Learners’ production of refusals: Interactive written DCT versus oral role-play

Abstract

Scholars in the field of interlanguage pragmatics (ELP) have examined second language learners' development of pragmatics by means of employing different data collection instruments (Beebe and Cummings, 1996; Duan, 2008; Houck and Gass, 1996; Martinez-Flor, 2006; Sasaki, 1998; Yuan, 2001). Findings from this research have showed the existence of task effects, since learners' performance varied depending on the task they were involved in. Specifically, given the interactive nature of role-plays and authentic discourse, learners' responses in the oral tasks were longer and more elaborate than those elicited in the written form. Therefore, ILP researchers have claimed the need to further investigate this area by widening the types of instruments being employed as well as the context in which they are used. Bearing these assumptions in mind, the present study aims at examining the effects of two production instruments (i.e., interactive written discourse completion test (DCT) and oral role-plays) on learners' use of refusals in a foreign language setting. The participants included 20 Spanish university learners who were required to make refusals to requests in written and oral production instruments. In these research methods, all situations i) varied according to the sociopragmatic factors of status and social distance; ii) were set at familiar contexts to the participants; and iii) asked learners to perform refusals in the role of students. Learners' performance when making refusals in the interactive written DCT and oral role-plays was compared. Results from such a comparison will be presented and discussed, and pedagogical implications highlighted.1 IntroductionOver the last decades, the area of interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) has shown an increasing interest in examining how learners' pragmatic competence in a second (L2) or foreign (FL) language is learnt and taught (Alcon and Martinez-Flor, 2005, 2008; Ishihara and Cohen, 2010; Kasper and Rose, 2002; Martinez-Flor et al., 2003; Rose and Kasper, 2001; Tatsuki, 2005). Since pragmatic language use is a very complex phenomenon with a lot of contextual factors influencing its actual performance, it is of paramount importance to carefully design the methods2 that elicit learners' production of a given pragmatic feature. In fact, how to collect appropriate data is a crucial issue in pragmatic research since the use of a particular elicitation instrument may potentially influence research outcomes (Alcon and Martinez-Flor, 2008; Nurani, 2009). That is the reason why continuous improvements concerning research methodologies in the pragmatics realm have been developed (Bardovi-Harlig, 1999; Cohen, 2004; Felix-Brasdefer, 2010; Kasper, 2000; Kasper and Dahl, 1991; Kasper and Roever, 2005), although there is still the need to further investigate this area by widening the types of data collection methods created, as well as including learners from distinct linguistic backgrounds (Trosborg, 2010).Within this framework, the aim of this chapter is to examine the effects on two elicitation instruments (i.e., interactive written DCT and oral role-play) on learners' production of refusals in a FL context. To this end, we will first provide a detailed literature review on data collection methods employed in ILP by differentiating between oral and written production data. Additionally, the studies that have been conducted with the aim of comparing both oral and written production data will also be described. Then, we will present our particular study with an explanation of how the two instruments were elaborated. Finally, concluding remarks of the present study will be mentioned and suggestions for further research will be proposed.2 Literature review on data production collection instruments in ILPKasper and Roever (2005) have examined the main methodological approaches that have been employed to analyze how target language pragmatics is learnt. The authors divide the data collection instruments used in ILP into three groups: i) examining spoken interaction; ii) questionnaires; and iii) self-report data. …