Effects of deductive and explicit-inductive instruction on tertiary-level Chinese learners’ use of English subjunctive as a pragmatic mitigator

Abstract

This quasi-experimental study investigates the immediate and long-term effects of deductive instruction and explicit-inductive instruction to L2 learners on the use of the English subjunctive as a pragmatic mitigator. Two intact classes of tertiary-level Chinese EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners, labeled as the deductive group and the explicit-inductive group, respectively, received two 45-min sessions of pragmatic intervention, whereas a third intact class serving as the control group was given grammatical instruction. The immediate post-test and delayed post-test administered to the three groups shows that the deductive group had an immediate edge but not a long-term one over the explicit-inductive group, in terms of appropriateness and linguistic accuracy; however, the gain of the explicit-inductive group was better retained than in the deductive group. This study contributes to the expansion of instructional targets within the field of L2 pragmatics. It also highlights the relative advantage of deductive and explicit-inductive instruction methods.