Abstract
This research study empirically investigated the impact of study abroad context on L2 learners’ pragmatic development compared with study at home group in Iran. For the study abroad group the participants were selected from the Iranian students who registered in a six-month program in language institutes in India (Mysore) and for the study at home group the participants were chosen from the language learners at the most outstanding language institute in Iran (Iran Language Institute) at the intermediate level. A Discourse Completion Task (DCT) including request and apology speech acts was used to measure the gains in the two groups. The DCT was administered one at the beginning as a pre-test and then at the end of the six months course as a post-test. Overall, the study revealed significant development in study abroad learners’ pragmatic knowledge, whereas this change in at home group was meager. It was also found that a correlation governs the growth in apology and request proficiency in language learning. This comparative study moreover yielded this finding that gender is not a determining factor in the acquisition of pragmatic knowledge specifically in request and apology speech acts in language learning.
Highlights
Looking for ways to facilitate the demanding task of language learning, teachers, researchers, theoreticians, and applied linguists have been devoting time and energy to introduce methods or programs that can serve well to train successful language learners
For the study abroad group the participants were selected from the Iranian students who registered in a six-month program in language institutes in India (Mysore) and for the study at home group the participants were chosen from the language learners at the most outstanding language institute in Iran (Iran Language Institute) at the intermediate level
This comparative study yielded this finding that gender is not a determining factor in the acquisition of pragmatic knowledge in request and apology speech acts in language learning
Summary
Looking for ways to facilitate the demanding task of language learning, teachers, researchers, theoreticians, and applied linguists have been devoting time and energy to introduce methods or programs that can serve well to train successful language learners To this end, a good number of studies have been done to investigate the fruitfulness of different methods. As a matter of fact, research has repeatedly indicated that study abroad learners will make gains in all four language skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing Their best performance is manifested in their speaking skill areas regarding oral proficiency, oral fluency, vocabulary, discourse, narrative abilities and the last but not the least, pragmatics. While regular language classes are good sources for providing linguistic knowledge, context which is study abroad program equipped with, seems to be a flourishing source for providing cultural and pragmatic knowledge through interaction with L2 natives
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