Effects of recasts of EFL learners' acquisition of pragmalinguistic conventions of request

Abstract

The applicability of recasting to the pragmalinguistic level was the mission of this study. With its three research questions, this study investigated the effects of implicit feedback on Chinese learners of English in learning eight pragmalinguistic conventions of request: 1. Are pragmalinguistic recasts effective for teaching pragmatically appropriate requests? 2. Are they effective for teaching pragmatically appropriate and grammatically correct requests? 3. Do they boost learners’ confidence in making requests? Both pragmatic recast and control groups performed role-plays; the former received recasts on their request Head Acts whereas the latter did not. The results of discourse completion tests yielded the effect sizes of the pragmatic recast group: Cohen’s (1988) d = 0.83 for research question 1 and Cohen’s d = 0.87 for research question 2. Both groups also built up confidence in speaking to an interlocutor of higher status, perhaps due to the interaction with the instructor and their peers.