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Email Pragmatics and Second Language Learners
Edited by Maria Economidou-Kogetsidis, Milica Savić and Nicola Halenko
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 328] 2021
► pp. 71–100

Chapter 3
Long-term instructional effects on learners’ use of email request modifiers

ORCID logo | Universitat Jaume I

This study followed a pre-test/post-test/delayed post-test design to investigate the long-term impact of metapragmatic instruction on learners’ ability to modify email requests. Twenty-five Spanish university students with an upper-intermediate proficiency level in English participated in the study. Over a two-week period, they received six hours of instruction on request modifiers by applying a form-function-context mapping framework (Taguchi 2011). Target request modifiers in written Discourse Completion Tasks (DCTs) were analysed for frequency and variety. Learners’ self-evaluations of email appropriateness were also used to determine their degree of confidence when producing request modifiers. The within-group comparisons revealed that learners made a significant progress in their use of request modifiers and confidence level immediately after instruction and two months later. These comparisons, however, also indicated that some types of request modifiers were more amenable to instruction than others.

Keywords: Spanish EFL learners, requests, emails, instructional pragmatics, delayed test
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
  • 3.Method
    • 3.1Participants
    • 3.2Instructional targets
    • 3.3Instructional procedure
      • 3.3.1Session 1: Researching and Reflecting
      • 3.3.2Session 2: Receiving and Reasoning
      • 3.3.3Session 3: Rehearsing and Revising
    • 3.4Data collection procedure
    • 3.5Data analysis and statistical procedure
  • 4.Results and discussion
    • 4.1Learners’ frequency of request modifiers
    • 4.2Learners’ variety of request modifiers
    • 4.3Learners’ confidence in judging the appropriateness of email request modifiers
  • 5.Conclusions, limitations and pedagogical implications
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 27 October 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.328.03uso
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