A way of developing pragmatic competence by means of explicit instruction: interpreting meanings that are embedded in culture in English

Abstract

Pragmatic competence is an essential part of communicative competence, although it is still given relatively little attention in many English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher education programs. It has been suggested that giving students explicit instruction in pragmatics is an effective way of improving their ability to understand meanings that depend on context. The present study looked at the impact of such explicit pragmatics instruction on the pragmatic competence of Ecuadorian pre-service EFL teachers. A quantitative descriptive approach was used, involving 35 seventh-semester pre-service EFL teachers studying at a public university in Ecuador. After receiving explicit instruction on the topics of presupposition, conversational implicature, irony, sarcasm, figurative language, contextual meaning, and intended meaning, the participants took a Pragmatic Interpretation Test which included both multiple-choice and open-ended questions. As a whole, the participants showed satisfactory performance and obtained perfect scores in the multiple-choice part. However, there was more variability in the open-ended questions concerning presupposition, indicating that explaining pragmatic reasoning was more difficult than simply recognising pragmatic meaning. The results show that explicit pragmatics instruction helps in the development of pragmatic competence and point to the need for promoting metapragmatic awareness in EFL teacher education through reflective and explanatory activities.