An attempt to raise Japanese EFL learners’ pragmatic awareness using online discourse completion task

Hiroya Tanaka,Nanaho Oki

doi:10.29140/jaltcall.v11n2.189

Abstract

Graduate School, Hokkai-Gakuen University nanaho.oki@gmail.com This practical paper discusses the effect of explicit instruction to raise Japanese efl learners’ pragmatic awareness using online discourse completion tasks. The five-part tasks developed by the authors use American tv drama scenes depicting particular speech acts and include explicit instruction in these speech acts. 46 Japanese efl college students enrolled in an English grammar course received explicit instruction and completed the tasks in five consecutive classes using an e-portfolio system that allows them to share their learning outcomes. Their pragmatic awareness was measured by preand post-instruction pragmatic judgment tasks. The results showed that the participants’ pragmatic awareness developed significantly after the instruction. The learners evaluated the awareness raising activities as effective; however, their learning outcomes reveal challenges in developing grammatical and lexical knowledge together with pragmatic knowledge. This paper will discuss the effects of the instruction, the participants’ perception of the usefulness of the tasks, and their actual responses to the tasks to further identify the challenges that Japanese efl learners should meet to develop well-balanced communicative competence in the language.

Highlights

Pragmatic competence is defined as “the knowledge that influences and constrains speakers’ choices regarding use of language in socially appropriate ways” (LoCastro, 2012, p. 307) and is regarded as a major component of an influential language knowledge 143The jalt call Journal 2015: Forum model (Bachman & Palmer, 2010)
It is related to the overall objective of English in the Course of Study “to develop students’ communication abilities such as... appropriately conveying information” (p. 1). l2 pragmatics or interlanguage pragmatics, “the study of how l2 learners learn how-to-say-what-to-whom-when” (Bardovi-Harlig, 2013, p. 216), has been widely studied for these past three decades as it has been claimed that l2 learners often develop grammatical competence in the absence of concomitant pragmatic competence (Bardovi-Harlig & Dörnyei, 1998, p. 233)
The pragmatic items in the judgment task were used in this analysis since the focus of this practical study is on pragmatic awareness

Summary

Introduction

Pragmatic competence is defined as “the knowledge that influences and constrains speakers’ choices regarding use of language in socially appropriate ways” (LoCastro, 2012, p. 307) and is regarded as a major component of an influential language knowledge 143The jalt call Journal 2015: Forum model (Bachman & Palmer, 2010). Pragmatic competence is defined as “the knowledge that influences and constrains speakers’ choices regarding use of language in socially appropriate ways” There are studies exploring the effect of instruction on Japanese efl learners’ pragmatic competence (Kondo, 2008; Takahashi, 2001; Takimoto, 2008). While previous studies support the learnability of pragmatic competence, it is claimed that there is “a noticeable gap between what research in pragmatics has found and how language is generally taught today” 33); in other words, pragmatics instruction in the language classroom is not taking place in an appropriate timing or manner. While previous studies support the learnability of pragmatic competence, it is claimed that there is “a noticeable gap between what research in pragmatics has found and how language is generally taught today” (Cohen, 2012, p. 33); in other words, pragmatics instruction in the language classroom is not taking place in an appropriate timing or manner. Sykes (2009) lists eight reasons to explain why this lack in language classrooms occurs: 1. limited theoretical support in course design and material creation, 2. lack of authentic curricular materials and appropriate input, 3. lack of instructor expertise, 4. a focus on microlevel features instead of macrolevel competence, 5. limited time available in the l2 classroom, 6. individual personality differences and sensitivity to certain factors influencing the interaction, 7. assessment and feedback challenges, and 8. immense dialectical, social and individual variation (pp. 203–204)

Methods

Results

Conclusion