چکیده:
An overview of pedagogical interventions in the field of interlanguage pragmatics reveals the under-exploration of the processes in which changes in learners' second language (L2) pragmatic competence are established and that most of these investigations have focused on the product or final outcome of the learners' pragmatic development (Bardovi-Harlig, 1999; Kasper, 1996; Vyatkina & Belz, 2006). This study aimed to provide a qualitative analysis of the microgenetic development of English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' pragmatic knowledge of request speech act. A total of 140 male and female participants received instruction on request strategy types and internal and external modification devices for seven sessions (weeks) through consciousness-raising (C-R) tasks. The data were collected after instructional sessions during the first, third, fifth, and seventh weeks through discourse completion tests (DCTs). The results indicated that, in the course of time, the participants stopped using direct request strategies and employed conventionally indirect strategies more frequently in situations involving high-status interlocutors and high-imposition requests. Moreover, as time progressed, the learners became more preoccupied with pragmatic appropriateness rather than grammatical correctness. The results of the study suggest that C-R instructional tasks offer an effective means of teaching pragmatics. Considering request speech act, learners should become conscious of the significance of concepts such as status and imposition as well as internal and external modification devices in request formulation.
خلاصه ماشینی:
The Role of Consciousness-Raising Tasks on EFL Learners' Microgenetic Development of Request Pragmatic Knowledge a Zia Tajeddin Professor of Applied Linguistics, Allameh Tabataba’i University, Iran Rasoul Mohammad Hosseinpur Assistant Professor of TEFL, University of Qom, Iran Received 5 November 2012; revised 4 September 2013; accepted 5 October 2013 Abstract An overview of pedagogical interventions in the field of interlanguage pragmatics reveals the under-exploration of the processes in which changes in learners' second language (L2) pragmatic competence are established and that most of these investigations have focused on the product or final outcome of the learners' pragmatic development (Bardovi-Harlig, 1999; Kasper, 1996; Vyatkina & Belz,2006).
Consistent with this line of research, the primary purpose of this article was to document the microgenetic development of EFL learners' pragmatic knowledge of request head act and its internal and external modification devices over the course of a seven-week instruction through consciousness-raising (C-R) tasks.
Third, apart from imperative, locution derivable (15%) was the only direct request strategy type used by the learners with high frequency in the third data collection session for a situation related to asking a friend for directions.
Concerning the third research question, the results of this study revealed that instruction was beneficial for the learners because their pragmatic production of request speech act considerably improved over the time and during the four data collection sessions.
These findings are in line with previous research on the positive effects of instruction on second and foreign language learning in general, and the benefits of instruction on the development of learners’ pragmatic competence in requests in particular (Doughty, 2003; Norris & Ortega, 2000).