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The Effect of Explicit Metapragmatic Instruction on the Speech Act Awareness of Advanced EFL Students
Muhammad Syukrianto .Introduction
Dealing with the failure happened to the English communication in foreign language learners lead some researchers to overcome it. The effect of the pragmatic
failure can be in the form of misunderstanding, impoliteness, or even rudeness. These problems require socialization through teaching and learning process to
develop learners’ pragmatic competence to avoid such problems. Therefore, this article attracts my intention to make it my subject of review.
This research based article focuses on the implementation of explicit metapragmatic instruction on the speech act for advanced EFL students, such as
requesting, apologizing and complaining. In order to see the effectiveness of that instruction, the study conducts a pretest-posttest control group design and comprises
Iranian undergraduate students in their last year of study in the field of study as foreign language. The results show that students’ speech act comprehension
improved significantly and that pragmatic competence can be developed through instruction.
This article is interesting to discuss, since the results from the data analysis supported the claim that explicit metapragmatic instruction facilitates interlanguage
pragmatic development. Overall, this research proved that teaching pragmatics in an EFL setting is important with the assumption that the problems of pragmatic failures
can be overcome by giving the students the tools to make the processes of pragmatic decision-making explicit.
A. The Description on the Content of the Research
This research is grounded in the area of communicative competence, pragmatic, speech act theory, second language acquisition theory, and interlanguage
pragmatics. It seeks to examine the effect of explicit Metapragmatic Instruction on the Speech Act Awareness of Advanced EFL Students.
The participants involved in this study were all 66 Iranian fourth year students in the Faculty of Foreign Languages at Isfahan University. A pretest-
posttest control group design are used, and to assist the teaching learning process, it used a set of programmed instructional materials explaining the realization and
interpretation patterns, rules, strategies, and tokens of the three speech acts under study. The study included a set of programmed instructional materials explaining
the realization and interpretation patterns, rules, strategies, and tokens of the three speech acts under study. After the pretest given, the participants were taught by
using the six different instructional activities comprising description, explanation, teacher-fronted discussion, small group discussion, role plays, pragmatically
focused tasks, and introspective feedback. The pragmatic instruction took about 30 minutes, which had been organized, planned, and scheduled.
The result of the data analysis supported the claim that explicit metapragmatic instruction facilitates interlanguage pragmatic development. It
reveals that pragmatic competence does not seem resistant to explicit metapragmatic instruction.
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B. The Review on the Research Article
Jung, 2001 states that Pragmatic is a subject that is indispensable part of language learning. It has received insufficient attention in acquisition but the
question is how to go from recognizing the importance of the issue to moving into classroom language learning and mitigating cross-cultural communication failure.
Therefore, Bouton 1996 cited by Rasekh, states that the development of communicative competence should be the goal of language teaching. It is believed
that there is possibility of teaching pragmatics in an EFL setting with the assumption that the problems of pragmatic failure can be overcome by giving the students the
tools to make the processes of pragmatic decision-making explicit.
Regarding the importance of the pragmatic competence to the learners, I find this research very useful and interesting to discuss. In this case, I don’t want to
review on the form and the methodology of the research, but I am going to concern with the results and the ideas. There are some comments I would like to share:
The first, I agree that teaching pragmatics in an EFL setting is necessary and teachable. Kasper 1997, argues that pragmatic is needed to be taught in an EFL
classroom setting. He suggests students should be provided with opportunities to develop their pragmatic competence. In this case, teaching of pragmatics aims to
facilitate the learners ability to find socially appropriate language for the situations they encounter. Furthermore, Wildner-Bassett and Tateyama in Bardovi-Harlig
1997 have demonstrated that pragmatic routines are teachable to beginning foreign language learners. This experience important in terms of curriculum and syllabus
design because it dispels the myth that pragmatics can only be taught after students have developed a solid foundation in L2 grammar and vocabulary. Just as in
uninstructed acquisition, students can start out by learning pragmatic routines which they cannot yet analyze but which help them cope with recurrent, standardized
communicative events right from the beginning.
The second, comparing the relative effect of explicit and implicit instruction, in line with the writer, the students pragmatic abilities improved regardless of the
adopted approach, but the explicitly taught students did better than the implicit groups. Thomas 1995 states that an explicit performative can be seen to be a
mechanism which allow the speaker to remove any possibility of misunderstanding behind an utterance. As a matter of fact, a number of researchers have explored the
role of instruction in learners’ pragmatic development. Indeed, different language owes different cultures. Automatically, each of them has different way in greeting,
inviting, apologizing, even opening and closing a conversation. These differences demand a great effort of teachers to expose as well as to employ the real use of
certain expression at certain situation. Based on the result of the research, explicit metapragmatic instruction facilitates interlanguage pragmatic development and
reveals that pragmatic competence does not seem resistant to explicit metapragmatic instruction. Te assumption is that the problems of pragmatic failures can be
overcome by giving the students the tools to make the processes of pragmatic decision-making explicit.
The third, I agree if exposing learners to pragmatics in their foreign language is needed since it helps the learners to expand their perception of the target language
and those who speak it. Peirce 1995 cited by Kasper, noted that language classrooms provide an ideal arena for exploring the relationship between learners
subjectivity and L2 use. Classrooms afford second language learners the opportunity
86 to reflect on their communicative encounters and to experiment with different
pragmatic options. In this case, the goal of instruction in pragmatics is not to insist on conformity to a particular target-language norm, but rather to help learners
become familiar with the range of pragmatic devices and practices in the target language. With such instruction, learners can maintain their own cultural identities,
participate more fully in target language communication, and gain control of the force and outcome of their contributions. Instruction should allow students to
choose how much of the pragmatic norms of the culture they would like to include in their own repertoire. As a result of the activities suggested, they will be better
able to interpret the speech of others and, therefore, to decide what they feel comfortable adopting. They will also enjoy greater insights into the target culture.
At last, this research have given contribution and input on the application of pragmatic to EFL teaching. It is hoped, the problems of pragmatic failures can be
overcome and the learners can figure out the norms of appropriateness for various speech acts and different interlocutors in the target culture
C. Conclusion
