Alcon, E. (2005). Does instruction work for learning pragmatics in the EFL context?
System, 33, 417-435
This article discusses the efficacy of instruction for pragmatic competence in the EFL
context. The study particularly explores two types of instructions, explicit and implicit, in terms
of their effectiveness on learners’ pragmatic development and further classroom implications.
The author first identifies the difficulties in conducting at pragmatic level in EFL contexts,
as opposed to ESL settings where much research has been done, due to its large class size and
limited hours on communication that consequently leads the lack of pragmatic input and
opportunities to practice discourse organization strategy in classrooms. She then introduces the
beneficial use of authentic audiovisual materials for learning pragmatic competence in EFL
classrooms as a possible solution for those challenges mentioned previously.
The ensuing discussion is the most functional types of instructions. According to the article,
previous literature has revealed several different views of the instructional preferences. On one
hand, some authors such as House and Kasper (1981) argue that planned and explicit instruction
on pragmatic skills is more beneficial than inductive and implicit one, based on their study.
Their opponents including Izumi (2002), on the other hand, insist that a combination of explicit
and implicit instructions is the most advantageous.
Making use of a meaningful authentic materials, some episodes of TV series Stargate, the study
on 132 Spanish high school students, who are divided into three groups, an explicit group, an
implicit group and a controlled group, is conducted in order to find a suitable instructional of
pragmatic competence in an EFL setting. In this study, the speech act of request is the target
pragmatics competence. The explicit group and implicit group, given explicit and implicit
awareness-raising tasks, respectively, engaged in self-study which enables each of them notice
pragmatic features of requesting. The former focuses on forms with meta-pragmatic feedback
being instructed and the latter deals with pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic factors while the
controlled group places focus on comprehension and production.
The results of this study show both explicit and implicit instruction for learning pragmatics work
in helping learners raise their awareness on the particular pragmatic features. It is also proved,
however, that explicit instructions are more advantageous when it comes to the production of
the features.
The author concludes this article by suggesting pedagogical applications. Planned and explicit
instructions proved highly beneficial because it provides learners opportunities to raise their
awareness of language use and its norms in particular environments through authentic materials
and thus highly encouraged in EFL contexts. It is essential to note, however, to introduce
different approaches depending on the students and contexts.
This article strongly suggests the effectiveness of instructions for pragmatic competence in
EFL contexts by supplementing their lack of pragmatic input with authentic material and
awareness-raising tasks. As it is cited in the article, learning requires noticing in input and
learners’ notice becomes intake (Schmidt, 1993, 2001), both explicit and implicit instructions
with relatively more focus on planned and pedagogical learning are encouraged in classrooms
for EFL teachers and this findings give them a promising and encouraging hope to teach
pragmatics. Even though this study picks up requesting as their target pragmatic feature, I
suppose the instructions proved to be effective in this article are advantageous for other features
of pragmatic competence as well.