چکیده:
It is substantiated that particular features of pragmatics are teachable, and instruction is both necessary and effective. Determining what kind of intervention is most effectual for facilitating learners’ pragmatic development has been a central issue for researchers. To respond to the inconclusive findings in intervention studies and to extend the instructional studies in L2 pragmatics to less studied and more complex teaching targets, such as implicatures, the current study inquired into the effects of metapragmatic awareness, interactive translation, and discussion through video vignettes on the comprehension of implicatures of 51 (15 male and 36 female) Iranian upper-intermediate EFL learners, who were selected based on Oxford Quick Placement Test (2004) from students majoring English Literature and TEFL at Golestan University, Gorgan, Iran. Fifty-six video prompts containing implicatures from <em>Friends</em> sitcom series and <em>Desperate Housewives</em> TV series were taught to the participants who were randomly assigned to four groups (metapragmatic awareness, interactive translation, discussion, and control). The participants attended the classes twice a week for eight sessions. Results of multiple-choice implicature listening test revealed that all three intervention groups outperformed the control group. Results of Tukey’s Honest Significant Difference (HSD) test illustrated that the metapragmatic awareness group outperformed the interactive translation and discussion groups. No meaningful difference was found between the interactive translation group and the discussion group. The paper concludes that providing learners with contextually appropriate input through video using methods of pragmatic instruction (metapragmatic consciousness-raising, translation, and discussion) is effective to promote their ability to comprehend implicatures and signposts some avenues for future research.
خلاصه ماشینی:
To respond to the inconclusive findings in intervention studies and to extend the instructional studies in L2 pragmatics to less studied and more complex teaching targets, such as implicatures, the current study inquired into the effects of metapragmatic awareness, interactive translation, and discussion through video vignettes on the comprehension of implicatures of 51 (15 male and 36 female) Iranian upper-intermediate EFL learners, who were selected based on Oxford Quick Placement Test (2004) from students majoring English Literature and TEFL at Golestan University, Gorgan, Iran.
Although RT has the potential to demonstrate L2 comprehension of nonliteral meaning, relative paucity of studies in the learners’ pragmatic comprehension of speech acts in general (Birjandi & Derakhshan, 2014; Taguchi, 2008b; Takahashi, 2005) and implicatures in particular, (Bouton, 1988, 1994a, 1994b, 1999; Garcia, 2004; Köylü, 2018; Mirzaei, Hashemian, & Khoramshekouh, 2016; Taguchi, 2011, 2013; Taguchi, Li, & Liu, 2013; Taguchi & Yamaguchi, 2019) has been acknowledged since most previous studies have focused on the production of speech acts (Alcón-Soler, 2013; Bardovi-Harlig, 2013; Eslami-Rasekh & Eslami-Rasekh, 2008; Kasper & Roever, 2005; Martínez-Flor, 2016; Rose, 2005; Taguchi, 2008a; Tajeddin, Keshavarz, & Zand-Moghadam, 2012).
Furthermore, as suggested by different researchers (Bardovi-Harlig, Hartford, Mahan-Taylor, Morgan, & Reynolds, 1991; Derakhshan & Arabmofrad, 2018; Derakhshan & Eslami, 2015; Eslami-Rasekh, 2005; Rose, 1994; Taguchi, 2015), learners are mainly exposed to unnatural, decontextualized, and impoverished language in textbook conversations, have limited interaction opportunities in large classes, as well as little opportunity to maximize and develop intercultural competence.