meta-analysis; pragmatics; instruction; request; apology, refusal

Considering one of the earliest calls for applying pragmatics in second language, Kasper and Rose’s (2002) study “Is Pragmatic Teachable?”, pragmatic features have been analyzed during the last 20 years in EFL/ESL contexts. The amalgamation of studies has been conducted on many speech acts around the world within the last two decades, among which request, apology, and refusal are considered as the most-appreciated speech acts in Iran. The purpose of the present paper is to unravel the overall effectiveness of the intervention on the speech acts of request, apology, and refusal in an Iranian EFL context. To this aim, out of a total number of 80 studies, 57 papers were chosen based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria, which were coded for the analysis. The results of the study revealed that the instruction of request, apology, and refusal is effective and generated a mean of (g = 1.43) which is significant, reflecting a quite large gain of instruction. The paper concludes with pedagogical implications and suggestions for future studies.