Inductive or Deductive? - Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Inductive or Deductive?

Inductive or Deductive?: The Impact of Method of Instruction on the Acquisition of Pragmatic Competence in EFL

By

Karen Glaser

Inductive or Deductive?: The Impact of Method of Instruction on the Acquisition of Pragmatic Competence in EFL, by Karen Glaser This book first published 2014 Zgl.: Lüneburg, Universität, Dissertation, 2014 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2014 by Karen Glaser All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-6653-9, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-6653-8

TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures........................................................................................... viii List of Tables ............................................................................................... x List of Appendices ..................................................................................... xii Acknowledgments .................................................................................... xiv List of Abbreviations ................................................................................ xvi Chapter One ................................................................................................. 1 Introduction Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 10 The Development of Pragmatic Competence 2.1 The Learner’s Perspective: Acquiring Pragmatic Competence 2.1.1 Origins of Pragmatic Competence and of Pragmatic Failure 2.1.2 Components of Pragmatic Competence: Sociopragmatic Knowledge and Pragmalinguistic Ability 2.1.3 The Relationship between Pragmatic Competence and Lexico-Grammatical Proficiency 2.1.4 The Role of Attention and Awareness in the Development of Pragmatic Competence 2.2 The Instructor’s Perspective: Teaching Pragmatic Competence 2.2.1 The Effectiveness of Pragmatics Instruction 2.2.2 Explicit versus Implicit Instruction 2.2.3 Inductive versus Deductive Instruction 2.2.4 Instructional Components: Input, Output, and Feedback 2.2.5 The Target Norm Problem in EFL Contexts Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 93 Dispreferred Speech Acts in English and English Language Learning 3.1 Speech Acts as Functional Categories of Language Use 3.2 Preference Organization 3.3 Speech Act 1: Disagreement 3.3.1 Features of English Native Speaker Disagreement

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Table of Contents

3.3.2 Features of EF/SL Learner Disagreement 3.4 Speech Act 2: Refusals 3.4.1 Features of English Native Speaker Refusals 3.4.2 Features of EF/SL Learner Refusals 3.5 The Impact of Situational Variables on Speech Act Performance 3.5.1 Power 3.5.2 Social Distance 3.5.3 Rank of Imposition and Rank of Stake 3.5.4 Rights and Obligations Chapter Four ............................................................................................ 152 Methodological Setup of the Study 4.1 Research Questions (RQs) 4.2 The Quasi-Experimental, Longitudinal Design 4.3 Data Collection Instruments and Procedures 4.3.1 Language Proficiency Test 4.3.2 Discourse Completion Tasks (DCTs) 4.3.3 Role Plays 4.3.4 Course Feedback Questionnaire (CFQ) 4.3.5 Reflective Essay 4.4 Participants 4.4.1 The EFL Learners 4.4.2 The Native Speakers 4.5 Instructional Treatment 4.5.1 Concretizing the Instructional Designs: Input, Output, Feedback 4.5.2 The Explicit-Inductive Group 4.5.3 The Explicit-Deductive Group 4.6 Data Analysis Procedures 4.6.1 Coding of the Elicited Speech Samples 4.6.2 Analysis of the CFQs 4.6.3 Analysis of the Reflective Essays Chapter Five ............................................................................................ 278 Results and Discussion 5.1 Data Overview: Valid Responses, Opting Out, and Actual Realizations of the Target Speech Acts 5.2 RQ 1 – Effectiveness of Instructional Approach 5.2.1 Indicator 1: Features Focused on in the Instruction 5.2.2 Indicator 2: Approximation of NS Norm 5.2.3 Summary and Discussion


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5.3 RQ 2 – Influence of Lexico-Grammatical Proficiency 5.3.1 Influence prior to the Instruction 5.3.2 Influence after the Instruction 5.3.3 Summary and Discussion 5.4 RQ 3 – The Learners’ Perspective 5.4.1 Results of the CFQ 5.4.2 Results of the Reflective Essay Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 443 Teacher Observations and Teaching Implications 6.1 The Component of Time 6.2 The Challenge of Using Authentic Materials in Pragmatics Teaching 6.3 Putting the Two Approaches into Practice in the Language Classroom 6.4 Teaching Dispreferred Speech Acts Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 454 Summary and Conclusion 7.1 Summary of Research Goals and Findings 7.2 Limitations and Suggestions for Future Research 7.3 Merits and Implications References ............................................................................................... 472 Appendices .............................................................................................. 533 Index ........................................................................................................ 611

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2-1 Figure 2-2 Figure 2-3 Figure 4-1 Figure 4-2 Figure 5-1 Figure 5-2 Figure 5-3 Figure 5-4 Figure 5-5 Figure 5-6 Figure 5-7 Figure 5-8 Figure 5-9 Figure 5-10 Figure 5-11 Figure 5-12 Figure 5-13 Figure 5-14 Figure 5-15 Figure 5-16 Figure 5-17 Figure 5-18

Decoo’s (1996) modalities of induction Adaptation I of Decoo’s (1996) five modalities Adaptation II of Decoo’s (1996) five modalities Situational variable combinations for refusals Interpretation of the K ratings Disagreement opting out patterns of NSs and learners at T1 Disagreement opting out patterns of NSs and learners at T2 Refusal opting out patterns of NSs and learners at T1 Refusal opting out patterns of NSs and learners at T2 Utterance length in words in the disagreement DCT scenarios at T1 and T2 Utterance length in words in the refusal DCT scenarios at T1 and T2 Utterance length in words in the disagreement role plays at T1 and T2 Utterance length in words in the refusal role plays at T1 and T2 Utterance length in strategies in the disagreement DCT scenarios at T1 and T2 Utterance length in strategies in the refusal DCT scenarios at T1 and T2 Utterance length in strategies in the disagreement role plays at T1 and T2 Utterance length in strategies in the refusal role plays at T1 and T2 Token agreement in the DCT and role play disagreement data Mitigation patterns in the DCT disagreement data Mitigation patterns in the role play disagreement data Mitigation patterns in the DCT refusal data Mitigation patterns in the role play refusal data Internal modification of semantic strategies in the disagreement DCT scenarios at T1 and T2


Figure 5-19 Internal modification of semantic strategies in the disagreement role play scenarios at T1 and T2 Figure 5-20 Internal modification of adjuncts in the disagreement DCT scenarios at T1 and T2 Figure 5-21 Internal modification of adjuncts in the disagreement role play scenarios at T1 and T2 Figure 5-22 Internal modification of semantic strategies in the refusal DCT scenarios at T1 and T2 Figure 5-23 Internal modification of semantic strategies in the refusal role play scenarios at T1 and T2 Figure 5-24 Internal modification of adjuncts in the refusal DCT scenarios at T1 and T2 Figure 5-25 Internal modification of adjuncts in the refusal role play scenarios at T1 and T2 Figure 5-26 Rating distribution of perceived improvement (CFQ items 2a and 2b) Figure 5-27 Rating distribution of perceived usefulness (CFQ items 3a, 3b, and 3c) Figure 5-28 Perceived difficulty of strategies taught (CFQ question 6) Figure 5-29 Ratings differing between the learner groups (CFQ items 3d, 6f, 7f, and 7h) Figure 5-30 Learner perceptions expressed in the Reflective Essays

ix

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1-1 Table 2-1 Table 2-2 Table 4-1 Table 4-2 Table 4-3 Table 4-4 Table 4-5 Table 4-6 Table 4-7 Table 4-8 Table 4-9 Table 4-10 Table 4-11 Table 4-12 Table 4-13 Table 4-14 Table 4-15 Table 4-16 Table 4-17 Table 4-18 Table 4-19 Table 4-20 Table 4-21

Characteristics of the data collection methods employed The explicit/implicit and inductive/deductive matrix SLA studies contrasting deductive and inductive teaching designs Situational variables, social roles and disagreement topics in Q1 Situational variables, social roles and refusal topicsin Q1 Cell-situation correspondence in the DCT questionnaire Situational variables, social roles and disagreement topics in Q2 Situational variables, social roles and refusal topics in Q2 Situational variables, social roles and disagreement topics in Q0 Situational variables, social roles and refusal topics in Q0 Perceived realism of Q0 DCT scenarios Q0 scenario rank order of perceived realism PD rating averages to determine scenario validity Distribution of intended PD ratings to determine scenario validity K rating averages to determine scenario validity Distribution of intended K ratings to determine scenario validity R rating averages to determine scenario validity Distribution of intended R ratings to determine scenario validity O rating averages to determine scenario validity Distribution of intended O ratings to determine scenario validity O-low frequency distributions on the four-point scale Creation of the disagreement role play scenarios as based on the DCTs Creation of the refusal role play scenarios as based on the DCTs Sequence of the role play scenarios at T1 and T2


Table 4-22 Background variables of the learner participants Table 5-1 Valid responses, optouts and actual disagreements in the DCTs Table 5-2 Valid responses, optouts and actual refusals in the DCTs Table 5-3 Valid responses, optouts and actual disagreements in the role plays Table 5-4 Valid responses, optouts and actual refusals in the role plays Table 5-5 Development of taught disagreement strategies Table 5-6 Development of taught refusal strategies Table 5-7 Rank distributions of semantic strategies in disagreements Table 5-8 Rank distributions of semantic strategies in refusals Table 5-9 Rank distributions of adjuncts in disagreements Table 5-10 Rank distributions of adjuncts in refusals Table 5-11 Group advantages for internal modification of disagreement Table 5-12 Group advantages for internal modification of refusals Table 5-13 Distribution of unintended disrespect Table 5-14 Significant correlations for lexico-grammatical proficiency in disagreement DCTs at T1 Table 5-15 Significant correlations for lexico-grammatical proficiency in disagreement role plays at T1 Table 5-16 Significant correlations for lexico-grammatical proficiency in refusal DCTs at T1 Table 5-17 Significant correlations for lexico-grammatical proficiency in refusal role plays at T1 Table 5-18 Significant correlations for lexico-grammatical proficiency in disagreement DCTs at T2 Table 5-19 Significant correlations for lexico-grammatical proficiency in refusal DCTs at T2 Table 5-20 Significant correlations for lexico-grammatical proficiency in refusal role plays at T2 Table 5-21 Overview of host countries during the semester abroad Table 5-22 Awareness gains depending on condition and linguistic environment Table 5-23 Opinion on instruction depending on condition and linguistic environment

xi

LIST OF APPENDICES

Appendix A Appendix B Appendix C Appendix D Appendix E Appendix F Appendix G Appendix H Appendix I Appendix J Appendix K Appendix L Appendix M Appendix M.1 Appendix M.2 Appendix M.3 Appendix M.4 Appendix M.5 Appendix M.6 Appendix M.7 Appendix M.8 Appendix M.9 Appendix M.10 Appendix M.11 Appendix M.12 Appendix M.13 Appendix M.14 Appendix M.15 Appendix M.16 Appendix M.17 Appendix N Appendix N.1 Appendix N.2 Appendix N.3 Appendix N.4

Disagreement Strategies Reported in the Literature Refusal Strategies Reported in the Literature DCTs for Learners at T1 (Q1) DCTs for Learners at T2 (Q2) DCTs for Native Speakers (Q0) Assessment Questionnaire (AQ) AQ Results of Cross-Cultural Comparison Follow-Up Assessment Questionnaire (FQ) Role Play Instructions at T1 Role Play Instructions at T2 Course Feedback Questionnaire (CFQ) Reflective Essay Assignments Teaching Materials Inductive Group Handout Ind_SitVar_I Handout TermsDefs Handout InapprResp Handout Ind_Situation1 Handout Ind_Situation8 Handout Ind_DisRuleDisc Transparency Ind_DisSandwich Handout DisagreementRating Handout Ind_RefRuleDisc Postponement and White Lies PPT Materials Handout RefusalDialogs Handout Ind_RefusalRules Handout RefusalHW Teacher Turns Pausing Activity Role Play Practice Cards Offer Cards for Circle Activity Handout Ind_SitVar_II Teaching Materials Deductive Group Handout Ded_SitVar_I Handout Ded_Situation1 Transparency Ded_DisRules Handout Ded_Situation8


Appendix N.5 Appendix N.6 Appendix N.7 Appendix N.8 Appendix O Appendix P Appendix Q

Handout Ded_DisLearner Handout Ded_RefusalRules Handout Ded_SitVar_II Transparency Ded_Imposition Transcription Symbols and Sample Transcriptions Classification Scheme for Disagreement Classification Scheme for Refusal

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book is a revised version of my PhD thesis, and as with most empirical PhD research projects, mine would not have been possible without the help and support of a myriad of people, to whom I would like to express my sincerest thanks. First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor, Prof. Dr. Anne Barron of Leuphana University Lüneburg/Germany, for her invaluable input and unwavering encouragement. I am deeply indebted to her for continuously pointing me in the right direction, not only with regard to my topic and research questions, but also with many of the steps I had to take on the rocky road of empirical classroom research. I am immensely grateful for her sensitive guidance and timely feedback, which was marked by an unrivaled knowledge of the field of interlanguage pragmatics and of linguistic research methods and which propelled me forward every time I received it. Thanks for being such a wonderful and incredibly supportive advisor! I would also like to thank the committee members, Prof. Dr. Torben Schmidt of Leuphana University and Prof. Dr. Eva Alcón Soler of Universitat Jaume I in Castellón de la Plana/Spain, for serving as my reviewers. Thank you for taking the time to read the many pages of my thesis and for providing your excellent comments and suggestions. I am honored to have had you as my examiners! Another thank you goes to the 49 students who agreed to serve as learner participants in this study and without whose participation and input this project would never have become a reality. I had a lot of fun teaching you, and I’ll be forever grateful for your help! In addition to these learner participants, my heartfelt thanks goes to the 61 native speakers of American English who provided the DCT baseline data as well as to the 50 Germans and 50 Americans who assisted with the pilot testing phase of this data collection instrument. It was an overwhelming experience to see how many people were willing to contribute their time, energy and thoughts to somebody else’s research project without getting anything in return. I owe you so much! I would also like to acknowledge the help of my colleagues at TU Chemnitz, TU Dresden, Leipzig University (all Germany) and Kent State University (USA) who helped me in brainstorming and pilot testing the


xv

various scenarios employed in this research as well as in carrying out the role plays and their transcriptions: Prof. Dr. Josef Schmied, Dr. Susanne Wagner, Helen Forbes, Ian Mills, Ben Hogan, Lauren Baker, James Daly, Nita Hutchinson, Lauren Vogel, Anja Kreutel (kudos for all your perseverance with the recordings!), Christina Spirow, and Sascha Schmidt. Thank you all so much for your precious time, insightful comments and incessant patience! Being a linguist does not necessarily entail being a technology wizard, and this is especially true in my case. I therefore would like to extend my thanks to three people who are, namely to Stephan Süß for programming the online DCTs and for putting up expertly with all of my special requests, to Maria Kreutel for taming MS Excel and for making it do wondrous things I would never have thought possible, and to Kristin Preuß for helping with the formatting of the paper and book, which was much more time-consuming and nerve-racking than it sounds (and which involved copious amounts of coffee and midnight oil). Your contributions were as essential to the completion and success of the project as was your never-ending optimism, which oftentimes exceeded mine and helped me overcome many a rough patch. I’ll be forever thankful for your bearing with me and for encouraging me at all times! Last – but by no means least – I would like to thank my family for their unconditional support and encouragement. First and foremost my husband, who always believed in me and gave me the time and space I needed to finish the thesis, which inevitably meant cutting back on his free time to take care of our son. Completing a PhD thesis is usually hardest on the people we are closest to, and this was especially true during the final months of the project, when I was virtually non-existent for my little family. I will never forget these sacrifices you made so that I could pursue my academic career. Other babysitters and providers of moral encouragement were my parents-in-law, my sister-in-law and her entire family, my parents and my sisters, who all contributed fundamentally to the progress of the project. Your time and support was the foundation that allowed me to complete my work, and I will be forever grateful for your help. Needless to say, as much as I depended on all of these helpful contributions, the responsibility for any shortcomings and errors of this book rests solely with me. Karen Glaser

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

AmE1 App. AQ CFQ D DCT EFL EF/SL ELF ELT ENL ESL FFL FL FQ F/SL F/SLT FSS FTA H HO iBT IL ILP JFL K L1 L2 MM NNS NS P PCR 1

American English Appendix Assessment Questionnaire Course Feedback Questionnaire social distance Discourse Completion Task English as a Foreign Language English as a Foreign and/or Second Language English as a Lingua Franca English Language Teaching English as a native language English as a Second Language French as a Foreign Language foreign language Follow-up Assessment Questionnaire Foreign/Second Language Foreign/Second Language Teaching face-saving strategies face-threatening act the hearer handout Internet-based TOEFL interlanguage interlanguage pragmatic(s) Japanese as a Foreign Language rank of stake first language (native language, mother tongue) foreign or second language modality marker non-native speaker native speaker power (social power/power distance) Pragmatic Consciousness-Raising

Cf. Kortmann and Schneider (2004).


Q0 Q1 Q2 R S SAW SFL SL SLA TL

DCT questionnaire for the native speakers DCT questionnaire for the non-native speakers at T1 DCT questionnaire for the non-native speakers at T2 rank of imposition the speaker speech act work Spanish as a Foreign Language second language Second Language Acquisition target language

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CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION

The rise of the now widely embraced communicative approach to language teaching has been accompanied by an increase in the importance attributed to pragmatic competence in the target language (TL), widening the notion of language proficiency to include not only structural aspects such as grammar, lexis and phonology, but also the successful mastery of interpersonal communication as well as of the decoding and encoding of language functions such as implicatures or speech acts1 in authentic social contexts (e.g., Cohen, 2004, p. 302; Hymes, 1972, pp. 277-281; Ishihara & Cohen, 2010, pp. 1-17; Murphy & Neu, 1996, p. 191). In other words, the focus has shifted from a paradigm concentrating on the linguistic inventory of a language and the mastery of the linguistic code to one that emphasizes the appropriate and successful application of these language symbols in communicative encounters that are rooted in space and time and shaped by the interlocutors and their manifold relationships to one another (Bachman & Palmer, 1996, pp. 66-75). That this is an important aspect of language mastery becomes visible from the many reports of language learners who, despite being proficient in the linguistic code of their second language (L2), fail to communicate successfully due to not having mastered the pragmatic code of this language (e.g., Barron, 2003, pp. 1-2; Ishihara & Cohen, 2010, pp. 195-197; Thomas, 1983). Hence, acquiring pragmatic competence in a foreign or second language (F/SL) entails more than just “learning new words, new expressions of the target language to do what one is already doing in one’s own language” (LoCastro, 1986, p. 1), but rather the acquisition of a new system of social meanings and the tools to express these social meanings successfully. Hence, the challenge of learning an F/SL lies not only at the lexical and morphological but also at the conceptual level and requires the learners to master what Rivers (1983, p. 162) called the “interlingual conceptual contrast” between a learner’s first and second languages. What is more, it cannot be assumed that such sociocultural rules of language use are 1

A detailed explanation of the concept of speech acts is provided in chapter 3.1.

2

Chapter One

acquired simultaneously with the linguistic code (García, C., 1989, p. 300); rather, they need to be specifically imparted and trained. From the researcher’s perspective, this focus on pragmatic competence entails the ambition to identify and understand the elements and processes involved in a language learner’s development of pragmatic skills. From the language teacher’s perspective, it entails the ambition to endow students with knowledge, strategies and skills that are vital for communicating their intended meanings successfully. Equipping language learners with effective communication strategies, or, in other words, teaching a foreign or second language successfully in its entirety, should be informed by scientific findings about the acquisitional processes of pragmatic competence rather than the teacher’s or text book creator’s personal intuitions (Boxer & Pickering, 1995, p. 44; cf. also ch. 2.1.1). Accordingly, it is essential to analyze the pragmatic development of language learners as well as factors potentially influencing the acquisition of pragmatic competence from an empirical perspective to have scientifically grounded information available as the basis for teaching, and this is where the researcher’s and the teacher’s foci meet. The present study hopes to make a contribution to this knowledge by analyzing the impact of two teaching approaches on the acquisition of pragmatic skills in learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in a German university setting, more specifically on the acquisition of the two dispreferred2 speech acts disagreement and refusal. Several terms have been used in the literature to refer to this branch of research, the most prominent ones being cross-cultural pragmatics and interlanguage pragmatics3. Since both terms refer to the study of pragmatics across cultures and therefore, in most cases, across languages, both appear to be suitable labels for the research on pragmatic competence in a foreign language. Yet, as Knapp and Knapp-Pothoff (1987, pp. 7-8) point out, while the term cross-cultural refers to the comparison of data obtained from different cultural groups, it does not specifically take into consideration that for at least one party in the interaction the shared language is a foreign or second language (L2). The term interlanguage pragmatics, on the other hand, makes explicit reference to interlanguage4 and thus to language acquisitional issues and seems, therefore, the more 2

This term will be explained in detail in chapter 2.2.2. Other terms in use are contrastive pragmatics, intercultural pragmatics, or intracultural pragmatics. For a detailed terminology discussion, see Kraft & Geluykens (2007, pp. 4-15). 4 The reader is directed to Selinker (1972, 1992) for a detailed discussion of interlanguage. 3

Introduction

3

fitting term for an analysis of the development of pragmatic competence by language learners. Hence, the term interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) was chosen as the preferred term for the study at hand. The research project presented here aims to contribute to the knowledge of the development of ILP competence by analyzing the influence of type of instruction on the acquisition of pragmatic competence in upper-intermediate to advanced learners of English, namely students of British and American Studies (Anglistik/Amerikanistik) at a German university. Even though the majority of the learners analyzed here are native speakers (NSs) of German, this is not the case with all participants, which makes the results equally applicable to learner populations from other linguistic backgrounds (cf. ch. 4.4.1 for the detailed description of the learners). The educational environment provided at university offers a favorable setting for collecting learner data not only at different stages in the language development but also under relatively controlled conditions. As early as 1999, Bardovi-Harlig predicted that “influence-of-instruction studies are going to form the most significant body of acquisitional interlanguage pragmatics studies” (Bardovi-Harlig, 1999a, p. 702), and given that a large portion of L2 learning world-wide is in some way or other connected to instruction, it is indeed vital to include the teaching component in ILP research – both in the form of learning conditions to be analyzed and as the professional domain that will probably benefit from the research results most. The study contrasts an explicit-inductive and an explicit-deductive teaching design and analyzes their impact on instructed learners’ development of the two dispreferred speech acts of disagreement and offer refusal. As will be explained in more detail in chapter 3.2, dispreferred speech acts are structurally more complex and cognitively more challenging than their preferred counterparts, which is why they provide an appropriate target for language learners at an advanced stage of proficiency. While the two teaching designs are located within the explicit domain, that is, both learner groups were provided with metapragmatic information and rules (cf. ch. 2.2.2), they differ with regard to the sequencing of the instruction: The deductive approach proceeds from rule provision towards rule application, whereas the inductive design moves from learner contact with the language material and guided discovery processes towards the collaborative identification of the underlying rules (cf. ch. 2.2.3), i.e., the rule provision is not the starting point but rather the ‘destination’ of the instruction. Inductive approaches do not necessarily have to be explicit in nature, that is, inductive teaching can also stop short of the concluding rule provision phase, resulting in an implicit-inductive design. However,

4

Chapter One

comparing deductive and inductive approaches within an explicit framework seems more promising from a methodological perspective since it isolates the influence of these conditions rather than confounding them with a second dichotomy, namely that of explicit versus implicit instruction (cf. ch.s 2.2.2 and 2.2.3 for a detailed explanation of these two dimensions). Apart from analyzing general effects of the instruction, the study examines whether (and, if so, how) one of the two approaches is more successful than the other. This is done by means of two measures of effectiveness, viz., an increased use of the features focused on in the instruction (indicator 1), and an increased approximation of the TL norm (indicator 2). To this end, the study not only collected learner data but also NS baseline data from speakers whose first language (L1) is English to have a yardstick available for the analysis of the groups’ similarity to the TL norm. The study hopes to contribute to the knowledge of the impact that instructional approaches can have on the development of ILP competence. It is thus situated within the field of “classroom-based interlanguage pragmatics research” (Kasper & Rose, 2001, p. 4) and features an interventional rather than an observational design (Kasper, 2001b, p. 47). That is, rather than observe what is going on in an already-planned language course, it provided the learners with a specifically prepared pedagogical treatment and investigated the effects of this instructional intervention. It thus responds to Rose’s (1994) claim that “much more research is needed to determine the effect of instruction in language use, both in ESL and EFL settings” (p. 56), a call which is echoed in Kasper (2000b, p. 396). Although the decade-and-half that has passed since Kasper’s article appeared has produced quite a number of promising interventional ILP studies (cf. ch.s 2.2.1 and 2.2.2 for a detailed review), we are only beginning to understand the mechanisms at work in pragmatics instruction and the elements that make the teaching of pragmatics a successful endeavor. Since the study not only collected learner output at two points in time but also information on the learners’ proficiency level by means of a standardized language test (cf. ch. 4.3.1), a secondary goal of the present investigation was to examine the relationship between the learners’ proficiency level and their pragmatic competence. This helps shed light on the hitherto unsolved question of whether lexico-grammatical proficiency is a necessary prerequisite for pragmatic proficiency or whether the two are unrelated (cf. ch. 2.1.3). Although not a primary focus of the investigation, it complements the analysis of the learners’ speech act

Introduction

5

performance and yields useful insights into this subaspect of ILP development, which is also relevant for the language classroom. Finally, the study also collected information on the learners’ perceptions of the instruction to complement the speech production data with affective learner data on the usefulness of the instruction as well as their awareness of and attitudes towards pragmatic aspects. This is an area which has hitherto been largely neglected in ILP research (Pearson, L., 2006a, p. 109) even though it provides important insights into how pragmatics instruction is perceived by its ‘recipients.’ This kind of data was collected directly after the instruction by means of a questionnaire as well as during the students’ subsequent sojourn abroad by means of a longer essay task. The past two decades have seen a plethora of studies in the general area of ILP, for the most part sparked by Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper’s (1989a) seminal Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP). These studies have contributed greatly to the current knowledge and understanding of interlanguage pragmatics; yet, several methodological shortcomings of the existing body of research have become visible over the past years and a number of gaps still need to be bridged. As the first and probably most obvious weakness, data collection methods have not been sufficiently varied, and researchers have often contented themselves with one single method of data collection per study (Gudykunst, 2000, p. 311). As has been documented repeatedly, this creates a situation in which the data elicitation technique itself all too often determines the outcome of the study (e.g., Beebe & Cummings, 1996; Golato, 2003; Rose & Ono, 1995; Sasaki, 1998). Therefore, a combination of data collection procedures, often referred to as multi-method approach (Cohen, 2004, p. 307; Takahashi, S., 2010b, p. 394) or triangulation (Knafl & Breitmayer, 1989, p. 226; Leech, N. & Onwuegbuzie, 2007, p. 575; Massey, 1999), is needed for methodologically sound investigations in the field of ILP to improve data quality and quantity (DuFon, 2001; Kasper & Dahl, 1991, p. 24; Rose & Ono, 1995, p. 207). More specifically, in choosing data collection methods, three dimensions should be taken into account to ensure optimal variation: “(i) the degree of control that the researcher has over the elicitation process; (ii) the degree to which the data reflects authentic interaction; and (iii) whether the data focuses on linguistic output, i.e. production, or is concerned with language perception or metalanguage” (Geluykens, 2007, p. 33; emphasis in original). Secondly, all too often researchers subscribe to either the qualitative or the quantitative research paradigm, neglecting the strengths and potential usefulness of the respective other approach. In SLA, studies based on

6

Chapter One

qualitative research largely outweigh those based on quantitative research (Geluykens, 2007, p. 65). This is understandable given that the analysis of language learning processes often requires detailed descriptions of a wide range of learner and context variables as well as output phenomena, which is usually reflected in small numbers of participants rather than samples that are large enough to allow sound statistical analyses. In addition, studies in second language acquisition (SLA) often make use of case studies and ethnographic methods, which are, by definition, qualitative methods. Yet, a more flexible approach exploiting the advantages of both paradigms is not only feasible, but also urgently needed in order to make advances in the field. Lastly, studies have predominantly focused on the elicitation of speech data at one point in time as opposed to longitudinal research designs. This means that ILP research has first and foremost been “the sociolinguistic, and to a much lesser extent [the] . . . acquisitional study of NNSs’ [non-native speakers’] linguistic action” (Kraft & Geluykens, 2007, p. 14), a situation which calls for rectification by means of a larger number of longitudinal studies. The present study attempted to address all three of these shortcomings in its methodological setup. Concerning the first aspect, triangulation of methods, the study was designed as a combination of Discourse Completion Tasks (DCTs, cf. ch. 4.3.2), role plays (cf. ch. 4.3.3), a Course Feedback Questionnaire (CFQ, cf. ch. 4.3.4) and a Reflective Essay (cf. ch. 4.3.5). DCTs are questionnaires that contain descriptions of selected scenarios of social interaction. At the end of each of these scenario descriptions, a conversational turn is presented, and the participant is asked to provide a response they would give in this situation (BardoviHarlig & Hartford, 1993a, p. 144; Félix-Brasdefer, 2010, p. 45). Role plays can be performed as genuine role play situations, in which two or more persons act out a given social encounter theatrically, or as role play interviews, in which the participants are presented with a certain scenario and asked to respond as they would in this situation, i.e., without actually acting it out (Cohen, 1996a, p. 24). In the present study, the former method was chosen for reasons of interactional authenticity. Data on learner perceptions were collected in the form of a structured Course Feedback Questionnaire (CFQ) directly following the instruction and an open-ended Reflective Essay during the students’ subsequent semester abroad. On the background of the three research dimensions pointed out by Geluykens (2007), the combination of the selected methods holds many advantages, as the following table shows (cf. Table 1-1):

Introduction Method Dimension

DCTs

7

Role Plays

CFQ

Reflective Essay

(i) control

high

lower (but higher than in natural data)

high

low

(ii) interaction

not given

given

n/a

n/a

(iii) directionality

language production

language production

learner perceptions

learner perceptions

Table 1-1: Characteristics of the data collection methods employed Thanks to their fixed structure, DCTs hold the undisputed advantage of allowing the researcher to exert a high degree of stimulus control (dimension i), thus guaranteeing that the elicited data actually contains the phenomena in question. On the other hand, DCTs have often been criticized for their lack of authenticity and interactionality (Beebe & Cummings, 1996; Cohen, 1996a, p. 25; Golato, 2003) (dimension ii). In fact, data elicited by means of DCTs is generally assumed to represent spontaneous reactions in oral discourse although it is collected via the written mode. This means that typical features of spoken language such as para-verbal and non-verbal features or reaction time cannot be recorded; also, DCT responses have been observed to be generally shorter than actual oral data (Cohen, 1996a; Rintell & Mitchell, 1989; Sasaki, 1998; Yuan, 2001). Apparently, these drawbacks call for a method which elicits oral data in an interactional context – a criterion fulfilled by the role play component. Role plays, in turn, have the disadvantage of a lower degree of control of the speech production resulting from the higher degree of interactionality (although the degree of control is still much higher than in naturally occurring speech). In the design employed here, this drawback was counterbalanced by the above-mentioned high degree of control in the DCTs. Finally, the CFQ and the Reflective Essay attempt to bring the learner perspective into focus (dimension iii), thereby shedding light on the affective impact of the pragmatic intervention. The CFQ was designed in a structured, closed format supplemented by open-ended questions, thus providing a relatively high degree of control over the data collection process. In contrast, the Reflective Essay was a very open data collection tool, which results in a rather low degree of control on the part of the researcher but has the potential to tap into new and unexpected aspects of the issue under investigation. The second shortcoming mentioned above dealt with the missing link between quantitative and qualitative approaches to ILP research. I would

8

Chapter One

like to suggest that this link is not too difficult to establish, since – as Geluykens (2007) points out – “some form of qualitative research is a necessary precursor to doing quantitative analysis, since the classificatory criteria and hypotheses on which quantitative research is based do not appear out of the blue” (p. 54). In accordance with this suggestion, the study at hand is qualitative in that it builds on existing studies by qualitatively identifying additional phenomena in the NSs’ and the learners’ speech data during the coding process (cf. ch. 4.6.1) and by providing a qualitative analysis of surface realizations that transpired as conspicuous in the learner data (cf. ch. 5.2.2.7). What is more, both the CFQs and the Reflective Essays provide valuable qualitative insights alongside their quantitative results (cf. ch.s 5.4.1 and 5.4.2). In addition, the study is quantitative in that it subjects the learner and NS production data to statistical analyses that permit the exploration of possible connections between variables and the identification of general patterns and rules. Accordingly, the combination of quantitative and qualitative elements employed here has resulted in a comprehensive analysis of the speech act features in question as well as of the learners’ pragmatic development. The third methodological weakness mentioned above concerned the neglect of developmental aspects of pragmatic competence as reflected in a dearth of longitudinal research. By collecting data at different points in time, the present project is devised as a longitudinal study and thus takes the developmental aspect into account. What is more, it is designed as a quasi-experimental design analyzing not only how learners develop their pragmatic skills under the influence of pragmatic instruction but also how different instructional approaches can affect the developmental route in the learners. The results of this longitudinal, quasi-experimental approach are thus not only helpful in furthering our understanding of acquisitional pragmatics in general, but also relevant to language instructors in their day-to-day business of curriculum development, lesson planning and materials creation. It shall further be mentioned here that the study was designed and conducted with a strong focus on foreign/second language teaching (henceforth F/SLT5). Accordingly, it does not attempt to provide a thorough sociolinguistic description of linguistic occurrences across regional varieties, social strata, age groups etc.; rather, it concentrates on aspects that are relevant for the F/SLT classroom. This focus had an effect 5

Cf. Gómez-Morón, Padilla-Cruz, Fernández-Amaya and Hérnandez-López (2009, p. xii) for this abbreviation. In analogy, F/SL refers to ‘foreign/second language’.

Introduction

9

on the selection of communicative situations and speaker roles in the elicitation instruments (cf. ch.s 4.3.2 and 4.3.3) in that they were chosen with a view to the communicative goals which academic language learners commonly have and the interlocutors and situations they are most likely to encounter (academia, work, socializing etc.). Moreover, the pragmatic intervention was geared toward a native speaker variety, more specifically American English, and the communication needs of educated speakers. This emphasis is not to be understood as a dialectal or sociolectal judgment in any sense; rather, it was merely chosen for its pedagogical applicability to language classrooms world-wide, as explained in more detail in chapter 2.2.5. This book has the following structure: Chapter 2 presents the theoretical background on what is currently known about development of pragmatic competence in language learners, both with a view to general acquisitional phenomena (chapter 2.1) and the specific role which pragmatic instruction plays in this development (chapter 2.2). In addition, chapter 3 presents information on speech act research, specifically on speech acts as functional categories of language use (chapter 3.1), preference organization and dispreferred speech acts (chapter 3.2), on the two speech acts under investigation, viz., disagreement (chapter 3.3) and refusal (chapter 3.4), and on the role of situational variables in speech act realization (chapter 3.5). Following this theoretical groundwork, chapter 4 provides the description of the methodology used in the present study. Proceeding from the presentation of the research questions in chapter 4.1, it details the study’s quasi-experimental, longitudinal setup (chapter 4.2), the data collection instruments (chapter 4.3), the participants (chapter 4.4), the instructional treatments in the two learner groups (chapter 4.5), and the data analysis procedures (chapter 4.6). Chapter 5 presents the results obtained from the data and the answers to the research questions, starting with an overview of the valid responses collected via the DCTs and the role plays (chapter 5.1). The findings for the first research question, which addressed the effectiveness of the instructional approaches, are presented in chapter 5.2, followed by those for the second research question on the relationship between lexico-grammatical and pragmatic competence in chapter 5.3. Finally, chapter 5.4 reports about the learner perspective as targeted by the third research question. Teacher observations as well as teaching implications for the pragmatics classroom derived from the present research are presented in chapter 6. Finally, chapter 7 presents the main conclusions of the present investigation, delineates its methodological limitations, and proposes suggestions for future research.

CHAPTER TWO THE DEVELOPMENT OF PRAGMATIC COMPETENCE

Research on the development of pragmatic competence has looked into a great variety of features that are assumed and/or have been proven to influence this acquisitional path. One of these factors is the influence of the teaching of pragmatic phenomena. Since this pedagogical factor is the core focus of the present study, it will be discussed in detail in chapter 2.2, which is devoted to pragmatic acquisition from the instructor’s point of view. Prior to elaborating on this classroom perspective, we will first discuss general aspects of pragmatic acquisition in foreign language learners in chapter 2.1. Here, we will look at the factors that foster or, respectively, hamper the development of pragmatic competence in a learner (ch. 2.1.1), the different components which pragmatic competence entails and which thus have to be mastered by the learners (ch. 2.1.2), the relationship between general linguistic proficiency and pragmatic skills (ch. 2.1.3), and the role of attention and awareness in the development of pragmatic competence (ch. 2.1.4). Chapter 2.2 then narrows the focus to instructed language learning environments. Here, chapter 2.2.1 details what is known about the effectiveness of teaching pragmatic skills in the language classroom, which is followed by a presentation of specific aspects of pragmatic teaching approaches, viz., the explicit-implicit (ch. 2.2.2) and the inductive-deductive dichotomies (ch. 2.2.3), which constitute the basis of the quasi-experimental design used in the present interventional study. The chapter on pragmatic instruction concludes with a review of the pedagogical components of input, output and feedback (ch. 2.2.4), which have been identified as vital elements in successful language teaching and also play an important role in the pragmatics classroom.

The Development of Pragmatic Competence

11

2.1 The Learner’s Perspective: Acquiring Pragmatic Competence 2.1.1 Origins of Pragmatic Competence and of Pragmatic Failure For the past three to four decades, researchers and educators alike have placed an increasing emphasis on the role of pragmatic competence in the overall mastery of a foreign language. Hymes (1972) was among the first to speak out against purely formalist approaches to the study of language development, advocating that language competence needs to include not only linguistic (i.e., grammatical) but also communicative competence, that is, the ability to communicate within a given social context that is determined by the interactants and their communicative intentions and anchored in space and time (pp. 277-281). Other researchers have taken up this suggestion and integrated it into their models of language competence. Canale and Swain (1980), for instance, proposed their rather influential model of communicative competence, which views communicative competence as consisting of the three pillars of grammatical, sociolinguistic, and strategic competence (pp. 28-31). Bachman (1990) and Bachman and Palmer (1996) have taken up this suggestion in their recommendations for language testing. They subsume sociolinguistic and strategic competence (relabeled as functional or illocutionary competence) under the heading of pragmatic competence, which they place alongside grammatical competence and assign both an equal weight. Similar to Hymes, they argue that it is not only important to master the linguistic symbols of the target language such as syntax, phonology, graphology etc. (grammatical competence) but also to be able to apply these in any given communicative context (illocutionary/pragmatic competence) (Bachmann, 1990, p. 89). Bachman’s (1990) and Bachman and Palmer’s (1996) model is a good indicator of the fact that pragmatic competence is not extra or ornamental, like the icing on the cake. It is not subordinated to knowledge of grammar and text organization but co-ordinated to formal linguistic and textual knowledge and interacts with 'organizational competence' in complex ways. In order to communicate successfully in a target language, pragmatic competence in L2 must be reasonably well developed. (Kasper, 1997b, para. 6)

As Kasper (1997b) further points out, language learners are already equipped with a certain amount of L2 pragmatic knowledge “for free”

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Chapter Two

(para. 8) based on their first language socialization. This is due to the fact that certain aspects of pragmatic knowledge are universal (Kasper, 1992, p. 210; Nguyen, M. 2005, p. 220) such as the knowledge of conversational organization and routines (Coulmas, 1981, pp. 3-4, Kasper & Rose, 2002, p. 165) or the influence of situational variables on communicative actions and realization strategies (Blum-Kulka, 1991, p. 263; Mir, 1995; p. 110; cf. also ch. 3.5). Others can be successfully transferred from their L1 (Blum-Kulka, 1982, p. 47; Dogancay-Aktuna & Kamisli, 1997, p. 12). However, what we observe more frequently, and what is usually much more conspicuous, are instances of deviation from the target pragmatic norms, either through unsuccessful transfer from the L1 or due to the learner’s insufficient awareness of or resources in the L2. Thomas (1983) coined the term pragmatic failure to refer to such instances of infelicitous pragmatic performance, especially when they result in communication breakdown (p. 91). But even if communication does not come to a standstill, such instances are indicative of the learner’s pragmatic incompetence (Brock & Nagasaka, 2005, p. 17; Kedveš & Werkmann, 2013, p. 5), which can cause misunderstanding and frustration in communication. An article by Cohen and Olshtain (1985) illustrates quite well how many-layered the causes of pragmatic failure or incompetence can be. The authors distinguish between two general types of pragmatic deviation, viz., deviation due to the situation and deviation due to grammatical and lexical factors. The first case refers to those instances in which the learners fail in their choice of the appropriate communicative action such as a specific speech act or in which they deviate in terms of intensity or frequency of the required speech act elements (p. 178). The second type, deviation based on grammatical and lexical factors, is further subdivided by the authors into overt errors (obvious linguistic errors), non-overt errors (literal translation from the L1 that is not meaningful or appropriate in the L2), and faulty strategy realization (infelicitous phrasing resulting in an inappropriate speech act realization) (pp. 179-181). This not only shows that pragmatic infelicities can result from a number of factors (which in most cases probably intersect and reinforce each other), but it also highlights the interdependence of pragmatic and lexico-grammatical proficiency. Since this connection plays such a vital role in the development of ILP, chapter 2.1.3 below is devoted to the relationship between lexico-grammatical and pragmatic competence in more detail. In a more recent publication, Ishihara and Cohen (2010, pp. 77ff) have summarized five causes of learners’ divergence from pragmatic norms which have been identified in ILP research over the years and which can