Discourse Completion Test Research Articles

The Construct of Interlanguage Pragmatic Learning Strategies: Investigating Preferences of High vs. Low Pragmatic Performers

Interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) has witnessed a growing body of research in the past two decades. One of the under-explored domains of L2 pragmatics is the role of learning strategies specifically tailored for the development of ILP knowledge. Therefore, this investigation aimed to determine the significant interlanguage pragmatic learning strategies (IPLS) used by high vs. low L2 pragmatic achievers. It was conducted in two phases. First, a multiple-choice discourse completion test including five common English speech acts was administered to 500 EFL learners. Next, 80 highest and 80 lowest ILP performers were orally interviewed and their answers were audio-taped. The most important interlanguage pragmatic learning strategies were extracted from L2 learners' interviews. The elicited IPLS were arranged based on Cohen's (2005, 2010) classification, the findings of the study itself, and an analogy with general language learning strategies (LLS) classification suggested by Oxford (1990). The extracted IPLS were divided into six categories of memory-related, cognitive, social, affective, metacognitive and compensatory IPLS. The high ILP performers used more strategies in all the six categories. The main conclusion of this study is that the use of more IPLS means a better ILP knowledge of speech acts. The most significant implication of the current study was that ILPS need to be taught to L2 learners to enhance their ILP knowledge in general and their speech-act-specific competence in particular.

A Cultural Study of Social Disagreement Strategies by Iranian EFL Male and Female Learners

The speech act of disagreement is one of the neglected areas of research in the Iranian context. This study seeks to investigate the ways in which this act is expressed by young male and female Persian speakers. To collect the data 100 participants (50 males, 50 females,) were selected randomly from among undergraduate and graduate students of University of Isfahan and Islamic Azad University (Najafabad branch). The focus of this study was the role that gender and power might play in the employment of strategies to mitigate the threat of the act of disagreement. Students were asked to complete a discourse completion test (DCT) designed by the researcher. They were supposed to read nine situations, and react to them via making disagreements. Respondents were expected to disagree with three interlocutors with higher status, three peers and three with lower status. In order to analyze the utterances of disagreement, Muntigl and Turnbull’s taxonomy (1998) was employed. The results revealed that although both males and females were concerned about the power status of interlocutors and try to apply the appropriate strategies while expressing their disagreements, females were more cautious.

A cross-cultural study of disagreement strategies to suggestions between Persian EFL learners and American native English speakers

The speech act of disagreement is one of the areas of research that has not received much attention in the Iranian context. The focus of this study is to investigate the ways in which this act is expressed by Persian EFL learners and American native English speakers. To collect the data 140 participants (100 Persian EFL learners and 40 American native English speakers) were selected randomly from among undergraduate and graduate students of University of Isfahan and Islamic Azad University (Najafabad branch) majored in English and from Concordia University in Ann Arbor, Michigan. This study is an attempt to find out the role that power might play in the employment of strategies to mitigate the threat of the act of disagreement in two nations. Students were asked to complete a discourse completion test (DCT) designed by the researcher. They were supposed to read nine situations, and react to them via making disagreements. Respondents were expected to disagree with three interlocutors with higher status, three peers and three with lower status. In order to analyze the utterances of disagreement, Muntigl and Turnbull’s taxonomy (1998) was employed. The results revealed that although both nationalities were concerned about the power status of interlocutors and try to apply the appropriate strategies while expressing their disagreements, Persian EFL learners were more cautious.

A Study on the Perception of Jordanian EFL Learners’ Pragmatic Transfer of Refusals

This study investigates the perception of Jordanian EFL learners’ (JEFL) pragmatic transfer of refusal strategies in terms of contextual and cultural factors. Data were collected using a discourse completion test (DCT) and a scaled-response questionnaire (SRQ) to elicit perception data from the participants. Data from the SRQ were analyzed based on the speaker’s right to refuse the initiating act. Findings revealed that the right the speaker has to refuse the initiating act was assigned high ratings by the three groups (i.e., M > 3.00) in all social categories. Individually, however, the groups displayed the rating value differently where the AEL1 group’s perception of the speaker’s right was relatively higher than that of the JEFL and JAL1 groups in all the social categories. The JEFL participants’ negative pragmatic transfer criteria were met in the first and third social categories. The study concludes with a discussion of important directions for future research. Keywords: Perception, Refusal, Pragmatic transfer, Pragmalinguistic transfer, Sociopragmatic transfer

Assessing Pragmatics through MDCTs: A Case of Iranian EFL Learners

Testing pragmatic competence has always posed daunting challenges to researchers and practitioners. As a step to address the gap in pragmatic testing, this paper delineates the procedural stages of developing and validating a context-sensitive Multiple Choice Discourse Completion Test (MDCT). Following a unitary view of validity, tenable argument and empirical evidence was accumulated to support the construct validity of the test. While 136 advanced learners of English took the developed test, it exhibited reasonable internal consistency (α= .72). Furthermore, the results of correlational studies revealed acceptable association between the scores of this MDCT with both a written version of the same test and a previously validated test of pragmatics from the literature endorsing its concurrent validity. Also, the MDCT proved efficient in differentiating between native speakers and EFL learners as suggested by the results of an independent samples t-test. Finally, a pretest-posttest experimental study with 26 intermediate EFL learners was designed to check the sensitivity of the test towards developments in learners’ interlanguage after which a t-test analysis corroborated the construct validity of the test. This array of evidence denotes that the suggested MDCT can be reliably used in EFL contexts as a valid measure of pragmatic competence.

The Effects of Practice Modality on Pragmatic Development in L2 Chinese

This study investigated the effects of input-based and output-based practice on the development of accuracy and speed in recognizing and producing request-making forms in L2 Chinese. Fifty American learners of Chinese with intermediate level proficiency were randomly assigned to an input-based training group, an output-based training group, or a control group. The input and output groups practiced the target forms over four consecutive days. The control group did not practice the forms. The effects of practice were measured by a Listening Judgment Test (LJT) and an Oral Discourse Completion Test (ODCT). The results showed that the effects of input-based and output-based practice were shared across task modalities on measures of performance accuracy (i.e., accuracy in the LJT and ODCT) but not on measures of performance speed (i.e., LJT response times, ODCT planning times, and speech rates).

The Effects of Practice Modality on Pragmatic Development in L2 Chinese

This study investigated the effects of input‐based and output‐based practice on the development of accuracy and speed in recognizing and producing request‐making forms in L2 Chinese. Fifty American learners of Chinese with intermediate level proficiency were randomly assigned to an input‐based training group, an output‐based training group, or a control group. The input and output groups practiced the target forms over four consecutive days. The control group did not practice the forms. The effects of practice were measured by a Listening Judgment Test (LJT) and an Oral Discourse Completion Test (ODCT). The results showed that the effects of input‐based and output‐based practice were shared across task modalities on measures of performance accuracy (i.e., accuracy in the LJT and ODCT) but not on measures of performance speed (i.e., LJT response times, ODCT planning times, and speech rates).

The Effect of Explicit Metapragmatic Instruction on Request Speech Act Awareness of Intermediate EFL Students at Institute Level

This study deals with the application of the pragmatics research to EFL teaching. The need for language learners to utilize a form of speech acts such as request which involves a series of strategies was significance of the study. Although defining different speech acts has been established since 1960s, recently there has been a shift towards empirical studies which focus on perception and production of various speech acts by EFL or ESL learners. The present article reveals the researcher’s interest in a set of strategies in which native speakers of target language use for performing speech activities. The study intended to enhance EFL learners’ awareness of request speech act by teaching the materials used for speech acts. To achieve the aim, the teacher used some sorts of educational activities such as teacher-fronted discussions; role plays, cooperative grouping, and other pragmatically oriented tasks were used to increase the learning of speech acts. Discourse Completion Test was developed as a pretest and posttest to measure the effects of instruction on the pragmatic awareness of the students. The results revealed a significant difference between the pretest and posttest scores of the use of request speech act in experimental group.

Speech Act Disagreement among Young Men in Iran

Speech act of disagreement is one of the least attended among all the other types of speech act. The present study seeks to find out the ways in which this inherently threatening act is expressed by young male Persian speakers. To gather the needed data one hundred participants randomly selected from among a population of BA and MA students of Isfahan and Najafabad universities were asked to complete a discourse completion test (DCT) designed by the researchers. The respondents were to read six natural situations, and react to them via making disagreements. As the major focus of the study was the role that gender and power play in the application of politeness strategies, the participants were expected to disagree with two higher power interlocutors (one male and one female), two peers (one male and one female) and two addressees with lower power status (one male and one female). In order to analyze the units of disagreement, Muntigl and Turnbull’s taxonomy (1995) was employed. Students’ responses were further compared with Brown and Levinson’s politeness strategies. The results revealed that respondents use confrontational strategies more frequently whenever expressing their oppositions to a person with the same sex which could be explained with regards to the effect of social solidarity which can potentially over rule the effect of power and gender differences.

Speech Act of Suggestion Across Language Proficiency and Gender in Iranian Context

This study seeks to investigate how Iranian EFL learners employ suggestion speech act. With this aim, 105 Iranian EFL learners participated in this study. A Discourse Completion Test (DCT) was used to produce data related to the suggestion forms utilized by the participants. Percentage and Chi-square test were used to analyze the data. Research findings revealed similarities and differences between English natives and Iranian EFL learners in terms of suggestion forms produced. The findings further showed that different language proficiency level did not produce any significant differences in production of suggestion speech act. However, participants’ performances considering different gender reached statistical significance. It was also found that Iranian EFL learners transferred their L1 structures in using suggestion forms.

A Pragmatic Study of Requestive Speech Act by Iranian EFL Learners and Canadian Native Speakers in Hotels

This study was an attempt to shed light on the use of requestive speech act by Iranian nonnative speakers (NNSs) of English and Canadian native speakers (NSs) of English to find out the (possible) similarities and/or differences between the request realizations, and to investigate the influence of the situational variables of power, distance, context familiarity, and L1’s (possible) influence. Participants were 4 different groups: Canadian NSs of English, Persian NNSs, Iranian hotel staff, and Iranian English learners. Data were obtained by a discourse completion test (DCT) including 12 situations and was translated into Persian to elicit the data from the Persian NNSs. Then, data were analyzed and codified based on the cross-cultural speech act realization pattern (CCSARP; Blum-Kulka & Olshtain, 1984). Findings indicated that the Persian culture is more direct and positive-politeness oriented, whereas the Canadian culture tends to be indirect and negative-politeness oriented. The Iranians revealed more variations in their request performance and were more sensitive to power differences. The Canadians were fixed and used conventionally indirect strategies in most situations.

Exploring the effects of input-based instruction on the development of EFL learners’ pragmatic proficiency

The present study evaluates the relative effectiveness of four types of input-based instruction: metapragmatic explanation (N=21), form-comparison (N=21), meaning-focused (N=28), and input enhancement (N=25) on the development of the participants’ production of pragmatically appropriate requests. The control group (N=15) did not receive any type of input-based instruction. Over a 16 week course, 110 Iranian undergraduate students majoring in English Translation received input-based instruction with the use of video clips. Treatment group performance was compared to that of a control group on pre-tests and post-tests which took the form of oral and written Discourse Completion Tests (DCTs). The results revealed that the treatment groups significantly improved in the post-test in comparison to the pre-test, outperforming the control group. The findings are discussed with implications for classroom practices and future research.

The effects of different levels of linguistic proficiency on the development of L2 Chinese request production during study abroad

This study examined the effects of different levels of linguistic proficiency on the development of pragmatically appropriate requests in L2 Chinese in a study abroad context. The participants were 31 American learners of Chinese studying in China. Fifteen learners came from intermediate level classes (Intermediate group) and the remaining 16 from advanced level classes (Advanced group). The participants completed a Computerized Oral Discourse Completion Test (CODCT) at the beginning and toward the end of their sojourn. The participants' oral request production was analyzed in terms of appropriateness rating, planning time, and speech rate. The results showed that the Intermediate and Advanced groups made comparable gains in appropriateness rating, that neither group reduced planning time, and that only the Advanced group gained in speech rate. The Intermediate and Advanced groups showed similar patterns of change in their production of alerters, head act forms (i.e., request strategies), internal modification, and external modification.

Length of stay abroad: Effects of time on the speech act of requesting

By means of a discourse completion test (DCT) and a discourse elicitation test (DET) this study investigates the awareness and production of requests and request act modifiers of 104 non native speakers of English from 31 nationalities during different lengths of stay in the UK. The paper first of all provides a brief overview of studies that deal with pragmatic development and periods abroad and then, describes the data collection procedure and methodology employed. Results show that the early stages of a stay abroad are decisive in developing an awareness of pragmatic infelicities. With respect to production of requests, our results do not show statistically significant differences, suggesting that length of stay does not affect request act use. There is also evidence that learners in the study abroad context increase their pragmatic repertoire of internal and external modifiers at later stages of their stay in the UK.doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.6018/ijes/14/1/155211

Politeness strategies and power relations in disagreement

The speech act of disagreement is one of the fairly neglected areas of research in the Iranian context. The present study seeks to investigate this inherently threatening act by young male and female Farsi speakers under gender and power differential contexts. To collect the needed data one hundred participants (50 males and 50females) randomly selected from among a population of undergraduate and graduate students of Isfahan and Najafabad universities were asked to complete a discourse completion test (DCT) designed by the researchers. The respondents were to read six natural situations, and react to them via making disagreements. As the major focus of the study was the role that gender and power play in the application of politeness strategies, the participants were expected to disagree with two higher power interlocutors (one male and one female), two peers (one male and one female) and two addressees with lower power status (one male and one female). In order to analyze the units of disagreement, Muntigl and Turnbull’s taxonomy (1995) was employed. Students’ responses were further compared with Brown and Levinson’s politeness strategies. The results revealed that although both males and females are concerned about the power status of interlocutors and try to apply the appropriate politeness strategies in their disagreements, females are more cautious even when there is a high degree of solidarity.

The Effect of Implicit and Explicit Types of Feedback on Learners’ Pragmatic Development

Having adopted a pretest- posttest design with a control group, this study investigated the effects of implicit and explicit corrective feedback on pragmatic development of Iranian EFL learners. Having received explicit instruction, forty intermediate participants in this study received explicit type of feedback (matalinguistic explanation) and implicit type of feedback (recast) in response to any utterance containing an error in doing the role plays of refusals. One week after a treatment lasting 10 days, pragmatic acquisition was measured by a Discourse Completion Test. Results of Chi-square indicated that both treatment groups outperformed the control group and the proportion of using all subcomponents of polite refusal strategy except for one of the subcomponents outweighed in explicit group compared with implicit group.

Iranian EFL Learners’ Proficiency Levels and Their Use of Apology Strategies

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of different proficiency levels on apology strategies that Iranian learners utilize when confronting apology situations. The participants included in this study were 16 students with different proficiency levels: elementary, intermediate, upper-intermediate and advanced level. The data were gathered through discourse completion test (DCT) which consisted of five apology situations and adapted from Tuncel (1999). The data were classified based on the categorization of Cohen and Olshtain (1981) and functional analysis was carried out. The results of the study demonstrated that students’ proficiency levels had a significant effect on type and complexity of strategies used by the learners. Therefore, learners with highlevel of proficiency are more familiar with and inclined to use different apology strategies.

Indirectness in English Requests among Malay University Students

Communication serves as the main medium to connect human beings so that they can live in harmony. There are numerous ways to communicate effectively, and one of them is by making polite requests. Adopting the Discourse Completion Test (DCT), 40 questionnaires were distributed to 40 respondents from two higher learning institutions located in Selangor. The results showed that conventionally indirect strategies were preferred by students when making requests to their lecturers, and even to their friends. Therefore, the findings indicate that the Malay culture conforms to Brown and Levinson's theory on face which highlights that in order to keep either positive or negative face on FTA (Face Threatening Acts), politeness or indirectness strategies are employed.

Intensifiers in Persian Discourse: Apology and Compliment Speech Acts in Focus

Speech carries, in addition to its propositional meaning, the functional intentions of the speaker (illocution). Persian language is governed by norms the realization of which makes significant cross-cultural differences. This study is an attempt to investigate the proportion by which intensifiers are used in the two speech acts of apology and compliment. More specifically, it tries to investigate how using intensifiers ensures the desirable level of appropriateness for Persian speakers and, generally speaking, why they are used in that proportion. Moreover, it tries to find out whether gender tends to affect the differential degrees of use of intensifiers. To this end, Persian apologetic and compliment utterances were collected through interview as well as eliciting Discourse Completion Test (DCT) data. The findings of the analysis reveal that Persian speakers use intensifiers extensively in both apology and compliment speech acts. Significant differences are also observed in the type, frequency, and illocutionary effect of using intensifiers in apology and compliment speech acts. The interview data show that Persian participants believe they are concerned about the illocutionary effect of their speech acts in order to make sure that face has been sufficiently served in apology. In compliments, intensifiers are used in a typical sense to show the illocutionary force of the speaker's act. Intensifiers are also used differently across genders: female speakers show greater tendency to use intensifiers than male speakers.

Pragmatic Aspects of English for Tourism Course Books and ESL Learners Pragmatic Needs: A Speech Act Theory Perspective

Despite the need for communicating effectively for the ESL students engaged in jobs related to tourism industry, they still suffer from some incompetences while communicating in these contexts. Misunderstandings and communication breakdowns are said to mark many intercultural encounters as participants rely on the norms of their mother tongue and native culture to produce meaning in a foreign language. The aim of the current study is twofold: first, to study the extent that the course books deal with the pragmatic functions of language, and second, to assess the pragmatic needs of the EFL learners engaged in tourism industry. To study the pragmatic aspects of the course books, three different English for tourism course books were analyzed on the basis of Speech- act theory, and the frequency of each functional category was computed. Then, to assess the pragmatic needs of the EFL learners engaged in tourism industry, a discourse completion test consisting of fifty items (covering all the Speech-act Theory functions,) was given to 30 students studying EFL, and their pragmatic needs were specified on the basis of this test.