Explicit Interlanguage Pragmatics Instruction: Role Plays and the Analogy of L1 /L2

As a cognitive approach to teaching pragmatics, in consciousness-raising (Schmidt, 1993) the relevant forms and their pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic aspects should be brought to the learners’ conscious attention. In the same way there are also studies motivated by the input enhancement techniques proposed by scholars such as Sharwood Smith (1981, 1991) which investigate the role of instruction in the students’ pragmatic development. There also exists some empirical evidence supporting the superiority of the explicit and deductive instruction over implicit and inductive type of teaching in terms of helping the progression of pragmatic learning (Alcon, 2005; House, 1996; Rose & Ng Kwai-Fun, 2001; Takahashi, 2001). Moreover, Alcon (2005) and Martinez-Flor (2007) assert that making use of the audiovisual input which enjoys authenticity can provide the learners with the opportunity to attend to different aspects of language use. The present study aims to explore whether consciousness-raising through the use of authentic audiovisual material as accompanied by the analogy of the equivalent language function in the learners’ L1 can lead to different results in the learners’ production of the targeted speech acts in comparison with the learners who have practiced those speech acts in form of role plays after watching the same videos. The results indicate that utilization of the video clips along with any of these two types of class activities can be significantly effective for EFL learners, and students in L1 and L2 analogy group improved significantly better, substantiating the facilitative role of L1 in EFL classes.