Method effects in ILP classroom research : evidence from a study on request modifiers in L2 Italian

Abstract

In the last few decades, research in Interlanguage Pragmatics (ILP) has grown dramatically, focusing mainly on the investigation of speech acts, conversational structure and conversational implicature (Alcon Soler and Martfnez-Flor, 2008. p. 3). A considerable part of this body of research is devoted to investigating the effects of instruction in second language pragmatics. According to Rose (2005, p. 385), three central issues have been addressed by interventional studies on interlanguage pragmatics, namely the reachability of pragmatics, the relative benefits of instruction versus mere exposure, and whether different approaches to instruction yield different results. Overall, results suggest that i) pragmatics is teachable, ii) the teaching of pragmatic features leads to results that outpace those obtained by exposure alone (especially in FL contexts, where learners have limited opportunities for exposure to the TL input or to try out the newly-learned L2 pragmatic strategies outside the classroom), and iii) explicit intervention ensures the development of learners' pragmatic competence to a greater extent than implicit intervention (Alc6n Soler and Martfnez-Flor, 2008, p. 11). However, Takahashi (2010), in her overview of the empirical findings gathered during the past 25 years with respect to the effects of instruction on the learning of pragmatic features, shows that the picture is less homogeneous than previously suggested.