The process of globalization entails the acquisition of a construct, cultural intelligence, with which EFL students can function appropriately in intercultural situations. This study was, first, intended to find the relationship between cultural intelligence and the use of expressions of gratitude by Iranian EFL learners. Second, it sought to determine whether there were any significant differences between low and high culturally intelligent EFL learners in the way they used expressions of gratitude in English. To this end, 118 intermediate learners were selected through convenient sampling, with their proficiency level being controlled. A discourse completion test (DCT) for the expressions of gratitude and a cultural intelligence scale were given to the participants of the study. Learners’ DCT responses were rated on a five-point Likert scale and then analyzed. Statistical tests including Pearson Correlation Coefficient and t-test were used to investigate the research questions. The results of the analysis revealed that there was not a significant relationship, either positive or negative, between cultural intelligence and use of expressions of gratitude. Furthermore, no difference was found between the two groups, high and low culturally intelligent, in the way they used English expressions of gratitude. These findings have implications for the instruction of pragmatic competence.

This study investigated the impact of individual differences like language proficiency, gender and age on the Iranian EFL learners’ interlanguage pragmatics in institutional discourse especially, their capacity to recognize and to rate pragmatic and grammatical infelicities in speech act situations of request and apology. To this end, one hundred and eighty-seven EFL university students at three academic levels— undergraduate, postgraduate and PhD— participated in the study. Cross-sectional data collection was undertaken to analyze the relationship between the variables and the speech acts recognized and rated by learners at different proficiency levels. A three way between subject analyses (ANOVA) showed quantitative differences among the three groups according to individual differences. Further, in-depth analyses of test items indicated that EFL learners’ at the three proficiency levels identified and rated grammatical errors as more serious than pragmatic errors. Results revealed qualitative, developmental information about the cognitive and individual traits followed in pragmatic awareness. One significant implication is that any account of the development of ILP should take into consideration the individual differences that will intervene between the stages of noticing and target-like production. Moreover, being linguistically competent is not only essential for the EFL learner but acquiring pragmatic competence is also important.

This study investigates the effect of corrective feedback on Iranian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners’ interlanguage pragmatic (ILP) development in the context of invitation acceptance and declination. Three intact experimental groups were selected via convenience sampling from an English institute in Tehran: a recast group (N = 13), a metalinguistic group (N = 17), and a clarification request group (N = 12). Prior to the treatment, the groups participated in a dialogic extended discourse pretest. The dialogues for invitation acceptance and declination were drawn from Top Notch, American English File, English Result, and Four Corners. Learners’ performance was assessed using two checklists—one for pragmalinguistic and the other for sociopragmatic knowledge—based on a five-item Likert scale ranging from inappropriate to most appropriate. Treatment sessions were conducted three times per week, each lasting 60 minutes, over a period of one month. The findings reveal that corrective feedback significantly enhanced ILP development. Notably, the metalinguistic group outperformed the recast and clarification request groups. Consequently, metalinguistic corrective feedback proved more effective than recast and clarification feedback in fostering Iranian EFL learners’ ILP development concerning invitation acceptance and declination.

Instructed Interlanguage Pragmatics (IILP) is a subset of Interlanguage Pragmatics (ILP) that addresses how classroom language learners acquire pragmatic features in a second language (L2). For this study, 90 university students participated in an experimental study that incorporated a pretest, posttest, and delayed posttest observation to identify the effect of instruction on the acquisition of request speech act. For this purpose, a random sampling was used for the selection and assignment of participants into the experimental (EG) and comparison groups (CG). The two EGs received two types of form-focused instruction (FFI), namely task-oriented focus on form and focus on forms to help identify whether the type of instruction was a significant factor in the acquisition of the selected L2 pragmatic feature. The results of the study indicated an overall increase in the ability of the learners in the instructed group (IG) to produce request speech act. The study also indicated that the effect of instruction was not transient as the observed improvement was evident in the delayed posttest observation. The effect of instruction was also evident in the type of strategies that IGs used to make request proper after receiving the experimental treatments.

Socioculturally oriented developmental Interlanguage Pragmatics (ILP) studies have just recently drawn the Second Language Acquisition (SLA) researchers' attention, and the role of concepts like peer scaffolding, and the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) in ILP development are among rich areas in need of attention. The present study investigates the significance of the effect of expert peers' ZPD-wise, co-equal peers' ZPD-insensitive and teacher fronted ZPD-insensitive scaffolding on EFL learners' pragmatic development. The number of students who participated in this study was 85 of which 27 were male and the rest were female. They were organized into three experimental and one control groups. The subjects in the experimental groups were given either explicit ZPD-wise or implicit ZPD-wise scaffolding by the expert peers, or ZPD-insensitive scaffolding by their co-equals, while the subjects of the control group received ZPD-insensitive teacher scaffolding. The study reveals that the expert peers' ZPD-wise explicit and implicit scaffolding are more effective than the other two intervention types for the ILP development, however, the co-equals' scaffolding proved to be the third effective procedure for the subjects' co-construction of ZPD and ILP development. An implication of the study is that different forms of peer scaffolding are relatively effective for the EFL learners' ILP development.

The present study reports the results of a dissertation aimed at consolidating assessment and instruction of L2 pragmatics comprehension by drawing on an interventionist computerized dynamic assessment (C-DA) through which the test was embodied by providing graduated hints (from the most explicit to the most implicit) which were standardized for all test takers. To do so, a web-based software, called a Computerized Dynamic Assessment of Speech Acts, Routines, and Implicatures (CDASRI), accessible at http: //da-pragmatics. com, was developed. Then, 137 upper-intermediate or advanced high school and university students ranging in age from 16 to 36 from two provinces of Khorasan Razavi and Golestan, Iran, were selected based on convenience sampling, who voluntarily took part in the study. Based on how many hints or mediations were used by each test-taker, the CDASRI provided three scores: actual score (traditional score), mediated score, and learning potential score (LPS). The results of the study indicated that the test could improve test takers‟ pragmatic comprehension competence. Moreover, the significant difference between the mediated (using hints) and actual (without hints) scores of learners accounted for the fact that because of test-takers‟ different Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) levels, their level of responsiveness to mediation was significantly different from one another. Hence, it can be concluded that traditional non-dynamic test loses sight of a big part of learners‟ abilities through neglecting learners‟ potentialities and putting emphasis only on their preliminary performance. The study concludes with some pedagogical implications for language teachers and instructors who seek an effective perspective for their assessment and instruction.

Research into instructed pragmatics mainly comparing implicit and explicit instruction has gained salience in language teaching research in the last two decades. The present study was designed to investigate the effect of cognitive and interpersonal task-based instruction on EFL Learners’ production of two speech acts of apology and request. To this end, 125 intermediate EFL learners were conveniently sampled, and randomly assigned to four experimental groups (EG) and one control group (CG).  The four experimental groups received task-based instruction on the two speech acts of apology and request (three 30-minute sessions on each), though instruction varied in terms of general tasks types (cognitive or interpersonal) and their specific variants (cognitive: predicting (EG1; N=25) and inducing (EG2; N=25); interpersonal: co-operating (EG3; N=25) and role-play (EG4; N=25)).  The control group (N=25) did not receive any speech act-specific treatment. The participants’ speech act production was measured through a 16-item written discourse completion test (WDCT) as both the pretest and the posttest.  The findings showed the significant effect of both cognitive and interpersonal tasks, but also the greater effectiveness of the latter for speech act production. The study has implications for pragmatic task design and classroom practice. More specifically, it shows the potential of task-based instruction and interaction for EFL learners’ pragmatic development.

This study attempts to investigate the pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic development of Iranian EFL learners cross-sectionally when making requests in different situations. To this end, 103 university students in three proficiency levels of pre-intermediate, upperintermediate, and advanced were asked to write three discourse completion tests (DCTs) of requests in different situations with various social and power relation demands and 20% of them were interviewed about their DCTs. The analyses of these written and verbal reports suggested that parallel with proficiency there was a movement from directness to conventional indirectness and an expansion of the repertoire of both external and internal modification devices. Even though all the participants expressed their awareness of the sociopragmatic requirements of different request situations in their verbal reports, increasing proficiency led to the application of this awareness in practice. That is, advanced learners were more successful to differentiate among the situations both sociopragmatically and pragmalinguistically. The results are discussed in light of previous research and available developmental patterns.

The main purpose of this paper is to study the impact of interactional feedback on inter language variation in terms of accuracy, complexity, and fluency of learners' discourse in performing planned vs. unplanned tasks. The forty upper-intermediate participants of the study who were both male and female young adult learners were randomly assigned into an experimental and a control group. Every participant of both groups was required to perform both a planned and an unplanned task. The experimental group received interactional feedback while performing each task, but the control group was not provided with any feedback. The results of statistical analysis revealed that the participants exposed to interactional feedback while performing both the planned and the unplanned tasks achieved greater accuracy and complexity, but lower fluency. While feedback hindered fluency in both planned and unplanned tasks, greatest fluency was related to the performance condition in which the participants benefited from a plaJlt1ing time period and were not interrupted with feedback moves. The findings highlight the need to consider interactional feedback as a task implementation condition in task grading and sequencing and the necessity of considering this task condition for accomplishing accuracy, complexity, and/or fluency in task response.

The present investigation was designed to study the production and comprehension of specific means for information highlighted by advanced Iranian learners of English as a Foreign Language. The study focused on the discourse-pragmatically motivated variations of the basic word order such as inversion, pre-posing, it- and Wh-clefts. After taking the Nelson test, a homogeneous group was settled. For measuring the learners’ comprehension, a set of meta-linguistic tests was administered consisting of an acceptability judgment task along with an error identification task. In the case of investigating the learners’ production, they were supplied with a test of production consisting of discourse completion items. A total of 30 males and females who were all MA EFL learners served as the participants of this study. First, the production task was administered, and the learners went through the comprehension task in another session. Descriptive analysis and Pearson tests were performed on the data to test the hypotheses of the study. The results indicated that the advanced Iranian learners of English are aware of the syntactic options for structuring the information; however, they avoid producing these structures in their use of language to convey their proper pragmatic functions. Furthermore, there is no meaningful relationship between the learners’ awareness and their use of marked structures.