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Article published In:
Pragmatics
Vol. 28:2 (2018) ► pp.217–252

Pragmatic development in the instructed context

A longitudinal investigation of L2 email requests

| Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

This article reports an eight-month investigation into the long-term impact of explicit instruction on the learnability of different aspects of email requests by a group of Vietnamese university students. Two intact classes were randomly assigned to the treatment (N = 13) and control conditions (N = 19). Over a four-week period, the treatment group received six hours of instruction which comprised consciousness-raising, meta-pragmatic explanation, repeated output practice and teacher feedback. The control group, on the other hand, only followed the usual syllabus. Results of the study indicate that the treatment group obtained significantly greater pre-to-posttest gains than the control group, and that their improvement was retained by the time of the eight-month delayed post-test. Despite the learners’ overall progress, however, it was also found that different aspects of their performance appeared to respond differently to instruction. The article supports the need for instruction of email politeness and discusses implications for future pedagogy and research.

Keywords: e-politeness, email requests, pragmatic instruction, second language, learnability
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Pragmatics of email requests in student-faculty communication
    • 2.2The role of instruction in developing L2 pragmatic competence
  • 3.Methods
    • 3.1Participants
    • 3.2Instructional intervention
    • 3.3Data collection procedure
    • 3.4Scoring procedure
  • 4.Findings and discussion
    • 4.1Research question 1
    • 4.2Research question 2
      • 4.2.1Opening sequences
      • 4.2.2Closing sequences
      • 4.2.3Request strategies
      • 4.2.4Supportive moves
      • 4.2.5Aggravators
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 7 May 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.00007.ngu
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