Applied Pragmatics - Volume 1, Issue 1, 2019

This study investigated the efficacy of different feedback conditions in developing accurate and fluent production of L2 English email requests. Sixty-nine intermediate-level Vietnamese EFL university students were randomly assigned to one control and three experimental groups. All the four groups received three hours of explicit metapragmatic instruction on email requests, but only the experimental groups received written corrective feedback on their pragmatic production. One experimental group received feedback without opportunity for revision. Another experimental group received one cycle of feedback and revision, and the third group two cycles of feedback and revision. Results of a Discourse Completion Task (DCT) pre-test, immediate post-test, and delayed post-test indicated that the combination of instruction and feedback had a positive effect on the accuracy of learners’ pragmatic performance. However, no clear-cut evidence for the effect of revision on the fluency of learners’ pragmatic performance was found in the study. The findings highlight the effectiveness of corrective feedback and revision in consolidating emergent L2 pragmatic knowledge, but further research is needed to understand how much revision is sufficient to facilitate fluency development.

This study examines the functional variability of so in essays written by 200 L1 English speakers (ENSs) and 400 Japanese EFL learners (EFLs). Using quantitative and qualitative approaches, this study elucidates discourse marker usage of so in each group, thereby establishing the normative patterns of use among ENSs and the features specific to L2 English writers. The findings suggest that ENSs use so strategically as a preface to stance-taking by carefully selecting and adjusting the information to be established as common ground with the reader. EFLs use so in a manner distinctly different from ENSs, displaying varying degrees of understanding and difficulty in utilising the word’s discoursal properties. The study concludes that it is important for L2 English learners to learn the uses of so not only as a connective marker with resultative meaning but also as a resource for projecting stance and assertion.

This study investigated the sociolinguistic pragmatic performance of eight advanced Chinese learners from a variationist sociolinguistic perspective, focusing on the variable appearance versus absence of Mandarin sentence final particles (SFPs) in non-interrogative sentences. These learners participated in a Chinese TV talk show and have become popular on social media platforms. The speech data from the talk show (400 tokens) and online data from Chinese social media platform Weibo (400 tokens) were collected and analyzed. These Chinese L2 users productively demonstrated variation in their use of SFPs in non-interrogative sentences, in that they added SFPs to a sentence in around 20% of variable contexts. Rbrul (logistic regression) analyses revealed that the variable presence of SFPs was conditioned by their duration of time spent in China and gender-related personalities. Follow-up case analyses explored how they made use of SFPs in different situations and how they were received by other participants. The study found that these Chinese L2 users became active social agents who made decisions to shift styles in different contexts or to strengthen their identities. The results are discussed within a broader context of identity, language socialization, and L2 social agency. This study also attempts to offer pedagogical implications for the acquisition of Chinese SFPs.

This study investigates pragmatic development in the English-medium instruction (EMI) setting of the Valencian Community in Spain. More specifically, the study examines whether the intensity of EMI influences functional adequacy (FA) in second language (L2) writing. Participants were 102 EMI learners, each of whom wrote three motivation letters over one academic year in English. The rating scales designed by Kuiken and Vedder (2017) were used to examine the FA of the written texts in terms of cohesion, coherence, task requirements, content, and comprehensibility. Quantitative results revealed significant differences among the EMI groups under analysis, suggesting that the intensity of instruction may exert an influence on FA in L2 writing. Results from this study show the importance of intensity of exposure to EMI for L2 writing.