Pragmatic Competence Development: Demystifying the Impact of Task Types and EFL Students' Perceptions

Abstract

Interlanguage pragmatics, as an inseparable part of communicative competence, has been emphasized as an ultimate objective in language learning. This study explored the perceptions of Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) students regarding interlanguage pragmatics and the impact of textbooks tasks on shaping their pragmatic competence. To accomplish this objective, 137 senior EFL students from 12 state universities, ranging from 23 to 28 years, were selected based on convenience sampling procedures. The researcher utilized teachers' perception questionnaires, first used by Jandt (2011), to investigate the students' perceptions. A semi-structured interview as well as a document analysis of the university English textbooks were applied. Moreover, thematic analysis was carried out regarding the interview. Themes were identified for meaningful interpretations based on a document analysis to investigate if they were either linguistically or pragmatically oriented. Results from quantitative analysis revealed that university English students specified a perception that pragmatic knowledge is as imperative as linguistic knowledge. Besides, by analyzing the qualitative data via the participants’ interviews, the researcher extracted three codes, including the inadequacy or the quantity of pragmatic information, the suitability or the quality of pragmatic information, and also cross-cultural diversities. Moreover, students acknowledged that meta-pragmatic information is lacking in ELT textbooks, and the textbooks provide learners with more linguistic resources. The findings of the study suggest that university English teachers need to provide more pragmatic knowledge and design more pragmatically oriented tasks for students in their classroom teaching to help students become pragmatically competent.