The effects of input enhancement and recasts on the development of second language pragmatic competence

Abstract

This study investigates the combined effects of input enhancement and recasts on a group of Vietnamese EFL learners' performance of constructive criticism during peer review activities. Particularly, the study attempts to find out whether the instruction works for different aspects of pragmatic learning, including the learners' sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic knowledge, as well as their frequency of externally and internally modifying their criticism. Over a course lasting approximately seven instructional hours, the learners received visually enhanced pragmatic input and recasts of their errors of form and meaning. The learners' pre-to-posttest improvement was investigated using three production tasks, namely a discourse completion task, a role play, and an oral peer-feedback task. The findings show there is potential for input enhancement and recast in teaching different aspects of second language pragmatics and are discussed with implications for classroom practices and future research.

Keywords:

• pragmatic competence
• input enhancement
• recast
• speech acts
• second language acquisition
• interlanguage pragmatics

Notes on contributors

Minh Thi Thuy Nguyen is an Assistant Professor at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Her research interests and recent publications include pragmatics and language learning, language pedagogy, and language teacher education.

Hanh Thi Pham is a Lecturer at the Faculty of English Language Teacher Education at the University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi. Her professional and research interests are curriculum development, testing and assessment, SLA, and teacher education.

Tam Minh Pham is a Lecturer at the Faculty of English Language Teacher Education at the University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi. Her research interests include language pedagogy and language teacher education.

Notes

1. As noted by Jeon and Kaya (2006), the distinction between explicit and implicit instruction tends to constitute a continuum rather than a dichotomy in previous L2 pragmatic research. As such, the concept of implicit instruction is not absolute but may represent a wide variety of pedagogical interventions varying in degrees of implicitness. These may range from extremely implicit conditions (e.g. sole exposure to TL input without any form of manipulation of learners’ attention to target forms) to instructional techniques lying on the adjoining points of the explicit-implicit continuum toward the implicit end (e.g. visual input enhancement). The current study shares Jeon and Kaya’s view of the relative nature of explicitness and implicitness.

2. As pointed out by Ellis and Sheen (2006), recasts are far from homogeneous and monolithic but have been operationalized differently in the literature. Contrary to Long’s (1996, 2006) view that as an implicit type of corrective feedback recasts do not include an overt focus on form, Ellis and Sheen point out that recasts may in fact lie at various points on a continuum of linguistic implicitness-explicitness. In other words, depending on the linguistic signals that encode them and the discoursal context, recasts can be more or less implicit or explicit. For example, a conversational recast (a reformulation of a student utterance in an attempt to resolve a communication breakdown that is often formulated as a confirmation check) may be considered more implicit than a didactic recast (a reformulation of a student utterance in the absence of a communication problem). However, both types of recasts are deemed less explicit than explicit and metalinguistic correction (see Lyster, Saito, and Sato 2013).

3. The learners, however, were blind to the real purpose of the study and were only told that the researchers were interested to know what they did and talked about in a peer-feedback session. This is to avoid inadvertently influencing their behavior and biasing the collected data.

4. The criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of criticism were mainly based on Tracy, van Dusen, and Robinson (1987). Tracy, van Dusen, and Robinson (1987) investigated the characteristics of ‘good’ criticism as perceived by people from different cultural backgrounds via an open-ended questionnaire. They found some stylistic characteristics that distinguish ‘good’ from ‘bad’ criticism. For example, ‘good’ criticism needs to display positive language and manner. The changes suggested in it must be specific enough, and the critic must offer to help make them possible. The reasons for criticizing must usually be justified and made explicit and the criticism compensated for by being placed in a larger positive message. ‘Good’ criticism also does not violate the relationship between interlocutors and is accurate. While adopting these criteria, we acknowledge, however, that for some activities, such as responding to sample essays, it was difficult for the learners to evaluate the effectiveness of their and the NS feedback without knowing how it would have been co-constructed by the target hearer. Nonetheless, the real purpose of these activities was to incidentally expose the learners to the target structures rather than to teach them how to evaluate criticism, which they had already learned in the first session and continued to practice in the subsequent reflection tasks.

5. It should be noted that although the corrected part was stressed phonologically, we cannot be certain that the recast was understood the way it was intended. This may particularly be the case for Type 3 where there were more than one error to deal with. Unfortunately, we did not interview the students to find out whether or not they noticed the focus of the correction. However, the students’ postexperimental improvement has attested to the efficacy of the treatment.