A Comparative Study On The Effects Of Deductive Instruction And Inductive Instruction On The Development Of EFL Learners' Pragmatic Competence In The Speech Act Of Apology

Pragmatic competence determines individual' s communicative competence and there are numerous studies demonstrating that it can be developed through teaching interventions(Jeon & Kaya,2006;Kasper& Rose,2002).Hence recent researches start to increasingly pay attention to the effects of instructions on the development of foreign language learners' pragmatic competence,most of which study the effects of explicit instruction and implicit instruction.In addition,deductive instruction and inductive instruction are common teaching methods in pragmatic teaching that can be regarded as the extension or refinement of explicit and implicit instruction because they take the instructional designs one step further,addressing issues of the sequence of instructions and the role of consciousness-raising activities in the classroom.Besides,foreign researchers have found that explicit-inductive instruction is more effective than explicit-deductive instruction on the development of foreign language learners' pragmatic competence(Glaser,2016;Xuedan Qi & Chun Lai,2017)whereas there are few related researches in China.Therefore,in order to examine whether this conclusion is applicable to the development of domestic EFL learners' pragmatic competence,based on Schmidt' s Noticing Hypothesis(1993)and the deductive and inductive teaching framework proposed by Decoo(1996),this study combines explicit instruction and implicit instruction with deductive instruction and inductive instruction,and further expands them as follow:explicit-deductive,explicit-inductive,implicit-inductive.Taking the speech act of apology as an example,this thesis aims to make an empirical study on the development of foreign language pragmatic competence which adopts Discourse Completion Task(DCT),Course Feedback Questionnaire(CFQ)and Reflective Essay as research instruments to answer the following questions:(1)In the explicit-deductive,explicit-inductive and implicit-inductive instructions,which instruction has an advantage for EFL learners' immediate pragmatic performance of apologies?(2)In the explicit-deductive,explicit-inductive and implicit-inductive instructions,which instruction has the long-term effect on EFL learners' development of pragmatic competence of apologies?(3)What are the learner's attitudes towards the three kinds of instructions they received?A quasi-experimental,pretest-posttest-delayed posttest design is adopted.In the study,75 senior students from three parallel classes of English major in a university in Lanzhou participated in the experiment who were appointed as explicit-deductive group(N=25),explicit-inductive group(N=25)and implicit-inductive group(N=25)respectively.In the experiment,the participants in explicit-deductive group received explicit meta-pragmatic explanations first,and then the instructor provided the video clipsand exercises to strengthen their pragmatic competence,whereas the participants in explicit-inductive group were provided with a combination of training materials and enhancement,and then completed the additional tasks(that is to answer the guidance questions)and summarized the meta-pragmatic rules by themselves.Finally,they were received metapragmatic feedback.The participants in implicit-inductive group were asked to summarize the metapragmatic rules by themselves after watching the video clips without any guidance of the instructor.The experiment lasted for nine weeks.The data were collected through DCT adapted from Liu Jianda(2006),CFQ and reflective essay and were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively.Meanwhile,all the quantitative data were analyzed by one-way ANOVA and paired-sample T test with the aid of SPSS 23.0.Results of the present study indicate that:(1)Although explicit-deductive,explicit-inductive and implicit-inductive instructions all have a positive impact on participants' pragmatic proficiency,the explicit-deductive instruction has an advantage for EFL learners' immediate pragmatic performance of apologies.(2)Explicit-deductive instruction also has the long-term effect on EFL learners' development of pragmatic competence of apologies.(3)Most participants of the three experimental groups think the instructions they received are effective and interesting,helping them improve pragmatic awareness and pragmatic competence.Moreover,the participants of the three groups all suggest having more practice and self-participation in the process of learning,especially through role play and the pair work.However,the participants in the implicit-inductive group hope the teacher can give more guidance during the class,because it is hard for them to summarize metapragmatic rules by themselves.That means the implicit-inductive instruction is not suitable for the pragmatic teaching in this experiment.In summary,the results of this thesis demonstrate teaching interventions can improve the EFL learners' pragmatic competence in apologies to some extent.Most importantly,the explicit-deductive instruction is relatively effective in intermediate-to-advanced level proficiency EFL learners' pragmatic competence development in domestic.