Abstract
Conventional expressions are crucial for social interactions. However, despite their communicative value, they are not acquired even by advanced language learners. Therefore, some sort of pragmatic intervention in the form of pragmatic instruction or educational sojourn should be provided to help language learners develop their knowledge of target language conventional expressions. To this end, the current study was conducted on two groups of participants including 15 Malaysian undergraduate students of English education at a university in Malaysia and 15 Malaysian undergraduate students of English education from the same Malaysian university on a one-semester academic exchange program at a university in the United States to compare the effect of pragmatic instruction and educational sojourn on the development of knowledge of target language conventional expressions. Knowledge of target language conventional expressions was assessed through a discourse completion task. The results of independent-samples t-test revealed the superiority of the effect of pragmatic instruction to educational sojourn in developing knowledge of target language conventional expressions. The pedagogical implications of the findings suggested incorporation of pragmatic features of the target language into foreign language class instruction.
Highlights
Conventional expressions, described as “tacit agreements, which the members of a community presume to be shared by every reasonable co-member” (Coulmas, 1981; 4), are crucial for social interactions (Bardovi-Harlig & Vellenga, 2012)
The current study was conducted on two groups of participants including 15 Malaysian undergraduate students of English education at a university in Malaysia and 15 Malaysian undergraduate students of English education from the same Malaysian university on a one-semester academic exchange program at a university in the United States to compare the effect of pragmatic instruction and educational sojourn on the development of knowledge of target language conventional expressions
Some sort of pragmatic intervention in the form of either pragmatic instruction or educational sojourn, defined as “period spent abroad in a region where a target language is used as a medium of everyday communication” (Culhane, 2004: 50), should be provided for language learners to help them develop their knowledge of target language conventional expressions
Summary
Conventional expressions, described as “tacit agreements, which the members of a community presume to be shared by every reasonable co-member” (Coulmas, 1981; 4), are crucial for social interactions (Bardovi-Harlig & Vellenga, 2012) They are not used by language learners in the same way as target language speakers because language learners do not have ready access to, and do not make use of, standardized conventional expressions for social interactions as target language speakers do (Edmondson & House, 1991). Research on language learners‟ knowledge of target language conventional expressions and the methods of developing the knowledge in language learners has recently attracted the attention of a group of scholars in the area of interlanguage pragmatics In one of these studies, Bardovi-Harlig (2009) explored the source of low production of conventional expressions by a group of learners of English enrolled in the intensive English program of a university in the American Midwest. The findings of the study suggested that while all language learner groups failed to reach a native level, study-abroad experience presented an advantage in the appropriate production of conventional expressions
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