The Effect of Explicit Instruction on Developing Appropriate Spoken Pragmatic Language Choices in Female Saudi Arabian English as a Foreign Language Students

Alhammad, Albandary ORCID: 0000-0002-1669-8314 (2022) The Effect of Explicit Instruction on Developing Appropriate Spoken Pragmatic Language Choices in Female Saudi Arabian English as a Foreign Language Students. PhD thesis, University of Liverpool.

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Abstract

This study assessed the effects of providing explicit pragmatic instruction on the development of spoken pragmatic competence as exhibited in the understanding and production of appropriate spoken pragmatic language choices. The intervention in the study was conducted in an English as a foreign language (EFL) context with students studying/using English for academic purposes in a non-English environment (Saudi Arabia). Specifically, the study focused on the understanding and production of specific appropriate pragmatic language choices; i) conversational implicatures, ii) politeness strategies, iii) direct/indirect requests, along with iv) a number of appropriate formulaic expressions. The data was collected from 70 Saudi female participants who were at B1(CFER) level learning English as a foreign language EFL in the English department at a Saudi university. The study employed an experimental design, comparing the results of an experimental group, which received ten hours of explicit interventional instruction, and a control group, whose members did not receive instruction. The instruction focused on appropriate language choices in using English language, in particular, the understanding and production of pragmatically appropriate language choices in common conversational contexts that they may encounter in their everyday academic life. This included a focus on the understanding of conversational implicatures, including how to understand cooperative principles and their maxims; politeness strategies, including direct or indirect politeness, and the production of speech acts focusing on direct and indirect requests and explicitly introducing some common formulaic expressions. Performance was measured based on a pre-, post-, and delayed tests designed using a Computer-Animated Production Task (CAPT). The data were collected using two methods: i) a production task to assess the production of appropriate pragmatic language choices of direct and indirect requests and formulaic sequences, and ii) a recognition task to assess the appropriate understanding of conversational implicatures and politeness strategies. The effects of instruction were measured (i) immediately after instruction and (ii) four weeks after instruction to examine the immediate influence and changes over time. The results showed that explicit instruction facilitated the development of pragmatically appropriate language choices in the experimental group, which performed significantly better than the control group in both the post- and the delayed tests. The study demonstrates that explicit instruction to develop pragmatic competence can be effective.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Divisions:	Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of the Arts
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	23 Jan 2023 10:09
Last Modified:	23 Jan 2023 10:10
DOI:	10.17638/03167037
Supervisors:	Jones, Christian Chapman, Siobhan
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3167037