چکیده:
Most of the studies in Interlanguage Pragmatics have focused on the performance
and acquisition of speech acts by nonnative speakers, considering politeness only
as a subsidiary issue. The present study pertains to linguistic politeness and
attempts to investigate the effects of different teaching methods on the acquisition
of English politeness strategies (PSs). Eight groups of freshman and junior English
majors were randomly assigned to three experimental groups (enhanced input,
explicit teaching, and role play) and one control group (mere exposure). The
participants took a TOEFL test, a pretest, and finally a posttest after a seven-week
treatment of a list of PSs. The results indicated that instruction has a significant
positive influence on the acquisition of PSs and explicit teaching is significantly
the most effective method. Role play and input enhancement were the second and
third most effective. Moreover, it was shown that although the level of language
proficiency significantly influenced the knowledge of PSs (the ability to recognize
appropriate PSs for each social context), it did not affect the acquisition of PSs.
The findings imply that the instruction of PSs can be started at intermediate level
and explicit teaching alongside role play activities will greatly benefit language
learners.
خلاصه ماشینی:
"Finally, a week after the last treatment session the participants took the posttest (an MDCT test identical to the pretest) to reveal the effect of the different teaching methods on the acquisition of English PSs. Results The employed statistical measures revealed the homogeneity of the groups at each level in general proficiency and pragmatic competence and the superiority of the junior groups at the start of the study.
Moreover, the study revealed that the role play method was the second most effective, which suggests that communicative activities like writing and role playing dialogues in class can efficiently help learners to develop their competence in PSs. In short, if learners receive explicit instruction on politeness strategies and practice them in communicative activities like role pays, they will learn a greater portion of instructed PSs. The results of the study imply that materials developers should include more information on politeness strategies in their course books and supplementary materials, as language learners, even upper intermediate learners, appear to lack sufficient competence in PSs. This is especially the case in EFL contexts, such as Iran, where most language learners have little or no interaction with native speakers and their English textbooks and classrooms do not provide sufficient input on pragmatic features, such as politeness strategies and speech acts (Kasper, 1997; Martinez-Flor & Fukuya, 2005)."