Teaching email requests in the academic context: a focus on the role of corrective feedback

Abstract

As email requests from students to professors have become increasingly common in academic settings, research has also shown second-language (L2) students’ unfamiliarity with email etiquette in L2 has adversely affected their communication with their professors. The present study examines whether giving corrective feedback on students’ performance during pragmatics-focused activities leads to their subsequent improvement in producing and recognising pragmatically appropriate email requests in the above context. Two intact classes of Vietnamese EFL (English as a foreign language) intermediate level students were randomly assigned to either direct-feedback condition or meta-pragmatic feedback condition, but received similar explicit pragmatic pre-instruction. Another intact class was randomly selected as a control group. Students’ pragmatic performance was measured by means of a pre-test, an immediate and delayed post-tests, which consisted of a production and a recognition task. The results indicate that the treatment groups performed significantly better than the control group in the production task, but there was no significant difference between the two treatment groups. On the other hand, students who received meta-pragmatic feedback significantly outperformed those receiving direct feedback and the control group in the recognition task. These findings indicate the varying effects of the two types of written corrective feedback on different areas of L2 pragmatic competence.

Keywords:

• meta-pragmatic feedback
• direct feedback
• meta-pragmatic instruction
• email requests
• pragmatic awareness
• pragmatic production

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Thi Thuy Minh Nguyen

Nguyen Thi Thuy Minh is an assistant professor in the English Language and Literature Academic Group at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Her research interests and recent publications include pragmatics and language learning, language pedagogy, and language teacher education.

Thi Thanh Ha Do

Do Thi Thanh Ha is a lecturer at Faculty of Linguistics and Cultures of English Speaking Countries at the University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi. Her professional and research interests are language testing, pedagogic linguistics, pragmatics and language learning, second language acquisition, and teacher education.

Anh Tuan Nguyen

Nguyen Anh Tuan is a lecturer at Faculty of English Language Teacher Education at the University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi. His research interests include language pedagogy and language teacher education.

Thi Thanh Thuy Pham

Pham Thi Thanh Thuy is a lecturer at Faculty of Linguistics and Cultures of English Speaking Countries at the University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi. Her research interests include language testing, language pedagogy, curriculum, and language teacher education.