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Fatma AYDIN

Anadolu University, Turkey

 

Abstract

The present study attempts to investigate the relative efficacy of explicit and implicit form-focused instruction (FFI) on the performance of some basic speech acts in English, namely responding to advice, making suggestions, complaints, requests and offers, by Turkish EFL learners. A total of 71 elementary-level adult Turkish EFL learners participated in the present study. The participants were randomly assigned to implicit FFI group, explicit FFI group and a control group. The experimental groups received pragmatics instruction for four weeks. Data were collected by using a written Discourse Completion Task (DCT), which consists of 15 situations that the participants were asked to respond to. The results showed that learners who received either type of instruction improved in the post-test over the pre-test. Results also showed that when performing in the post-test, the explicit group significantly outperformed the implicit group. These results indicate that although both types of instruction proved effective in developing learners’ pragmatic performance, explicit instruction tended to produce a larger magnitude of effects. These findings are discussed, and implications for classroom practices and suggestions for future research are provided in the end.

 

Keywords

Instructed SLA, pragmatics instruction, explicit form-focused instruction, implicit formfocused instruction, teaching speech acts