Publications

Publication details [#53932]

Barón, Júlia and María Luz Celaya. 2010. Developing pragmatic fluency in an EFL context. EUROSLA Yearbook 10 (1) : 38–61.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Language as a subject
Place, Publisher
John Benjamins
Journal DOI
10.1075/eurosla

Annotation

Studies on pragmatic development, especially on the development of pragmatic fluency, are still scarce in the area of Interlanguage Pragmatics. The present study analyses whether EFL learners (N = 144), from Primary to University levels, who have not been instructed in pragmatics nevertheless show development in pragmatic fluency. A wide variety of measures were used to analyse the learners' production in open role-play. The results in the present study show that pragmatic fluency indeed develops as proficiency increases (the learners develop their use of gambits and routines, they are capable of changing topics by themselves and they produce appropriate time responses) but also that, in contrast, the development in the use of patterns stops at Grade 11 and there is no development in the opening and the closing phases. These results are discussed in the light of cognitive models of second language acquisition.