Investigating the effects of explicit and implicit instruction on Iranian EFL learners’ pragmatic development Speech acts of request and suggestion in focus
Ehsan Rezvani, Abbass Eslami-Rasekh, H Vahid Dastjerdi
Abstract
The present study aimed at investigating the impact of explicit and implicit teaching on the acquisition of the speech acts of requests and suggestions by Iranian EFL learners. To do so, 60 homogenous adult Iranian intermediate EFL learners attending a language institute in Isfahan, Iran, were randomly assigned to two groups: Explicit Group (EG) and Implicit Group (IG). A pre-test was given to the two groups to measure the participants’ ability to use requests and suggestions prior to any treatment. Then, both groups were exposed to videos of short conversations including the speech acts under study. The instructional treatment for the EG followed a FonFS paradigm characterized by explicitness and deduction followed by a variety of drills, while the instruction for the IG involved a FonF paradigm characterized by input enhancement and recasts. The results of the post-test, administered after the treatment, indicated that both explicit and implicit teaching exerted a significant effect on the learners’ production of requests and suggestions in English. It was also found that there was no statically significant difference between the aforementioned methods of instruction with regard to their effects on learners’ pragmatic development.
Keywords: interlanguage pragmatics, explicit instruction, implicit instruction, speech acts