Teaching English as a Second Language Quarterly
Volume:4 Issue: 3, Autumn 2012

This study aims to examine the strategies utilized by eleven postgraduate students in an EFL university context in their attempts to acquire the textual practices of their discipline. First- and second-year MA students, one Ph.D. student as well as individuals who had completed their MA programs in TEFL took part in interviews in order to elicit the strategies they used when they endeavored to write their discipline-specific writings, such as articles, proposals and theses. The results revealed that the participants utilized socio-affective, communication and resourcing strategies more than cognitive strategies. However, they ignored metacognitive strategies, which might be due to a lack of conscious awareness of certain writing genres in the field. Social apprenticeship strategies were not considered to be of great importance by participants. Students were highly dependent on their instructors for feedback, though without bearing any sense of collaboration with them or their peers. The role of the explicit instruction of metacognitive genre awareness as well as the provision of an atmosphere of collaboration among students has been emphasized.

This study aimed to examine cross-cultural differences in performing refusal of requests between Persian native speakers (PNSs) and English native speakers (ENSs) in terms of the frequency of the semantic formulas. Also examined in this study was whether Persian EFL learners would transfer their L1 refusal patterns into the L2, and if there would be a relation between their proficiency level and the transfer of refusal strategies. To do so, 66 PNSs (studying Archeology and Law) and 59 ENSs from both genders filled out the Persian and English versions of the same discourse completion test (DCT), respectively. Also, the Oxford Placement Test (OPT) was used to form 2 groups consisting of 61 high proficient (HP) Persian L2 learners and 81 low proficient (LP) ones, who all filled out the English version of the DCT. The refusals strategies used by the participants were turned into semantic formulas, and then classified into 3 groups of Direct, Indirect, and Adjuncts to Refusals. Findings showed no significant differences in the use of Direct refusal strategies between the ENSs and the PNSs. Unlike the PNSs who outweighed the ENSs in the use of Indirect strategies, the ENSs employed substantially more Adjuncts to Refusals. Findings also indicated the occurrence of pragmatic transfer in the use of Indirect and Adjuncts to Refusals by both the HP and LP L2 learners. However, the LP group was found to transfer their L1 refusal patterns more than the HP group.

The present study aims to investigate the relative effectiveness of different types of pragmatic instruction including two collaborative translation tasks and two structured input tasks with and without explicit pragmatic instruction on the production of apologetic utterances by low-intermediate EFL learners. One hundred and fifty university students in four experimental groups and one control group participated in pre-tests, post-tests and two month follow ups consisting of open-ended discourse completion tasks (OPDCT), mobile short message tasks (MSMT) and telephone conversation tasks (TCT). The results of the study indicated that pragmatic instruction may enhance interlanguage pragmatics (ILP). It was also found that the participants receiving explicit pragmatic instruction outperformed the implicit and control groups. Moreover, the two Collaborative Translation Task (CTT) groups showed better retention of pragmatic knowledge. It was concluded that collaborative translation may result in deeper processing of both pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic knowledge leading to more appropriate pragmatic production.

The pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic aspects of language use vary across different situations, languages, and cultures. The separation of these two facets of language use can help to map out the socio-cultural norms and conventions as well as the linguistic forms and strategies that underlie the pragmatic performance of different language speakers in a variety of target language use situations. This study explored the sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic variations in the expression and realization of three speech acts of apology, request, and refusal by American native speakers and Iranian EFL learners. The participants were 100 graduate and undergraduate Iranian students and 50 American native speakers. A written discourse completion test (WDCT) was developed through a bottom-up procedure and used for collecting the data. The results showed that considerable variations emerged in the semantic formulae, sociopragmatic content, and pragmalinguistic forms the participants employed in realizing the speech acts in relation to the contextual variables and individual differences. The American participants employed more (pragmalinguistic) formulaic strategies and were generally more direct than the Iranian L2 learners. Further variability was also noticeable in the participants’ choice of sociopragmatic appropriacy formulae in order to mitigate their speech acts and avoid offending their interlocutors. The findings indicated that there is an intricate reciprocity between the sociopragmatic values and the variant forms or strategies that language users employ on the pragmalinguistic level of language use. It is then suggested that pragmatic variation be traced and probed on the two pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic planes of language use in real-life (or simulated) contexts.

The use of L1 in language classroom has been traditionally repressed by applied linguists. However، in recent years، it is believed that switching to L1 can be considered a pedagogical instrument by teachers rather than a heterodox. Consequently، this two-phase study was an attempt to investigate the functions that are fulfilled by EFL teachers through their use of L1. In the first phase (i. e.، theoretical phase)، a thorough analysis of the available literature on teacher codeswitching was conducted with the aim of developing a typology which would encompass various functions of teachers’ L1 use. In the second phase (i. e.، empirical phase)، in order to test the construct validity of the typology، data was collected from four EFL teachers by videorecording an entire session of their teaching. The instances of codeswitching in their performance were transcribed and coded in the light of the typology. The results of data analysis indicated that the typology has external manifestations in teachers’ instances of codeswitching. It was also discovered that، among the selected participants، L1 was mostly used to fulfill pedagogical functions rather than social ones. Implications of the findings are discussed and suggestions for further research are provided.

To investigate the effect of massed and distributed collaborative and non-collaborative presentation on L2 learners’ comprehension and production of lexical collocations، 105 participants at Takestan Islamic Azad University in 4 groups were assigned to four different treatment conditions (collaborative-massed; collaborative-distributed; noncollaborative-massed; and noncollaborative-distributed presentation of collocations). Participants were given recognition and production posttests. To compare the participants'' comprehension of collocations، a two-way ANOVA was used. Results indicated that the differences among the types of presentation and method were not statistically significant. Another two-way ANOVA was used to compare the learners'' production of collocations، which showed that there was no significant difference between types of presentation- massed and distributed. The differences between methods of teaching- collaborative and non-collaborative- were not statistically significant either. However، the results indicated that the interaction effect of method and presentation of lexical collocations was statistically significant in the production of collocations. The findings of the present study can have theoretical and practical implications for teachers and learners of English.