The effect of peer scaffolding on Iranian EFL learners acquisition of request and apology speech acts

Although the effect of scaffolding on different domains of L2 has been widely investigated,when it comes to EFL pragmatics, one faces the paucity of the research studies. Building uponsociocultural theory of Vygotsky, the present study explored the effect of peer scaffolding onEFL learners production of speech acts of requests and apologies. The participants included125 EFL students who were randomly assigned to control and scaffolding groups. Followingmetapragmatic instruction on speech acts, the scaffolding group went through interactionalproblem solving tasks which demanded for peer scaffolding and drawing upon their collectiveresources to reach the ultimate solution. Prior to and following the treatment all participantscompleted a pretest on L2 pragmatics to assess their proficiency before and after the treatment.The results of paired samples test and ANOVA revealed that while control group did not madea statistically significant improvement from pretest to posttest, scaffolding group revealed asignificant improvement. However, the improvement was found to be short-term and did notmaintain over the period of four weeks. The findings have implications in language teachingand pedagogy and suggest that pragmatic knowledge is likely to develop through assistedperformance.

کلیدواژه ها:

apology speech act ، interlanguage pragmatics ، request speech act ، scaffolding ، sociocultural theory