Abstract
Attitude toward accepting target language culture or maintaining heritage culture referred to as acculturation attitude can determine language learners’ pragmatic gains during an educational sojourn. To this end, the current study investigated the relationship between language learners’ acculturation attitudes during an educational sojourn and the effectiveness of pragmatic instruction. Participants of the study were 52 Iranian postgraduate students of English education at a university in Australia. A discourse completion task was used to assess language learners’ level of pragmatic competence. The adapted version of Berry’s (2001) East Asian Acculturation Measure (EAAM) was also used to assess language learners’ level of acculturation attitude toward Australian culture. The analysis of Pearson product–moment correlation coefficient (r) revealed that there is a strong positive relationship between acculturation attitude and effectiveness of pragmatic instruction. The pedagogical implications of the findings suggested encouraging and providing opportunities for language learners who are on an educational sojourn to immerse in target language culture to be able to develop their pragmatic competence to an optimal level. Keywords: Acculturation Attitude, Pragmatic Competence, Pragmatic Instruction
Highlights
Pragmatic competence defined as the ability to comprehend and convey one’s intention appropriately in social interactions involves one’s linguistic knowledge and knowledge of norms of the target culture and the ability to use these knowledge bases when performing social functions (Taguchi, 2015)
21.15 percent of participants presented their pragmatic competence at a high level (‘native-like’ level), 63.46 percent of participants presented their pragmatic competence at an acceptable level (‘slightly off, but acceptable’ level), and 15.39 percent of participants presented their pragmatic competence at a low level (‘obviously off’ level)
Pragmatic instruction was more effective for language learners who were more immersed in Australian culture adopting assimilation and integration acculturation strategies than language learners who were more separated from Australian culture adopting separation and marginalization acculturation strategies
Summary
Pragmatic competence defined as the ability to comprehend and convey one’s intention appropriately in social interactions involves one’s linguistic knowledge and knowledge of norms of the target culture and the ability to use these knowledge bases when performing social functions (Taguchi, 2015). Berry (1980) came up with a model for acculturation attitudes which outlines the various ways that people acculturate This acculturation attitude model comprises two major dimensions: the degree to which people are willing to keep their heritage culture and the degree to which people are willing to have contact with the people of the target society and adopt the culture of the target society (Figure 1)
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