The effect of explicit instruction and task repetition on Colombian EFL students’ use of politeness strategies during disagreements

ABSTRACT

Research has confirmed the benefits of pragmatics instruction for a variety of speech acts, including suggestions and requests. However, less is known about the effectiveness of instruction for disagreements, which are face-threatening acts that establish a point of view counter to the interlocutor. Therefore, the current study explored the effect of explicit instruction with different forms of practice on Colombian EFL learners’ (N = 31) use of politeness strategies when disagreeing. Over a two-week period, a comparison class (n = 8) received explicit instruction only, while two experimental classes received both explicit instruction and practice through task repetition. Whereas the procedural repetition class (n = 12), repeated the same task procedure four times with new content, the content repetition group (n = 11) repeated the same content with different task procedures. The participants carried out a pretest, immediate and delayed posttests, which consisted of discourse completion and role play tasks. The results indicated that the procedural repetition group used significantly more politeness strategies in both the discourse completion tasks and role plays. Implications for L2 instruction in EFL setting and pragmatics research are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Pragmatics instruction
• disagreements
• politeness strategies
• task repetition
• EFL learners

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Canada Research Chairs [grant number 950-221304] and Concordia University [Mobility Award].