A qualitative investigation into the effects of pragmatic instruction on Iranian EFL learners’ production of suggestions and requests

Abstract

Due to the fact that unlike grammatical errors, pragmatic errors may cause communication breakdown, studies in the area of interlanguage pragmatics have placed greater emphasis on the instruction of second/foreign language pragmatics. As thus, the present study investigated the relative effectiveness of four types of input-based instruction on the type of strategies the Iranian learners’ of English used in making suggestions and requests. Over a 16 week course, input delivered through video clips was enhanced through: a) metapragmatic explanation (N=21), b) form-comparison (N=21), c) meaning-focused (N=28), and d) typographically enhanced input at a university in Iran with female undergraduates majoring in English Translation. The four treatment groups were compared with a control group (N=15) on the strategies they used for making suggestions and requests on the pre-tests and post-tests, consisting of two production tasks: leaving a message on an answering machine and sending an email. The qualitative analysis of the utterances produced by the participants indicated that there was a great shift in the strategies the participants used from informal and inappropriate to appropriate strategies. The results are discussed with implications for classroom practices and future research.