Acquisition of Politeness Markers in an EFL Context: Impact of Input Enhancement and Output Tasks

Abstract

Although politeness markers are frequently used in written and spoken communication, pragmatic studies have not sufficiently explored the instruction of such markers to English as a foreign language (EFL) learners who lack sufficient opportunity to communicate with native speakers to acquire them in the context of use. Ignoring politeness as a subject of instruction could be due to the hypothesis that politeness is ingrained in the culture of its use and hence cannot be taught to EFL learners. To investigate this hypothesis, politeness markers proposed by House and Kasper (1981) in their politeness framework were used as the point of departure to teach these markers to two groups of EFL students using film-driven input-enhancement tasks and output tasks. The results of the study revealed the beneficial effect of teaching politeness markers through the two tasks. Whereas the input-enhancement group improved significantly in their comprehension of politeness markers, the output group manifested more gains in their production of these markers. Findings from this study have implications for interlanguage pragmatic instruction, suggesting that politeness is teachable and that different instructional tasks bring about different effects on the production and comprehension of politeness markers.