Pedagogical intervention to develop learners' production of downgraders when suggesting

• Autores: Alicia Martínez Flor
• Localización: Proceedings of the 30th International AEDEAN Conference: [electronic resource] / María Losada Friend (ed. lit.), Pilar Ron Vaz (ed. lit.), Sonia Hernández Santano (ed. lit.), Jorge Casanova García (ed. lit.), 2007, ISBN 978-84-96826-31-1
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The necessity of integrating pragmatics in foreign language teaching has given rise to a lot of research (Rose and Kasper, 2001; Martínez-Flor, Usó and Fernández, 2003). However, most of the interventional studies have focused on the teachability of particular speech acts, such as requests or apologies, and have included only one group of participants. Thus, as claimed by Kasper and Rose (2002), there is a need to conduct more research on the role of instruction on other pragmatic features, and include a control group in the research design. On that account, this study examines the effects of pedagogical intervention to develop learners' use of downgraders (i.e. particular mitigating devices) when making suggestions in comparison to a control group, which did not receive any instruction. Results showed that the learners receiving pedagogical intervention significantly improved their production of downgraders when suggesting in comparison to the control group. These findings therefore demonstrate the benefits of teaching this particular pragmatic aspect in the foreign language classroom, and call for further research that examines the teachability of other features.