The Effects of Explicit Instruction on the Acquisition of English Compliments and Compliment Responses Strategies

Abstract

通过以英语称赞语及称赞语回应策略为载体,采用前-后测的实验设计考察了显性导引对我国高中生语用习得的影响。dCT问卷结果显示:显性导引促进了他们对MAnES&WOlfSOn所提出的九种英语称赞句型的习得,并有效地改变了其英语称赞语宏观及微观策略的总体使用和分布。这表明了显性导引能加快语用习得速度,有利于我国高中生的语用发展。此外,还得出外语学习者语用能力能在一定程度上得以自然发展的结论。With the target features being compliments and compliment responses(CRs), this study adopts a pretest-posttest design examining the effect of explicit instruction on the pragmatic acquisition of high school EFL learners.The written DCT results show that explicit instruction has a facilitative effect on their acquisition of the nine syntactic compliment formulas concluded by Manes & Wolfson.It also effectively improved the use and distribution of the CRs' at the micro-level as well as at the macro-level.These results imply that explicit instruction is able to speed up pragmatic acquisition of Chinese high school EFL learners.Moreover, we have obtained a preliminary conclusion that the learners' pragmatic competence can develop naturally to some extent in EFL context, but this needs further experiments to verify.The research results might have far greater implications for foreign language teaching, English textbook compilation and some other related research fields.湖南省普通高校教学改革研究课题(湘教通[2011]315号

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