Rose 2005 Pragmatics Synthesis.pdf - Oncourse

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392 K.R. Rose / System 33 (2005) 385–399 Overall, however, the research provides ample evidence demonstrating the teachability of pragmatic features. But is instruction more effective than simple exposure 4.2. Instruction versus exposure Instruction versus exposure studies address the issue of whether pedagogical intervention in pragmatics leads to more effective learning than no instruction, or put another way, whether instruction is better than simple exposure. These studies provide a direct means of testing SchmidtÕs (1993) noticing hypothesis: the extent to which instruction which serves to draw learnersÕ attention to the targeted features proves to be more beneficial than simple exposure to the target language is the degree to which the noticing hypothesis is supported. As with the previous group of studies, instruction in each of the studies in this group could be characterized as explicit. A wide range of learning targets is represented in this group. BillmyerÕs (1990a,b) study on the effects of instruction on compliments and compliment responses was among the earliest interventional studies. Bouton (1994a) selected the understanding of implicature as his learning target, while Lyster (1994) examined the use of French tu/vous in informal and formal contexts. Wishnoff (2000) investigated the effects of instruction in the use of hedging devices (e.g., verb choice, quantifiers, modifiers, and conditional statements) in both formal and informal texts, and YoshimiÕs (2001) study focused on the Japanese interactional markers (n desu, n desu kedo, n desu ne) which feature prominently in the production of oral narratives. The range of instructional periods is also rather wide, with WishnoffÕs two class sessions (a total of one-and-a-half hours) on one end, and YoshimiÕs 24 h of instruction spread over an entire semester at the other. Assessment procedures included multiple choice tests (Bouton, 1994a; Lyster, 1994), and production tasks that were oral (Lyster, 1994) and written (Lyster, 1994; Wishnoff, 2000; Yoshimi, 2001). Only Billmyer (1990a,b) used as a measure of instructional effects learner production in actual face-to-face interaction. It is also worth noting that only Lyster (1994) employed more than one outcome measure. Without exception, learners receiving instruction in pragmatics outperformed those who did not. BillmyerÕs (1990a,b) instructed group outperformed the controls for frequency of compliments, norm-appropriate use, spontaneity, and adjectival repertoire, and favored the response strategy of deflection as they were taught, while the control group favored acceptance. In BoutonÕs (1994a) study, the experimental group achieved results as high as those observed with previous immersion students who had spent four years living in the US, but there was no such improvement for the control group. LysterÕs (1994) experimental participants outperformed uninstructed learners on all tasks except informal oral production, for which all learners used tu appropriately. These differences remained at the time of the delayed posttest. In the case of Wishnoff (2000), while use of hedges increased for both groups, the treatment groupÕs hedging devices increased more than 5-fold – a statistically significant difference across groups. And YoshimiÕs (2001) instructed learners showed a dramatic increase in frequency of interactional markers, but no similar increase in their use by the control group was observed. Although in these studies instruction proved superior to exposure, exposure
alone appears to have had some effect. In both BillmyerÕs (1990a,b) and WishnoffÕs (2000) studies, learners in the control groups registered noticeable improvement in the features targeted in the treatment provided to the experimental groups. Both studies dealt with subject matter that was of direct and immediate relevance to learners, and more importantly, concerned pragmatic features that learners in both groups were called upon to deploy in actual communicative use of the target language outside the classroom – a likely explanation for why learners in the control group improved despite a lack of targeted pedagogical intervention. Needless to say, a similar effect would not be observed in a foreign language context. An issue related to the success of instruction is the question of why certain features proved resistant to improvement. For example, Wishnoff (2000) found that despite the greater frequency of hedging devices used by learners in her experimental group, there were no significant changes in the variety of hedges they used on the pretest and the posttest. The greater frequency of the targeted pragmatic category with concomitant stability in the variety of strategies used is analogous to Olshtain and CohenÕs (1990) findings for apologies discussed above. Both studies also provided a rather limited amount of instruction. Yoshimi (2001) noted that not all the targeted features were learned equally well, and even her experimental learners evidenced considerable failure to use the target forms during communicative practice sessions, especially where more subtle aspects of the internal structure of tellings were concerned such as marking shifts in scene or perspective to highlight the point of a story, a result not unlike that of Liddicoat and Crozet (2001) discussed above. In both cases, learners receiving instruction had difficulty in mastering the more subtle aspects of the target features. In this case, it seems appropriate to appeal to BialystokÕs (1993) contention that due to limitations in the control of processing, adult learners may be unable to attend to the more subtle aspects of talk-in-interaction. In fact, Liddicoat and Crozet (2001) make such an argument, noting that their content features are more amenable to conscious attention and manipulation than their features of form, which are unconscious and automatic, making the latter a more difficult instructional target. Nevertheless, it appears that instruction outpaces exposure alone in the learning of second language pragmatics. What about the effects of different types of instruction 4.3. Different teaching approaches K.R. Rose / System 33 (2005) 385–399 393 Most studies comparing the effectiveness of different teaching approaches select two types of pedagogical intervention, and in all cases the intervention could be construed as explicit versus implicit. One could argue that these studies have much in common with those examining the effect of instruction versus no-instruction discussed in the previous section, with a crucial difference being that while studies in the second group compared instruction to exposure which was not manipulated to ensure that it contained the target features, studies in this group involved two (or more) treatments which guaranteed that learners were exposed to and used the target features. The main feature distinguishing one group from another was the provision of metapragmatic information designed to make the target features more salient.
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