The effect of instruction on the development of requests in adolescent learners of English as a foreign language in China

Abstract

The present study, based on Schmidt’s (1993) Noticing Hypothesis and focused on adolescent beginning learners, explores the effects of instruction on ILP development in the speech act of English request in an EFL environment. Furthermore, differential effectiveness of instructional treatments is examined, together with the durability of these effects. Three intact classes were chosen in a junior middle school and the participants had an average age of 13. Three instructional treatments were operationalized under the paradigm of FonF instruction (Doughty & Williams, 1998). Learners’ proficiency was measured by their scores in a unified proficiency test. All the three classes participated in communicative practice and role-play activities. The experiment lasted for three months, a 45-minute session each week for each class for 12 sessions. The Explicit class received metapragmatic information, the Enhanced class received input with target features visually enhanced, and the I-O class participated in input-output activities only. Learners’ pragmatic competence was measured by their performance in written DCT, which was implemented as a pretest, a posttest, and a delayed posttest six months later. Field notes and two whole-session recordings were kept, together with a post-task debriefing questionnaire, to explore learners’ good-faith effort in the learning task. There were also recordings of learners’ role-play activities in every other week to examine how their performance was influenced by instruction. Results show that pragmatic ability may develop independently of proficiency, and instruction has a positive effect on ILP development in an EFL environment. The more explicit the instruction, the more effects it has on the learning of general request strategies. But visual enhancement has little effect on strategy distribution, as evidenced by the Enhanced class’s over-reliance on direct strategies even after instruction. In terms of modification, instruction has no effect on the learning of syntactic downgraders. In the learning of lexical downgraders, instruction again has no effect, except that visual enhancement helps learners use more Please. In the learning of support moves, visual enhancement and I-O activities are more effective than explicit instruction. Results also show that only the I-O treatment could produce long-term effects on strategy use, strategy distribution, and the learning of support moves. However, the Explicit treatment could produce long-term effects on the learning of support moves, though it has no immediate effects. In terms of sociopragmatic development, the explicit instruction might be the only effective means in EFL environments.

Date of Award	16 Jul 2007
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	City University of Hong Kong
Supervisor	Ken ROSE (Supervisor)