Pragmatics Effect on English Writing Ability among High School Students

The purpose of this study is to find a practical solution for improving writing skill among Iranian high school learners of EFL. The main question was whether pragmatics had any priority over traditional methods in improving writing or not. Forty high school students were selected on the basis of their performance in PET (2009). In addition the following instruments were also used in this quasi-experimental research: California Standard Test (2008), Writing Discourse Completion Task, and Discourse Self-Assessment Task. The special treatment of the experimental group on the role of pragmatics lasted for about ten weeks, while the control group received only the traditional instruction on writing. The results show that there is a meaningful relationship between the pragmatic competency and the improvement of the EFL learner's writing skill. Paired t-test was utilized for analyzing the data. The study concludes that the teachers can use insights from pragmatics to teach writing skill appropriately and by improving writing skill through pragmatics, EFL learners will be able to communicate in a more appropriate way.