their preference for employing nonverbal offers and invoking God. However, they were like the BE speakers in their insistence, which was often made with strategies that consider imposition on the addressee and usually closed in two adjacency pairs. • This study combined quantitative and qualitative approaches to explore learners' offering interactions. • Offer negotiations among advanced learners displayed limited range of interactional tools and a tendency towards directness. • High proficiency did not enable participants to free themselves from the norms of their culture. • The study design provides a guide to using comparable sets of naturally occurring interactions in ILP studies. • The significance of combining quantitative with qualitative analyses in exploring extended discourse was suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores three pragmatic challenges that learners of Japanese as L2 encountered during their study abroad programs and work placements in Japan. These challenges are examined within the framework of Relevance Theory. Research on interlanguage pragmatics of L2 Japanese is limited in scope, as studies mostly focus on speech acts and other sociolinguistic and interactional strategies. As a result, researchers have yet to formally establish how learners of Japanese have difficulties in regard to their production of meaning. This study draws on open-ended questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions to determine the pragmatic competence of L2 students across two Irish universities. The study demonstrates that learners have difficulties with processing both linguistic encoding and phenomena that involve inference. That is, learners' inability to activate their pragmatic competence hinders their ability to produce communicative acts. Findings lend support to the need to enhance pragmatic competence among L2 learners through specific cognitive processes. This paper also contributes to the need for interlanguage pragmatics to be pursued in conjunction with current developments in Relevance Theory. It is argued that ideas developed within Relevance Theory can be particularly beneficial to the teaching and learning of pragmatic competence in the L2 classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study explores the development of pragmatic marker (PM) use by children and adult L2 English learners in two learning contexts: study abroad (SA) and at home (AH). The study involved a group of 35 Catalan/Spanish girls (aged 11 to 13) learning English AH (n = 16) and abroad in Ireland (n = 19), and a group of 16 adult students aged 19–31 learning English in the UK and Ireland (n = 10) and at their home university in Barcelona (n = 6). To test their pragmatic development, the use of PMs was prompted through pre-test and post-test semi-structured interviews. The results indicated an effect of both age and context on PM development. Children in the SA context increased their use of some PMs, whereas their peers who remained at home did not show any development. Regarding the adults, both SA and AH participants increased their use of specific PMs. These findings shed some light on a topic that has not received scholarly attention in the field of L2 pragmatics: the development of PM use by children. Additionally, they contribute to the very small body of longitudinal studies on the development of PM use during SA.

In cross-cultural and interlanguage pragmatics, constructive feedback (CF), defined as "the identification of a problematic action and advice on how to change or correct the problem" (Nguyen & Basturkmen, 2010, p. 125), has received little attention. To fill this gap, similarities and differences between native Chinese speakers, native American speakers, and high-proficiency Chinese EFL learners' CF are explored in this study. In particular, how these learners' strategy applications in CF differ from those of American and Chinese speakers is examined. Data were collected through discourse completion tests (DCTs) owing to their advantages in controlling social variables and their efficiency in eliciting rich data within a limited time (Leech, 2014). In total, 42 participants were randomly selected from three groups: 14 native Chinese speakers, 14 native American speakers, and 14 high-proficiency Chinese EFL learners. The results revealed significant differences in strategy employment in CF among the three groups, with the highest disparity elicited in hedge strategies. Here, EFL learners resembled American speakers in six of the eight hedge strategies. However, they had the same percentage in terms of compliments as the Chinese speakers. With regard to supportive moves, there were no significant differences among the three groups. As a pioneering investigation, the aim of this study is to call for further research on CF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is increasing research literature on instructional pragmatics, including work on Japanese, but little research on naturally occurring classroom innovations. This article presents a study of an instructional innovation called Casual Friday, where the professor of a university multi-section advanced-beginning (2nd year) Japanese language course designated certain lessons as spaces for graduate student teaching assistants (TAs) to involve students in using Japanese casual register. Analysis of interviews with instructional staff, student survey results, and classroom and meeting observations, shows how Casual Friday, an organizational transformation of the course, transformed activity systems (Engestrom, 1987, 1999, 2003). Transformed TA roles created a pedagogical safe house (Canagarajah, 2004; Pomerantz and Bell, 2011; Pratt, 1991) on Casual Fridays by providing TAs instructional autonomy, stronger horizontal connections with students, and temporary freedom from the restraints of the course-as-usual. The re-organization thus promoted TA innovation, as they creatively used language, designed materials, taught dialect, introduced Japanese youth culture, etc. Triangulation with student surveys confirms findings of the interviews and observations, while also showing that students reported languaculture learning. Results suggest the benefits of carving out spaces within normally textbook-and-grammar-focused courses for TAs to have free rein in presenting and involving students with languaculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pragmatic competence consists of both pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic components. The choice of pragmalinguistic strategies aligned with sociopragmatic norms may vary based on situational, cultural, and individual variables. The relationship between these important aspects of second language pragmatic competence, however, is underdeveloped in the literature. To fill this gap, the present paper is aimed at investigating the pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic variations of the Iranian EFL learners from different proficiency levels. A written discourse completion task (WDCT) was adopted for collecting data. Data were analyzed using the coding categories for apologies developed in the previous benchmark studies. The findings of the study provided evidence showing both sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic development across the levels of language proficiency. The findings can be used for the development of pragmatics-focused materials in L2 and pragmatics instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background. Several studies in interlanguage pragmatics have reported Russian directive speech acts to take a particular position within the dimensions of linguistic politeness and (in)directness, when compared to some Germanic and Romance languages extensively studied in this framework. Purpose of the study. The present paper aimed to investigate the role of language specific cues to politeness in Russian requests by examining their perception by native speakers and L2 learners in a scenario of teacher-student interaction. Methods. An experiment was conducted in which L1 and L2 groups rated the politeness of teacher directives in Russian on a discrete 7-point scale. Three variables were controlled for in the experimental design: the directness of the speech act (manifested in the choice between an imperative or an interrogative construction), verbal aspect, and the type of nuclear pitch accent. Findings. The obtained data generally corroborate existing studies, demonstrating that both native Russian speakers and learners of Russian with Chinese L1 do not judge as impolite direct imperative strategies employed in teacher requests. Though both groups of participants similarly relied on intonational cues in their judgements, the L2 learners did not perform target-like in evaluating the pragmatics of verbal aspect. Within the native group, the usage of imperfective verbs both in direct and conventionally indirect constructions was perceived as a highly salient indicator of impoliteness. Conversely, the size of this effect in L2 judgements did not reach a significance level, implying that this language specific cue is not acquired through incidental learning at pre-intermediate or intermediate proficiency levels. Conclusions. Taken together, these findings highlight the importance of explicit pragmatic instruction even for students who have sufficient experience studying abroad; furthermore, they outline new directions for empirical studies in Russian from the perspective of interlanguage pragmatics.

The purpose of this study was to determine if Bloom-based Interlanguage Pragmatics (ILP) instruction could enhance EFL learners' use of the speech act of request. Based on their OQPT scores, 43 students were assigned to a control group (n=23) and a treatment group (n=20). A written discourse completion task (WDCT) was developed to measure participants' use of the speech act of request before and after the intervention. The results pointed to a significant difference between the performance of the treatment group in which Bloom-based treatment supported by Vygotskian scaffolding was employed and the control group which received no explicit ILP instruction. The treatment group also yielded significant gains from the pretest to posttest and to delayed posttest, while no significant improvement was observed in the performance of the control group. In-depth examination of the participants' WDCT performance indicated that the four pragmatics factors (correct use of speech acts, type of expressions, amount of information, and degree of politeness) measured in this study, improved significantly, but differentially, from the pretest to delayed posttest. Comparison of the pretest and posttest data suggested that the component of degree of politeness enjoyed the highest degree of gain followed by amount of information, correct use of speech acts and type of expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study's primary objective is to investigate how Thai EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners use politeness and complaint response strategies similarly or differently in email communication. Email data are collected from 30 male and 30 female Thai EFL learners. The learners' complaint response strategies for handling complaints include gratitude, apology, explanation, offer, appeal, and guarantee. The study shows that complaint response strategies differ among Thai male and female EFL learners. Compared to the female group, the male group uses the offer and appeal complaint response strategies more frequently. More often than the male group, the female group opts for the complaint response strategy of guarantee. Additionally, the chi-square analysis reveals that the use of the politeness strategy of the hedge is significantly different between the male and female Thai EFL learners with varying levels of English proficiency. The employment of the indirect politeness strategy is another crucial difference between male and female students in the high group. However, there is no significant difference in how male and female English language learners with high and low competence levels utilize the direct politeness strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There have been a number of studies on the use of complaints as a speech act. The majority of these studies have included analysis of how different first language speakers make complaints while only a limited number of studies have examined the effects of instruction on the development of complaints as a speech act. Those that have examined this area have tended to focus on oral complaints made to second parties. The current study focuses on the receptive and productive benefits of instruction in developing informal second party complaints in the context of interaction amongst peers. Using an experimental design with control and experimental groups, we examined the effects of instruction on EFL learners in Saudi Arabia as related to informal second party complaints made via WhatsApp text-chat. Results show a significant effect on receptive knowledge of complaints for the experimental group but no significant differences in terms of appropriacy of complaint production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To date very little research is available that focuses on L2 pragmatics and young learners [cf. Schauer, G.A. 2022a. Teaching pragmatics to young learners: a review study. Applied Pragmatics. DOI:10.1075/ap.00006.sch]. Recent studies have shown that textbooks for young learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) vary considerably regarding their pragmatic content and frequently do not provide varied and consistent input of key speech acts and formulaic expressions. Graphic novels could be a rich source of pragmatic input for L2 learners as they tend to contain a considerable amount of direct speech that could be used in a variety of different ways in the L2 classroom. In this paper, I will examine four graphic novels (2 suitable for beginner level and 2 suitable for intermediate level EFL learners) concerning their potential to provide young L2 learners with pragmatic input of their respective level. The study provides an overview of the number of speech act occurrences of eight speech acts (greetings, leave-takings, requests, responses to requests, expressions of gratitude, responses to expressions of gratitude, apologies, responses to apologies), as well as a more detailed analysis of individual speech act expressions and formulaic routines of six of the eight speech acts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper lies in a poorly-researched area of interlanguage pragmatics, that of reporting discourse, and more specifically speech-acts. We present a small-scale study measuring L2 (non-native, of Greek L1) TEFL-training students' ability in indirect speech, i.e., in reporting speech acts containing less conventionalized meaning modulators. The hypothesis that, despite their high linguistic competence in English, the students' performance, and especially that of 'freshers', would drop significantly in reporting speech-acts containing such modulators was confirmed. The findings contribute to the persuasion that in EFL/ESL contexts, we need to focus on problems generated by poor understanding of functions in language use. The implications of this study are that rather than follow traditional 'recipes', i.e. technicalities such as backshifting, etc. in indirect-speech tasks, teaching methodologies need to develop students' pragmatic competence, in this respect too, that will profitably also inform and complement technical aspects of reporting. In view of the findings, it is suggested that developing strategies of reporting speech-acts, and identifying utterance-force modulation vis-a -vis propositional (sentence) meaning can provide a platform for scaffolding reflective learning and developing metapragmatic awareness in L2. The article also provides modest evidence that courses raising pragmatic awareness should be included in EFL teacher-training curricula. The notion of utterance-type is also proposed as a useful level in accommodating pragmatic meaning in impoverished contexts of language teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although critical reception of discourse markers (DMs) such as like and you know has often been noted, surprisingly little research has actually investigated this attitudinal perspective on usage. Moreover, a recent, rapidly expanding body of research on non-L1 speakers' use of discourse markers in English has suggested that their more or less frequent use of specific markers may be due to familiarity with these markers and positive or negative marker perceptions. The present study presents the results of a survey measuring British English L1 speakers', English as Foreign Language (EFL) learners', and English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) speakers' perceptions of the discourse markers so, like, well and you know and their reactions to either abundance or lack of DMs. The survey measured speaker attitudes by asking participants to evaluate the usage of other DMs. We found that L1, EFL, and ELF have varying attitudes about certain markers, and these markers are perceived differently for traits like politeness and friendliness. Generally speaking, L1 speakers were more positively disposed towards markers than either of the other groups, who in their turn rated the propositional functions of the markers as more acceptable than interactional functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Instructed Interlanguage Pragmatics (IILP) is a subset of Interlanguage Pragmatics (ILP) that addresses how classroom language learners acquire pragmatic features in a second language (L2). For this study, 90 university students participated in an experimental study that incorporated a pretest, posttest, and delayed posttest observation to identify the effect of instruction on the acquisition of request speech act. For this purpose, a random sampling was used for the selection and assignment of participants into the experimental (EG) and comparison groups (CG). The two EGs received two types of form-focused instruction (FFI), namely task-oriented focus on form and focus on forms to help identify whether the type of instruction was a significant factor in the acquisition of the selected L2 pragmatic feature. The results of the study indicated an overall increase in the ability of the learners in the instructed group (IG) to produce request speech act. The study also indicated that the effect of instruction was not transient as the observed improvement was evident in the delayed posttest observation. The effect of instruction was also evident in the type of strategies that IGs used to make request proper after receiving the experimental treatments.

The increasing mobility of speakers of different languages to different countries, together with the globalized world we live in, have led to multilingual societies in which linguistic exchanges between both native and non-native speakers have become a very common practice. This reality emphasizes the need to help learners of foreign and second languages become not only linguistically competent but also pragmatically competent, in order not to sound impolite or inappropriate in the target language. Addressing this need, studies in interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) have explored which methodology is most effective for teaching pragmatics. Earlier ILP studies compared explicit versus implicit instruction, highlighting the key role of explicit metapragmatic explanations. More recently, scholars have investigated how to create opportunities to for authentic pragmatic practice inside the classroom. To do so, some studies have implemented task-based language teaching to provide students with goal-oriented meaningful activities that address their real-world needs. Other studies have incorporated technology-enhanced materials such as simulated immersive environments and computer-mediated communication to promote students' engagement in authentic use of the language beyond the classroom. Another current concern in L2 pragmatic instruction is how to account for the emergence of English as an International Language (EIL), and the consequent need to guide learners into acquiring language as a tool to mediate across linguistic and cultural boundaries. Different studies have adopted an EIL perspective, proposing the enhancement of students' metapragmatic awareness and strategies to deal with the hybrid nature of English and its associated varieties and cultures. The special issue 'Teaching second language pragmatics in the current era of globalization' aims to illustrate such current trends, with six contributions by distinguished scholars in the field of L2 pragmatics from all over the globe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learners of a second language often have limited access to the native culture of that language in an authentic way, resulting in them committing linguistic and intercultural mistakes. One of the main advantages of task-based learning is that it can expose students to real-world circumstances, which makes learning a language more meaningful and inclusive of appropriate language behaviour. Task-based learning has become an accepted method for learning a language in face-to-face classroom environments, but its applicability to online learning is largely unaddressed. The author proposed well-organised online roleplays based on a task-based approach involving native speakers, which helped students interact in an authentic way and demonstrate their understanding of culture. The author conducted the research to increase intercultural pragmatic competencies in online L2 classrooms regarding common pragmatic speech acts as to not only increase their pragmatic competency but to also motivate students. The students from the online experimental group who were exposed to task-supported role-plays performed better than the online control group of students; however, student motivation was only mildly impacted. Thus, pragmatics and interculturality can be effectively taught in online L2 classrooms through task-supported learning, though motivation may require longer interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper describes a contrastive study of interlanguage refusal strategies employed by Korean and Norwegian learners of English as an additional language. The data were collected from multilingual first-year students at an American university in South Korea and in an English-medium program at a Norwegian university by means of an online open discourse completion task and analyzed using the coding categories based on Beebe, Takahashi, and Uliss-Welts (1990), and Salazar Campillo, Safont-Jordà, and Codina Espurz (2009). The data were analyzed to compare the average frequencies of refusal strategies used by the two groups, and the types of direct, indirect, and adjunct strategies that they employed. Independent samples t-tests revealed significant differences in the use of direct and indirect strategies with small effect sizes. The differences in the use of adjunct strategies were not statistically significant, and the effect sizes were negligible. Descriptive statistics of the differences in the types of direct, indirect, and adjunct strategies also revealed interesting patterns. The findings suggest that multilinguals’ pragmatic performance is a complex phenomenon that cannot be explained by the differences in cultural and pragmatic norms of their first language alone.

Research on L2 pragmatic development forms the mainstay of many interlanguage pragmatic (ILP) inquiries. Yet promoting L2 pragmatic competence becomes an exceedingly demanding task when different constraints are brought to bear. This dilemma is due in large part to contrasting theories on interlanguage pragmatics development. From exposure to instruction, ILP research has long wrestled with the practical problems in the way of such development. Adding these together, the field is in dire need of practically meaningful research to address the full spectrum of both the pragmatic construct and the factors to foster its development. Intent on piecing together disparate sources of theory and data, this review synthesizes research regarding key considerations in L2 pragmatic development from cognitive, sociocultural, psycholinguistic and independent vantage points. Meanwhile, it summarizes the current knowledge on ILP development and draws out critical questions in connection with the past research. It is argued that there is a dearth of an integrative model for the acquisition of pragmatic competence, which renders several controversies surrounding L2 pragmatic development, especially that of the relationship between grammar and pragmatic development patterns, implausible. To serve that purpose then, a model for the acquisition of L2 pragmatic competence is expounded. In conclusion, a research agenda involving two prime research questions is outlined for future directions.

The purpose of this study was to analyze the development of internal mitigating devices in requests by a group of second language (L2) learners studying abroad in Spain. The method of data collection was a role-play in which the learners interacted with a Spanish native speaker in two service-encounter request scenarios. The same role-plays were repeated at the end of the study abroad period. A group of Spanish native speakers (NSs) also performed the same role-play task once and their data served as a baseline against which to compare the L2 learners’ performance. The results of this study show that the L2 learners reduced their use of the politeness marker por favor “please” and started using other devices more frequently by the end of their study abroad experience; however, in comparison with the NS group, the range and quantity of their internal devices continued to be much lower.

Learners of a second language struggle to select and produce appropriate different kinds of speech acts due to their complexity. The students of the Islamic boarding schools are assigned to acquire two non-native languages compulsory and concurrently, namely Arabic and English. This study adapts the descriptive analytical approach to investigate the pragmalinguistic of the speech acts of apologizing in the Arabic language as produced by non-native speakers with special focus to the IFIDs. The participants are 202 students recruited to fill in a DCT that consists of eight situations regarding the students’ violation of the rules of the school. The results show that the students tend to use certain semantic formulas of apologies due to their lack of linguistic proficiency. To conclude, these forms are template slots of the IFID in which the non-native apologizer can slot his/her apology within these templates, and hence, enrich their pragmatic competence ability.

This article is intended to provide insight to researchers who are still doubtful about the validity and reliability of one of the data collection methodologies, namely the method of discourse completion test in general pragmatic research and interlanguage pragmatics. The literature review was used in the preparation of this article to get the comprehensive picture of the completion discourse test. One of the results is that data collection methods using completion discourse test have advantages and disadvantages. One drawback is that the authenticity of the data and the limitations on the data quality obtained from an informant or respondent, even in certain studies, is judged to not be able to capture sufficiently good data. However, this method is a very good method to find stereotype data because researchers can obtain abundant data in sufficient quantities by this method. In addition, this completion discourse test is very effective in the language study in the cross-cultural domain. This method can be used to capture data in two or more languages with different cultural backgrounds as Blum-Kulka and Olshtain did (in 1984). The control of research variables by using the completion discourse test is considered better because one of the research variables in pragmatic studies is the context of conversation which is very dynamic so that there needs to be controlled. Controlling this research variable is expected to be able to make conclusions that are more conical answer for the research problem. Â Keywords: discourse completion test, interlanguage pragmatics, research variable control

The way people perform a speech act differs across cultures. People from different cultures may have different perceptions of similar social factors and interpret them differentially. These differences can lead to cross-cultural miscommunications when language users perform a given speech act such as request. Based on the request analysis categories introduced by Blum-Kulka et al. (1989b) and Schauer (2009), the present study examined Iranian EFL learners' deviations in utilizing internal and external modifications from native speakers' norms and explored how Bloom-based instruction can contribute to the acquisition of internal and external modifications. To this end, a researcher-developed Written Discourse Completion Task (WDCT) was utilized to collect data from 61 participants: a. treatment group (20), b. control group (23), and c. native speakers (18). The data were categorized based on a framework adapted from Blum-Kulka et al. (1989b) and Schauer's (2009) coding schemes for internal and external modifications. The results suggested that, in the pretest, Iranian EFL learners’ use of request modification strategies differed significantly from native speakers’ norms. It was found that that after the Bloom-based ILP instruction, the treatment group progressed towards native speakers' norms in the application of several modification strategies. These findings imply that the employment of Bloom’s Taxonomy, with specific focus on high order thinking skills in the development of pragmatics tasks and activities can help EFL learners approach native speakers’ norms.

Interlanguage pragmatics has attracted considerable attention in recent years. One strand of interlanguage pragmatics research includes studies comparing the effectiveness of implicit versus explicit teaching on the development of pragmatics. Many studies, although inconclusively, have shown the superior effect of explicit teaching of pragmatics, but few have focused on finding ways to improve the implicit teaching of pragmatics. The present study attempted to unfold the effect of collaborative dialogue on the quality of implicit teaching of request (head act and preparator). To this end, 28 participants (19 to 33 years old, intermediate) majoring in English (freshman and junior) were divided into two groups. The experimental group (n=14) had the opportunity to complete the tasks collaboratively and the control group (n=14) were not provided with any specific pragmatic instruction. The instructional procedure included four successive sessions of teaching request in situations where the sociological parameters were systematically varied. For the purpose of data collection, the classes were audio-recorded and a pretest-posttest design for discourse completion task (DCT) was adopted. For the purpose of data analysis, target request head acts and preparators were scored and also the audio recordings of classes were transcribed and the process of learning during treatment was checked in detail. The findings indicated that the experimental group outperformed the control group in producing target preparators and head acts. And evidence of noticing the pragmatic forms namely noticing unnoticed forms, noticing the gap, and negotiation of form was observed during the collaborative task. This study suggests that teachers may need to provide learners with the opportunities for collaborative tasks along with input enhancement tasks in order to improve the pragmatic knowledge of the learners.

Most interlanguage pragmatic studies in Thailand focus on learning/teaching English as a second/foreign language, while interlanguage characteristics of learners of Thai as a second language are still under-investigated. With a view to bridge this gap, this study aims to investigate the interlanguage characteristics of 51 Chinese learners of Thai (CLT) in comparison with 66 native speakers of Thai (NST) through the use of request modifications. The Discourse Completion Test (DCT) comprising 12 scenarios with the three assigned social variables relative power (P), social distance (D), and rank of imposition (R) was used to elicit the request utterances. The results reveal 20 external and 14 internal modification types used to modify the requests. Overall, it seems that CLT and NST share several request modification types; however, each group of speakers rely on some specific modification types. The mutual modification types suggest that CLT acquire pragmatic competence until they can master most modification types of request. However, the modification types which only occur in the CLT’s data point out the interlanguage use of request modifications.

This paper, anchored in interlanguage pragmatics, studied the effects of individual differences such as language proficiency, gender, and age on the production of speech act of requests in institutional discourse. To this end, 187 Persian EFL university students at three academic levels (undergraduates, postgraduates and PhD students) participated in this study. Triangulation was undertaken to collect and analyze the data in three phases. In phase one, through convenience sampling, the Oxford Placement Test was employed to identify the proficiency level of the students. In phase two, a three way ANOVA between subject analyses showed quantitative differences among the three groups. In the third phase, in-depth qualitative analyses of test items and retrospective verbal reports (RVRs) revealed developmental information about the cognitive and individual traits followed in pragmatic awareness. Results showed that sociocultural, socio-psychological, and socio-affective aspects of the discourse situations influenced not only students’ pragmalinguistic and sociolinguistic choices but also their negotiation of lexical and grammatical forms in planning the requests. One significant implication is that not only linguistic competence is essential for the EFL learner, acquiring pragmatic competence is also important.

The research investigates the speech act recognition of refusing as made by Indonesian learners of English as a foreign language, native Indonesian, and native English. It involves three groups: 13 Indonesian EFL Learners (IELs), 13 Indonesian Native Speakers (INSs), and 13 American Native Speakers (NSs) of English. They were asked to respond to ten different situations, in which they carry out the speech act of refusal. Their strategies in refusing were compared one another in order to find out whether the refusal performed by Indonesian EFL Learner (IELs) correspond more closely with those of the Indonesian Native Speakers (INSs) or with speakers of the target language, the American Native Speakers (NSs). The data, collected from a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) which was developed by Blum-Kulka, were analyzed and categorized based on Azis’s categories (2000). Results indicated that although a similar range of refusal strategies were available to the two language groups, cross-cultural variation still exists. The data involved some contextual variables, which include the status of interlocutors (higher, equal, or lower status) and eliciting acts, i.e., requests, invitations, offers, and suggestions.

The issue of EFL teachers’ rating criteria and patterns in Interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) assessment is new and needs rigorous analysis. The purpose of this study was to reveal important variables such as raters’ criteria and rating patterns by analyzing the ILP assessment process of Iranian non-native English speaking raters (NNESRs) of both high and low proficiency levels based on the request speech act. The data for this study was collected through a discourse completion test (DCT) and a rating questionnaire from 40 Iranian EFL teachers and were later analyzed through descriptive analysis-test and chi-squares. The results showed that raters considered 9 criteria, including pragma-linguistic and socio-pragmatic components of language which raters noted differently through eight request situations. The results showed that raters considered nine criteria, including pragma linguistic and socio-pragmatic components of language which were noted differently through eight request situations. Among the considered criteria, the highest frequencies belonged to the criteria of authenticity, query of preparatory and softness, and interlocutors’ relationship used by high proficiency teachers, whereas low proficiency teachers used the highest frequencies of accuracy, style, and directness. The result of the study can have important connotations for teachers to consider teaching L2 pragmatics in language classes and in teacher training courses.

This study investigated the relationship between language proficiency and negative pragmatic transfer from a first language (L1), focusing on the speech act of refusal as realised by American learners of Arabic as a Foreign Language (AFL) in Egyptian Arabic. Twenty American AFL learners (10 intermediate and 10 advanced) and 2 baseline groups (10 native speakers of Egyptian Arabic and 10 native speakers of American English) participated in the study. Data were collected using enhanced open-ended role plays, which consisted of six scenarios eliciting refusals of requests and offers in lower, equal and higher status situations. The study is significant because it is the first to examine issues of pragmatic competence and transfer among American learners of AFL. Results showed that both learner groups engaged in negative pragmatic transfer from English with regard to the overall frequency of direct and indirect strategies, individual refusal strategies, strategy use relative to status and discourse-level transfer. The findings also showed that the intermediate learners engaged in negative pragmatic transfer more frequently than their advanced counterparts. Additionally, learners sometimes used patterns that deviated from the norms of both learners' L1 and their target second language (L2). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on pragmatic competence development in second or foreign language learners. In particular, it attempts to fill the significant research gap in measuring change in pragmatic competence and capturing pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic development over time. The paper proposes an innovative approach by applying a logistic model with multinomial distribution for measuring change in InterLanguage Pragmatics Research (ILP). Applied in the field of pragmatics, this statistical tool offers a comprehensive and flexible approach to modelling relations between independent and dependent variables in ILP research. The model is tested in a longitudinal study of Polish undergraduate students learning English, and specifically in the way they formulate requests by means of requestive directness strategies. The paper concludes that, regardless of time elapsing, the factors P (power distance) and D (social distance) have a highly significant influence on the use of requestive directness strategies by Poles learning EFL. Furthermore, the analysis indicates that the pragmatic output of Poles learning EFL is dependent on one more independent variable: the estimation of future social distance (F). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Journal of College of Languages is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper focuses on pragmatic competence development in second or foreign language learners. In particular, it attempts to fill the significant research gap in measuring change in pragmatic competence and capturing pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic development over time. The paper proposes an innovative approach by applying a logistic model with multinomial distribution for measuring change in InterLanguage Pragmatics Research (ILP). Applied in the field of pragmatics, this statistical tool offers a comprehensive and flexible approach to modelling relations between independent and dependent variables in ILP research. The model is tested in a longitudinal study of Polish undergraduate students learning English, and specifically in the way they formulate requests by means of requestive directness strategies. The paper concludes that, regardless of time elapsing, the factors P (power distance) and D (social distance) have a highly significant influence on the use of requestive directness strategies by Poles learning EFL. Furthermore, the analysis indicates that the pragmatic output of Poles learning EFL is dependent on one more independent variable: the estimation of future social distance (F). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper describes a contrastive study of interlanguage refusal strategies employed by Korean and Norwegian learners of English as an additional language. The data were collected from multilingual first-year students at an American university in South Korea and in an English-medium program at a Norwegian university by means of an online open discourse completion task and analyzed using the coding categories based on Beebe, Takahashi, and Uliss-Welts (1990), and Salazar Campillo, Safont-Jordà, and Codina Espurz (2009). The data were analyzed to compare the average frequencies of refusal strategies used by the two groups, and the types of direct, indirect, and adjunct strategies that they employed. Independent samples t-tests revealed significant differences in the use of direct and indirect strategies with small effect sizes. The differences in the use of adjunct strategies were not statistically significant, and the effect sizes were negligible. Descriptive statistics of the differences in the types of direct, indirect, and adjunct strategies also revealed interesting patterns. The findings suggest that multilinguals' pragmatic performance is a complex phenomenon that cannot be explained by the differences in cultural and pragmatic norms of their first language alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]