DSpace at VNU: The effects of input enhancement and recasts on the development of second language pragmatic competence

This article was downloaded by: [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] On: 09 April 2015, At: 05:33 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rill20 The effects of input enhancement and recasts on the development of second language pragmatic competence a b b Minh Thi Thuy Nguyen , Hanh Thi Pham & Tam Minh Pham a English Language and Literature, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore b Click for updates Faculty of English Language Teacher Education, University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, Viet Nam Published online: 07 Apr 2015 To cite this article: Minh Thi Thuy Nguyen, Hanh Thi Pham & Tam Minh Pham (2015): The effects of input enhancement and recasts on the development of second language pragmatic competence, Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching, DOI: 10.1080/17501229.2015.1026907 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17501229.2015.1026907 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden Terms & Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 05:33 09 April 2015 Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/termsand-conditions Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching, 2015 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17501229.2015.1026907 The effects of input enhancement and recasts on the development of second language pragmatic competence Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 05:33 09 April 2015 Minh Thi Thuy Nguyena*, Hanh Thi Phamb and Tam Minh Phamb a English Language and Literature, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore; bFaculty of English Language Teacher Education, University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, Viet Nam (Received 29 October 2014; accepted 28 February 2015) This study investigates the combined effects of input enhancement and recasts on a group of Vietnamese EFL learners’ performance of constructive criticism during peer review activities Particularly, the study attempts to find out whether the instruction works for different aspects of pragmatic learning, including the learners’ sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic knowledge, as well as their frequency of externally and internally modifying their criticism Over a course lasting approximately seven instructional hours, the learners received visually enhanced pragmatic input and recasts of their errors of form and meaning The learners’ pre-to-posttest improvement was investigated using three production tasks, namely a discourse completion task, a role play, and an oral peer-feedback task The findings show there is potential for input enhancement and recast in teaching different aspects of second language pragmatics and are discussed with implications for classroom practices and future research Keywords: pragmatic competence; input enhancement; recast; speech acts; second language acquisition; interlanguage pragmatics Introduction Pragmatic competence is the knowledge of how to express one’s meanings and intentions appropriately within a particular social and cultural context of communication This knowledge involves both having linguistic resources for expressing meanings and intentions (i.e pragmalinguistics) and understanding the sociocultural constraints on the use of these means (i.e sociopragmatics) (Canale 1983) Pragmatic competence is essential for effective communication and is featured significantly in various models of communicative competence in second language (L2) teaching (see Bachman 1990; Canale and Swain 1980; Canale 1983) Nonetheless, previous research has shown that pragmatic knowledge in the target language (TL) is incomplete for many learners, regardless of their proficiency levels (see Kasper and Rose 2002) Unlike grammatical errors, pragmatic failure may be treated as offensive, thus likely adversely affecting the learner’s communication with the native speaker (NS) (Thomas 1983) Earlier studies have also shown that pragmatic features are learned slowly without the benefits of instruction (see for example Bardovi-Harlig and Hartford 1993; Bouton 1994) This is because pragmatic functions and their contextual constraints are not salient enough for L2 *Corresponding author Emails: thithuyminh.nguyen@nie.edu.sg; thuyminhnguyen@gmail.com © 2015 Taylor & Francis Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 05:33 09 April 2015 M.T.T Nguyen et al learners to notice despite prolonged exposure (Kasper and Schmidt 1996) In other words, mere exposure is insufficient for L2 pragmatic development, and pragmatic acquisition requires a certain degree of consciousness of form-function mappings and pertinent contextual variables (Schmidt 1990, 1993) Recent years have seen an upsurge of interest in the effects of instruction in promoting pragmatic awareness (see Alcón-Soler 2008; Martínez-Flor, Usó-Juan, and Fernández-Guerra 2003; Rose and Kasper 2001) These studies address three important questions: the teachability of L2 pragmatics, the benefits of instruction versus mere exposure, and the relative effects of different teaching approaches Generally, the findings of these studies have attested to the teachability of pragmatic features and overall benefits of instruction in developing L2 pragmatic competence (see Jeon and Kaya 2006; Kasper and Rose 2002; Rose 2005; Roever 2009; Taguchi 2011; Takahashi 2010, for a comprehensive review) Findings have also suggested that explicit instruction (i.e instruction that serves to direct learners’ attention to the target forms with the aim of discussing those forms) may work more effectively than implicit instruction (i.e instruction that allows learners to infer rules without awareness), particularly in teaching sociopragmatics (Jeon and Kaya 2006; Takahashi 2010) However, findings in this area may need to be treated with caution (see Ellis 2008; Jeon and Kaya 2006) First, because current research has focused predominantly on relatively ‘well defined’ speech acts such as requests and suggestions (e.g Alcón-Soler 2005; Ghavamnia, Eslami-Rasekha, and Vahid-Dastjerdi 2014; Eslami, Mirzaei, and Dini 2014; Fuykuya and Zhang 2002; Koike and Pearson 2005; Martínez-Flor and Fukuya 2005; Safont 2003; Salazar 2003; Takahashi 2001, 2005; Takimoto 2009), it has remained much less known whether instruction works for less clearly defined speech acts or speech act sets such as constructive criticism that has no predetermined form and thus may cause even more problems to L2 learners (see Nguyen 2013; Nguyen, Pham, and Cao 2013; Nguyen, Pham, and Pham 2012) Thus, it is important that further research expand the range of learning targets under inquiry Second, due to a limited number of studies that have examined the impact of implicit instruction on L2 pragmatic development, their findings must be corroborated in further research to strengthen the body of evidence (Jeon and Kaya 2006; Nguyen, Pham, and Pham 2012) Another limitation, as pointed out by Fuykuya and Zhang (2002), lies in the inadequate conceptualization of implicit instruction in many earlier pragmatics studies In contrast to explicit instruction that is well aligned with a focus on forms approach (involving intentional learning of form via presentation and consolidation of rules in increasingly communicative practice), implicit instruction seems to be a less developed area both conceptually and methodologically (Fuykuya and Zhang 2002, 2–3, but see Alcón-Soler 2005; Ghavamnia, Eslami-Rasekha, and Vahid-Dastjerdi 2014; Eslami, Mirzaei, and Dini 2014; Koike and Pearson 2005; Martínez-Flor and Fukuya 2005; Nguyen, Pham, and Pham 2012) In many studies, it is simply defined as mere exposure to input (Pearson 1998; Tateyama 2001; Takahashi 2001) or the withholding of metapragmatic information (e.g House 1996) According to Fuykuya and Zhang (2002, 3), this conventional way of conceptualizing implicit instruction ‘leave[s] us with the impression that the pragmatists have been caught with a fixed notion of simple exposure to pragmatic examples,’ whereas implicit instruction may, in fact, refer to a wider range of instructional techniques varying in degrees of implicitness (see Jeon and Kaya 2006).1 The lack of systematic conceptualization of implicit instruction in earlier studies seems to suggest that perhaps they are more pedagogically than theoretically motivated (see Ellis 2008) Obviously, this calls for more rigorous designs in future interlanguage (IL) Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 05:33 09 April 2015 Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching pragmatics research to bring instructional pragmatics research closer to traditions of mainstream second language acquisition (SLA) research The present study attempts to add a variation in the way of conceptualizing implicit instruction by examining the potential of implementing focus on form instruction in teaching L2 pragmatics In contrast to the intentional learning of form afforded by focus on forms instruction, in focus on form instruction, learners’ attention to form is subconsciously accomplished while they are primarily engaged in comprehending or producing meaning (see Ellis 2001, 2008; Long 1991; Long and Norris 2009; Long and Robinson 1998) A focus on form might be achieved by means of input-based activities where input is manipulated in a way that causes attention to form to take place incidentally (e.g textual input enhancement), or implicit feedback (e.g recasts) that briefly addresses learners’ difficulty in using the target form (see Ellis 2008) Because of its unobtrusiveness, this instructional approach may be a suitable option for teaching form in meaning-based contexts where the primary focus is maintained on content of communication In the framework of this paradigm, the present study, therefore, examines the combined impact of two instructional techniques, i.e provision of textually enhanced input and recasts, given during a writing class to draw students’ attention to language form needed for giving pragmatically appropriate constructive criticism on a peer’s written work Since much focus-on-form literature addresses L2 grammatical development, more research is needed in the area of L2 pragmatic development (Fuykuya and Zhang 2002; Koike and Pearson 2005; Martínez-Flor and Fukuya 2005) The study reported in this article is part of a larger-scale project that sets out to investigate the relative effectiveness of explicit and implicit form-focused instruction on the acquisition of the speech act of constructive criticism by a group of Vietnamese EFL learners (see Nguyen, Pham, and Pham 2012) While the comparative effects of the above two instructional approaches on the learners’ overall pragmatic performance were discussed in Nguyen, Pham, and Pham (2012), the present article focuses on examining how the implicit approach works for different aspects of pragmatic learning that has not yet been explored in the earlier article (i.e Nguyen, Pham, and Pham 2012) It is hoped that by offering an in-depth analysis of the different aspects of the learners’ performance, the present article would be able to provide insights into questions such as what aspects of pragmatics are amenable or resistant to instruction and therefore would provide useful information to guide classroom practices In particular, one of the questions that the present article seeks to answer is whether implicit instruction improves learners’ performance in both areas of sociopragmatic appropriateness (conformity to sociocultural code of language use) and pragmalinguistic accuracy (accurate usage of linguistic resources for expressing the intended meaning) The reason for an examination of this question is that despite that grammar is distinctive from pragmatics (see Bachman 1990; Canale 1983; Canale and Swain 1980), grammar ‘serves as a resource for encoding different kinds of meaning,’ including pragmatic meaning (Ellis 2008, 195) Learners’ limited grammatical competence may restrict their capacity to produce linguistic actions effectively (see Nguyen 2008) This is particularly the case in a foreign language context where learners lack sustained exposure to L2 pragmatic input while their classrooms may place a greater emphasis on developing linguistic than pragmatic competence (see Ellis 2008) In a previous study, it was found that while explicit instruction generally produced positive impact on L2 learners’ performance of constructive criticism, this type of instruction seemed to benefit sociopragmatic appropriateness to a greater extent than pragmalinguistic accuracy (Nguyen, Pham, and Cao 2013) Thus, it would be useful to examine how implicit instruction impacts the two above aspects in the learners’ speech M.T.T Nguyen et al Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 05:33 09 April 2015 production Another question of interest to the present study is whether implicit instruction enables learners to notice both external and internal illocutionary force modifying devices (politeness devices that serve to tone down the force of the utterance) As indicated in previous studies, internal modifiers (politeness devices occurring within and making up an integral part of the head act) tend to carry less transparent pragmatic meaning than external modifiers (semantic moves to support the head act) and therefore are less likely noticeable to learners (Hassal 2001; Nguyen 2008) Although it would be pedagogically important to examine whether internal modifiers are amenable to intervention, previous studies on the effects of instruction of this type of modifiers are rather scarce and yet produce inconclusive evidence (e.g Fukuya 1998; Fukuya and Clark 2001; Martínez-Flor 2008; Nguyen 2013; Safont 2003) Hence, this question is worthy of further investigation The role of enhanced input and recasts in SLA Input enhancement is a technique for making the target form more prominent either phonologically (by means of oral repetition) or typographically (e.g color-coding or bold-facing) with an attempt to induce learners’ noticing in an implicit and unobtrusive manner (Doughty and Williams 1998) This idea is based on the assumption that noticing is a prerequisite for intake (see Gass 1988; Schmidt 1990, 1993; Sharwood Smith 1981) and that without being prompted to attend to target forms in language input learners generally lack sensitivity to them, particularly if these forms lack perceptual salience (Sharwood Smith 1993) A number of empirical studies have been conducted to investigate the effects of input enhancement on L2 learning (e.g Doughty 1991; Izumi 2002; Leeman et al 1995; White 1998; Wong 2003) Their outcomes are inconclusive, however For example, while some studies found significant results (e.g Alcón-Soler 2005; Doughty 1991; Leeman et al 1995; Martínez-Flor 2006; Martínez-Flor and AlcónSoler 2007; Martínez-Flor and Fukuya 2005; White 1998), others found limited or no effects (e.g Izumi 2002; Fukuya and Clark 2001; Wong 2003) Han, Park, and Combs (2008) attribute this lack of congruence to methodological idiosyncrasies of the earlier studies, for example, different choices of target structures (meaningful vs nonmeaningful) and learners (with vs without prior knowledge of the target form), nature and lengths of treatment, and types of enhancement (used with vs without other attention-getting devices) Han, Park, and Combs (2008) also point out that despite the mixed results, previous studies, nonetheless, have shown that although input enhancement may induce the noticing of form, particularly if the form is meaningful, whether or not it leads to acquisition depends largely on whether or not the learner has prior knowledge of the form (also see Sharwood Smith 1981) Further, input enhancement combined with other attention-getting devices such as corrective feedback may be most effective in causing the learner to process the form at a deeper level Recasts as a type of corrective feedback have been an area of inquiry of great interest to SLA Recasts are generally defined as the reformulations of erroneous utterances into more target-like versions while preserving the original meaning (see Long 1996; Lyster 2004) From the interactionist perspective, recasts are considered useful because they occur during interaction and the process of negotiation of meaning, thus causing learners to attend to linguistic form while maintaining their primary focus on meaning (Long 1996) Saxton (1997) also hypothesizes that recasts from caregivers to children learning their first language enable the latter to make cognitive comparison of their own output with the adults’ version, thus providing them opportunities to learn the correct form Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 05:33 09 April 2015 Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching Despite strong advocating theories, however, there is controversial empirical evidence regarding the facilitative impact of recasts (e.g Carroll and Swain 1993; Doughty and Varela 1998; Lyster and Ranta 1997; Mackey and Philp 1998; Ortega and Long 1997; Panova and Lyster 2002; Y Sheen 2004) Observational classroom studies have shown that recasts may not always be noticed by the learner, particularly when used within content-based, meaning-focused (as opposed to form-focused) instructional contexts (e.g Lyster 1998, 2004; Y Sheen 2004) Compared to other types of corrective feedback, for example, elicitations or clarification requests, recasts are less likely to lead to uptake and immediate repair (Lyster and Ranta 1997; Panova and Lyster 2002) On the other hand, many experimental laboratory studies have found that learners who receive recasts generally improve in postexperimental observations (e.g Carroll and Swain 1993; Doughty and Varela 1998; Mackey and Philp 1998; Ortega and Long 1997) As pointed out by Ellis and Sheen (2006) and Sheen (2008), these mixed results reflect differences in the design of the above studies, including research designs (classroom observation vs experiments), interaction settings where the recasts occur (form-focused vs meaning-focused), linguistic forms targeted for recasting (e.g morphosyntax vs phonology), types of recasts (e.g explicit vs implicit)2, learner factors (e.g developmental readiness, cognitive orientation), and outcome measurements Hence, Sheen (2008) calls for further research that allows for a more systematic control of these variables in order to fully understand the efficacy of recasts Importantly, Ammar and Spada (2006) have pointed out that it is problematic to associate the effectiveness of recasts with the rate of uptake and repair following this technique (as did observational studies) This is because uptake or the absence of it may not always serve as the best evidence of learning or lack of learning For example, sometimes opportunities for uptake to occur are impossible In other cases, repairs might simply be a sign of ‘mimicking.’ Therefore, it has been argued that the evidence of learning should be measured more reliably by means of carefully designed experimental research Unlike in mainstream SLA research, the role and effects of textually enhanced input and recasts have been scarcely investigated in L2 pragmatic research (e.g Alcón-Soler 2005; Fukuya et al 1998; Fukuya and Clark 2001; Fuykuya and Zhang 2002; MartínezFlor and Fukuya 2005) Findings of these studies are also relatively mixed For example, whereas Fukuya et al (1988) found no effects for recasts in teaching sociopragmatic aspects of L2 requests, Fuykuya and Zhang (2002) reported relatively large impact of recasts on improving learners’ performance of requests in terms of both sociopragmatic appropriateness and pragmalinguistic accuracy Fukuya and Clark (2001) failed to find positive effects for textual input enhancement in teaching request modifiers On the other hand, Alcón-Soler (2005) and Martínez-Flor and Fukuya (2005) found significant combined effects of textual input enhancement and recasts on the acquisition of L2 requests and suggestions, respectively See also the positive impact of combining input enhancement and input flooding in Ghavamnia, Eslami-Rasekha, and Vahid-Dastjerdi’s (2014) investigation of suggestions and input enhancement and recasts in Eslami, Mirzaei, and Dini’s (2014) investigation of requests Despite their contributions in terms of offering a more developed definition of implicit instruction compared to earlier works (for a review, see Jeon and Kaya 2006), the above studies nevertheless have exclusively focused on requests and suggestions, thus leaving unanswered the question of how implicit teaching works for other speech acts Further, most of the above studies employed only a single outcome measure task, thus limiting the validity of the data (e.g Alcón-Soler 2005; Fukuya et al 1988; Fukuya and Clark 2001; Fuykuya and Zhang 2002) Finally, due to the absence of a delayed posttest M.T.T Nguyen et al in the reviewed studies, it remains unknown if their findings are stable over an extended period of time Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 05:33 09 April 2015 The present study 3.1 Research question Due to a number of outstanding issues, there is a need for continuing the above line of inquiry to further our understanding of the applicability of implicit instruction in the pragmatic realm The present study therefore attempts to find out whether implicit instruction that is based on enhanced input and recasts works for different aspects of pragmatic learning, including learners’ sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic knowledge that is needed for performing constructive criticism during peer review activities, as well as their frequency of externally and internally modifying their criticism to reduce the potential offense to their peers The present study is hoped to address the current gaps in three ways First, it focuses on a less commonly researched speech act, i.e giving constructive criticism to a peer’s performance, hence contributing to expanding the range of learning targets for investigation (see Nguyen 2013; Nguyen, Pham, and Pham 2012; Nguyen, Pham, and Cao 2013) Second, the study employs a mix of written and oral data elicitation methods to measure the learning outcomes with a view to enhancing the validity of the data Third, the study aims to examine both immediate and durable effects of input enhancement and recasts, thus hoping to be better capable of informing L2 classroom practices To achieve the specified aims, the current study seeks to answer the following question: Does the combination of input enhancement and recasts benefit the different aspects of the learners’ performance of constructive criticism, as outlined above, in both short and longer terms? The rationales for implementing both of the instructional techniques are as follows First, the provision of corrective feedback in tandem with instruction is generally supported as they are deemed complementary in pedagogical terms (see Lyster, Saito, and Sato 2013) Further, research has shown that employing multiple instructional strategies may produce more positive learning effects than the adoption of a single teaching strategy (see Izumi 2002) Regarding the learning target under inquiry, the present study defines constructive criticism as a negative assessment of an individual’s work in progress with the aim of improving current or future performance This speech act usually involves the identification of a problematic action, choice, or product as well as advice on how to change or correct the problem (Nguyen 2005) The use of constructive criticism as a means of improving L2 learners’ writing skills has been generally supported in the literature for ‘its social, cognitive, affective and methodological benefits’ (Rollinson 2005, 23) However, due to its face-damaging nature, providing constructive criticism to a peer can become a daunting experience if learners lack training in it Research has documented that students from certain cultures may feel uncomfortable criticizing their peers’ work or worse yet face considerable difficulty in conveying their message appropriately For example, unlike the NS, Vietnamese learners of English tend to soften their constructive criticism far less frequently while aggravating it far more often, using modal verbs of obligation inappropriately (see Nguyen 2005) Given that constructive criticism may pose a challenge to learners who are not familiar with the way it is performed in the TL, this speech act deserves due pedagogical attention Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 05:33 09 April 2015 3.2 Participants The present study was conducted at a teacher training institution in Vietnam Two high intermediate EFL intact classes (N = 41) were invited to participate in the study Before being recruited, the learners were explained about the research3 and signed consent forms to indicate their agreement to participate The learners (2 males and 39 females) were preservice EFL teachers doing their Year English major The two classes were randomly assigned to control (N = 22) and treatment (N = 19) conditions There were no notable differences between the two groups in terms of age range, lengths of English study, and exposure to English outside the classroom In both groups, learners’ ages ranged between 20 and 22 Their lengths of English study ranged between and years None of them had ever resided in an English-speaking country They had had limited opportunities to hear and speak English outside the formal instructional time 3.3 Choice of target forms The treatment was integrated into a writing syllabus that focused on paragraph and essay writing The syllabus specified that students participate in peer-feedback activities for at least four writing assignments That is, they had to read and give critical comments on at least four pieces of written work by a peer The writing classes met for three class hours every week Instruction on constructive criticism was implemented for the treatment group for one class hour (i.e 45 minutes) every week over a period of 10 weeks, resulting in an approximate total of seven instructional hours The third author taught the control group and the second author taught the treatment group The two classes followed the same writing syllabus and schedule, that is, they both engaged in peer-feedback activities for at least four writing assignments (see above) The only difference was the additional exposure to the language for expressing constructive criticism via input enhancement and recast activities by the treatment group It is noted that the control group may have received some exposure to these linguistic items incidentally through teachers’ feedback in their writing class and other courses However, it remains uncertain if the items had been explicitly taught to them in previous courses Given that the students had reached a high intermediate level, it is plausible to assume a positive answer Nonetheless, since English instruction in Vietnam is heavily grammarbased, it could be the case that although the students may have learned these grammatical forms, they may not have learned all corresponding pragmalinguistic functions As a result, they did not always put the forms to the correct pragmatic use, as can be seen in their pretest performance The target features selected for instruction included two major criticism realization strategies: (1) identification of problem and (2) giving advice The pragmalinguistic conventions for realizing identification of problem included three structures: (1) NP was ADJ; (2) You V (past tense); and (3) You had (a/an) (ADJ) NP The pragmalinguistic conventions for realizing advice included 12 structures: (1) You can + V; (2) You could + V; (3) You could have + V (past participle); (4) You may + V; (5) You might + V; (6) You might want to + V; (7) (If I were you) I would; (8) It would be better if you + V; (9) It would be better + V (infinitive); (10) If you + V, it may; (11) NP may be + V (past participle); and (12) Why don’t you? The target features also comprised two types of criticism modifiers: (1) external modifiers, including compliments (e.g It was an interesting paper), disarmers (e.g You had a few spelling mistakes here and there but I think that’s because you’re writing pretty quick, nothing too major), and grounders (e.g I think ‘it’ is better than ‘are’ there because M.T.T Nguyen et al Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 05:33 09 April 2015 ‘traffic’ is single) and (2) internal modifiers, including past tense (e.g I thought it would make more sense that way), modal verbs (e.g may, might, could, would), modal adverbs (e.g maybe, perhaps, probably), expression of uncertainty (e.g I wasn’t sure that was the best phrase you could’ve used), hedges (e.g sort of, kind of, seem), and understaters (e.g a bit, a little bit, quite, rather) (see details in Nguyen, Pham, and Pham 2012) The above strategies, modifiers, and pragmalinguistic conventions were selected for teaching because they were found to occur most frequently in NS criticism in equal power situations but to present considerable difficulty to many learners of English (see Nguyen 2005) 3.4 Instructional procedures Over the 10 weeks, the treatment group was engaged in the following activities: (1) (2) (3) (4) Exposure to visually enhance input in the first three sessions: In the first session, learners read samples of NS peer-feedback conversations, answered comprehension questions, and evaluated the effectiveness of the NS criticism using a list of criteria such as whether the criticism is specific, well-grounded, sounds positive, includes suggestion for improvement, and does not provoke negative responses from the hearer (see Tracy, van Dusen, and Robinson 1987) They might add more criteria to the list if they wished to In the second session, the learners read and wrote feedback on a sample essay Then they read the sample NS feedback on this essay and compared the feedback with their own with reference to the above criteria.4 In the third session, the learners read different sample essays, identified the problems with them, and matched them with corresponding NS feedback samples Note that all the NS feedback samples contained bold-faced target structures, and the learners were instructed to pay attention to these highlighted parts when reading the samples in order to complete the tasks (see Appendix for samples of the materials) Communicative practice comprising performance on a discourse completion task (DCT) and oral peer-feedback tasks (OPFs) in the remaining seven sessions Performance evaluation: For this activity, learners recorded their peer-feedback conversation, listened to the recording, and evaluated their own performance, using a set of guiding questions given to them (see Appendix) Receiving recasts of both pragmatic and grammatical errors that arose out of communicative tasks (see below) The recasts were also written on the blackboard at the end of the lesson for students to note down Recasts were provided in the form of confirmation checks as these were assumed to present a clearer corrective intention than the reformulation of errors alone (see Gass and Alison 2007) Recasts were done as follows First, the teacher, also the second author, repeated the erroneous part of the utterance in a rising tone to attract students’ attention Then, the teacher said the appropriate utterance, preceded by ‘You mean’, also using a rising tone The corrected part was also stressed, as seen in the example below: Student: You must pay attention to grammar Teacher: Must?↑ You mean ‘Perhaps you could pay more attention to grammar?’↑ Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching In order to decide what and how to recast, the framework proposed by Fuykuya and Zhang (2002) was adopted In particular, if an utterance is pragmatically appropriate but grammatically inaccurate, the teacher recasts only the linguistic form (type 1) If an utterance is pragmatically inappropriate but grammatically accurate, the teacher recasts its illocutionary force by using one of the pragmalinguistic conventions for expressing constructive criticism (type 2) Finally, if an utterance is neither pragmatically appropriate nor grammatically accurate, the teacher recasts both of its form and illocutionary force by using one of the pragmalinguistic conventions for expressing constructive criticism (type 3) This procedure together with illustrative examples is presented in Figure 1.5 Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 05:33 09 April 2015 3.5 Assessment tools Previous research has shown that the type of outcome measure may affect the observed magnitude of instructional effects (Jeon and Kaya 2006) Studies employing elicited data only tend to produce smaller effect sizes than those employing both elicited and natural data Thus, to maximize the possibility to track postexperimental changes, both elicited and naturalistic data were employed in this study Specifically, the current study made use of an OPF on actual written works, an 8-item DCT, and a 6-item role play (RP) Details of these instruments were reported in Nguyen, Pham, and Pham (2012) Also see Nguyen, Pham, and Pham (2012) for samples of these instruments The treatment and control groups’ performance was compared on a pretest and an immediate posttest, using the three production tasks mentioned above The pretest was conducted at the onset of the study while the immediate posttest at the end of the treatment period To examine whether the treatment group’s gains (if any) were durable Learner made an error Figure Type Appropriate but inaccurate (e.g If I were you, I will revise it) Type Inappropriate but accurate (e.g You must pay attention to grammar) Type Inappropriate and inaccurate (e.g Your introduction are too long) Recasting linguistic form (e.g If I were you I would revise it) Recasting illocutionary force (e.g Perhaps you could pay more attention to grammar it) Recasting both illocutionary force and linguistic form (e.g Your introduction was probably a bit long) Types of errors and corresponding recasts 10 M.T.T Nguyen et al beyond the treatment, a delayed posttest consisting of the above three production tasks was also conducted for this group five weeks after Due to limited resources, however, the delayed posttest was not conducted for the control group To guard against the possibilities of the learners’ memorizing responses from the pretest, some adjustments were made as follows For the OPF task, the learners were asked to critique a different essay in each test Similarly, the order of DCT and RP scenarios was also reshuffled each time Finally, to keep the variable of social distance constant, the learners were allowed to choose their own pairs for the RP and OPF, and this pairing was maintained throughout all the three tests Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 05:33 09 April 2015 3.6 Data analysis The data were coded into different categories of criticizing strategies and modifiers, using a coding scheme devised and validated by Nguyen (2005) (also see Section 3.3) The data were first coded independently by each researcher in the team and then were carefully cross-checked Cases of discrepancies were discussed until an agreement was reached In order to analyze the frequency with which the learners in each group externally and internally modified their constructive criticism, means and standard deviations of each category of modifiers were computed This was done by first calculating the number of external and internal modifiers produced per criticism in each production task by individual learners in each group and then averaging the outcomes of the three tasks for each learner Next, the average outcomes for individual learners in each group were entered into an SPSS spreadsheet to compute the means and standard deviations for the groups In order to assess the sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic aspects of the learners’ performance of criticism, two rating scales, which were adapted from Martínez-Flor and Fukuya (2005), were employed Each scale consisted of five points, with representing the lowest and five the highest possible score Sociopragmatic appropriateness (henceforth ‘appropriacy’) was assessed in terms of knowledge of what to say to a particular interlocutor in a particular context of situation In this study, appropriacy was determined by the choice of realization strategies and politeness devices from the list that was taught to the students (see Section 3.3) These items were derived from an NS database of constructive criticism between peers in the institutional context that was collected by Nguyen (2005) Pragmalinguistic accuracy (henceforth ‘accuracy’) was assessed in terms of knowledge of various expressions for conveying intentions and determined by the correct usage of relevant linguistic structures, also from the aforementioned list Note that accuracy was to be scored only when appropriacy had been achieved This is because the ultimate goal of pragmatic instruction is to enable students to find socially appropriate language for the situations that they encounter (Bardovi-Harlig and Mahan-Taylor 2003); thus, only when learners can connect newly learned grammatical forms to the corresponding pragmatic functions should the instruction be considered successful Also note that scores were given only when learners were able to use one of the target forms which had been taught to them in the treatment (see Section 3.3) The scoring procedure for appropriacy is as follows If the student was able to employ the realization strategy and at the same time modify its illocutionary force appropriately according to the context, he or she would be awarded the full mark of He or she, however, would be awarded only 2.5 points if his or her utterance was lacking in modality or was accompanied by an inappropriate modifier (e.g making use of an intensifier instead of a downgrader) This is because modality constitutes an essential Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 05:33 09 April 2015 Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching 11 means for softening potentially offensive speech acts such as criticism, and the lack of it may cause serious damage to the hearer’s face (Nguyen 2005) Finally, no point would be awarded for an inappropriate realization strategy (e.g ordering a peer to make changes to his or her essay instead of offering suggestions for improvement) As far as accuracy is concerned, a full mark of would be awarded for a correct pragmalinguistic form with the correct connecting part A deduction of one point would be applied if the connecting part was inaccurate, however This type of error was penalized by only one point as it would only minimally interfere with the overall meaning and would not affect the recognizability of the speaker’s illocutionary intent Finally, no point would be assigned for an incorrect pragmalinguistic form A learner’s total score for each of two aspects on a production task was obtained by averaging the sum of sub-scores that he or she achieved for each criticism that he or she had made when performing the task Finally, a learner’s combined score gained for the three tasks was computed by averaging his or her total score gained in each task Scoring procedures were conducted independently and crosschecked carefully by all researchers on the team with the agreement rate of 90% Short- and longer-term improvement of the treatment group was measured in terms of students’ gains from the pretest to the two posttests (i.e within-group comparison) In order to determine whether changes in the dependent variables (i.e learners’ appropriacy and accuracy scores as well as their frequency of usage of external and internal modifiers) can be attributed to the manipulation of the independent variable (i.e whether or not the learners received exposure to textually enhanced input and recasts), the gains from the pretest to the immediate posttest of the treatment group were also compared with those of the control group (i.e between-group comparison) (Recall that delayed posttest data were not available for the control group – see Section 3.5.) A repeated-measures multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was employed for the within-group comparison, whereas a one-way MANOVA was employed for the between-group comparison Results Table presents the descriptive statistics for the treatment group, whereas Table presents the descriptive statistics for the control group First, results of the repeated-measures MANOVA conducted for the treatment group revealed a statistically significant multivariate effect [F(8, 11) = 10.5, p < 001, g2p =.89] Within-group univariate analyses indicated a significant improvement on all four measurements (that is, appropriacy and accuracy scores, external and internal modifiers) between the pretest and the two posttest (see Table 3) Post hoc analyses with the Least Significant Difference procedure showed that in both aspects of appropriacy and accuracy, differences lay between results gained from the pretest with those from the Table Descriptive statistics of the treatment group Pretest Appropriacy Accuracy External modifier Internal modifier Posttest Posttest Pre-to-posttest gains Pre-to-posttest gains M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD 1.49 1.97 40 12 33 50 22 12 2.18 2.52 66 24 36 38 41 15 2.1 2.48 69 15 29 35 37 09 69 56 26 12 35 43 42 13 62 51 29 02 34 42 34 14 12 M.T.T Nguyen et al Table Descriptive statistics of the control group Pretest Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 05:33 09 April 2015 Appropriacy Accuracy External modifier Internal modifier Posttest Pre-to-posttest gains M SD M SD M SD 1.82 2.11 56 19 46 47 32 15 1.75 1.97 59 11 36 40 45 08 −.07 −.15 02 −.08 47 46 31 15 two posttests (p < 001) but not between results from the two posttests (p > 05) These findings suggest positive effects for the treatment group in terms of both of their sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic performance when measured both immediately and five weeks after the treatment Nonetheless, when it came to the learners’ use of modification, it was found that although significant gains from the pretest to the immediate posttest were observed in their usage of both external and internal modifiers (p < 05), retention of these gains was observed only in the area of external modifiers (cf immediate posttest vs delayed posttest: p > 05 for external modifiers, but p = 01 for internal modifiers) In other words, while both short- and longer-term positive effects were found for the treatment group’s usage of external modifiers, only immediate positive effects were found for their usage of internal modifiers Further, results of the one-way MANOVA conducted for the gain difference between the treatment and control groups revealed that the former significantly outperformed the latter, both when the results were combined for the four dependent variables (i.e appropriacy, accuracy, external and internal modifiers) [F(4, 36) = 10.8, p < 001, g2p = 55] and when the results were considered separately for each dependent variable [appropriacy: F(1, 39) = 33.6, p < 001, g2p = 46; accuracy: F(1, 39) = 25.1, p < 001, g2p = 39; external modifiers: F(1, 39) = 4.14, p < 05, g2p = 10; internal modifiers: F(1, 39) = 19.1, p < 001, g2p = 33] (see Table 4) Discussion The present study sought to explore the combined effects of input enhancement and recasts on four different aspects of the learners’ performance of constructive criticism in English: (1) appropriacy, (2) accuracy, (3) external modifiers, and (4) internal modifiers In particular, the study addressed whether the instruction produced positive effects on all of the four aspects, and whether the effects (if any) lasted beyond the immediate postexperimental observation To this end, short- and longer-term improvement of the treatment group in the above aspects was measured in terms of the learners’ gains from Table Results of the within-group univariate analyses for the treatment group Measure Appropriacy Accuracy External modifier Internal modifier Type III sum of squares df Mean square F Significance Partial η2 5.45 3.60 941 151 2 2 2.73 1.80 470 075 47.3 20.9 6.31 7.96 000 000 004 001 72 54 26 31 Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching 13 Table Results of the between-group univariate analyses for the two groups Measure Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 05:33 09 April 2015 Appropriacy Accuracy External modifier Internal modifier Type III sum of squares df Mean square F Significance Partial η2 5.92 5.01 554 387 1 1 5.92 5.01 554 387 33.6 25.1 4.14 19.1 000 000 049 000 46 39 10 33 the pretest to the two posttests In order to determine whether changes in the dependent variables can be attributed to the manipulation of the independent variable, the gains from the pretest to the immediate posttest of the treatment group were also compared with those of the control group Regarding within-group contrasts, results indicate that the learners’ postexperimental improvement was evident in all four investigated areas Relatively strong partial η2 values found for the learners’ pre-to-posttest gains in these areas (appropriacy: g2p = 72; for accuracy: g2p = 54; external modifiers: g2p = 26; internal modifiers: g2p = 31) suggest large magnitudes of impact of instruction on improving the learners’ performance over time Results also indicate that learners’ improvement in terms of their appropriacy and accuracy scores as well as usage of external modifiers was retained by the time of the delayed posttest, suggesting the durable effects of the instruction on these three aspects of the learners’ pragmatic performance On the other hand, there was a lack of sustained improvement in the learners’ usage of internal modifiers, which indicated that instructional effects on this aspect of the learners’ pragmatic performance were only short-lived While additional follow-up tests are needed to confirm whether the above observations would be stable over a more extended period of time, the results of the present study seem to suggest that internal modifiers seem less effectively responsive to the type of instruction under inquiry than the other three areas of learners’ pragmatic performance (see Table 5, which shows, on average, the effect size for internal modifiers was the smallest) A possible account for the lesser responsiveness of internal modifiers (as compared to external modifiers, for example) may lie in the fact that because internal modifiers carry less transparent pragmatic meaning, their face-saving function may be less readily noticeable, especially when not explicitly explained to the learners Alternatively, it could have also been explained that since the addition of internal modifiers may increase the structural complexity of the speech act, thus requiring more processing effort on the part of the learners, the ability to retrieve internal modifiers in real-time communication requires a high degree of fluency in the TL (see Hassal 2001; Nguyen 2008) However, due to the lack of sustained practice of giving peer feedback beyond the present study, the treatment group might not have maintained their fluency in Table Cohen’s d effect sizes of the present study Appropriacy Accuracy External modifier Internal modifier Average Treatment vs control Pretreatment vs posttreatment 1.75 1.55 0.74 1.06 1.28 3.89 2.57 1.49 1.13 2.27 Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 05:33 09 April 2015 14 M.T.T Nguyen et al using this speech act, which can explain why their increased use of internal modifiers in the immediate posttest was not retained in the longer term Concerning between-group contrasts, results of the present study indicate that the treatment group gained significantly higher scores than the control group in all four explored areas Strong partial η2 values found for treatment-versus-control contrasts in the areas of appropriacy (g2p = 46), accuracy (g2p = 39), and internal modifiers (g2p = 33) and moderate partial η2 value found in the area of external modifiers (g2p = 10) revealed that the sizes of these differences were relatively large between the instructed learners and their uninstructed peers Taken together, these results suggest that changes in the learners’ postexperimental performance can be safely attributed to the instruction under investigation To interpret the overall effectiveness of the instructional approach employed in this study as compared to instructional approaches used in previous studies, Cohen’s d effect sizes were calculated for both within-group (i.e pretest vs posttests) and between-group (i.e treatment vs control) analyses (see Table 5) and compared with the corresponding figures reported by Jeon and Kaya (2006) in their meta-analysis of instructed L2 pragmatics studies, and by Fuykuya and Zhang (2002) and Martínez-Flor and Fukuya (2005) (see Table 6) The mean pretest-to-posttest effect size of the present study, calculated by averaging all effect sizes for pretest vs immediate posttest and pretest vs delayed posttest, was considered very large (d = 2.27) This was larger than the mean effect size of 1.01 reported in Jeon and Kaya (2006) Similarly, the mean treatment-versus-control effect size in the current study, calculated by averaging all effect sizes for posttest contrasts, was considered relatively large (d = 1.28), following Cohen’s (1988) recommendation This was also larger than the mean effect size of 44 reported for implicit pragmatic instruction by Jeon and Kaya (2006) Taken together, these results suggest a larger magnitude of instructional effects for the current study than that reported in earlier studies of L2 pragmatic instruction When compared with the two studies to which the current study was closest in terms of design and pedagogical procedures, i.e Fuykuya and Zhang (2002) and Martínez-Flor and Fukuya (2005), it was found that the current study had a larger mean treatmentcontrol effect size to Fuykuya and Zhang (2002) (d = 83 for pragmatic appropriateness; d = 87 for grammatical accuracy; average d = 85) However, its mean effect size was much smaller than the effect size reported in Martínez-Flor and Fukuya (2005) (d = 1.90 for oral production; d = 2.13 for written production; average d = 2.02) In other words, the intervention in the current study produced greater effects than that in Fuykuya and Zhang (2002), but smaller impact than that in Martínez-Flor and Fukuya (2005) It is argued that the differential duration of treatment, number of structures targeted for instruction, and method of recasting might have explained for smaller magnitude of Table A comparison of mean effect sizes for treatment-versus-control and pretest-to-posttest contrasts among three studies The present study Jeon and Kaya (2006) Fuykuya and Zhang (2002) Martínez-Flor and Fukuya (2005) Implicit vs Control Pretreatment vs posttreatment 1.28 44 85 2.02 2.27 1.01 Not reported Not reported Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 05:33 09 April 2015 Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching 15 effects of this study compared to that of Martínez-Flor and Fukuya (2005) In particular, Martínez-Flor and Fukuya (2005) conducted 12 hours of instruction, whereas the current study consisted of only approximately hours Martínez-Flor and Fukuya (2005) targeted at 12 head acts and downgraders, whereas the current study included instruction of 15 criticizing conventions and types of modifiers It was assumed that instruction of a greater number of forms in a shorter period of time might have led to less effect for the current study In fact, Ellis and Sheen (2006) have pointed out that recasts can be more effective when they are focused and intensive (i.e directed repeatedly at a single linguistic form) than when they are incidental and extensive (i.e directed at all types of errors that occur) Additionally, the type of recasts provided in Martínez-Flor and Fukuya (2005) may also be considered more explicit than the type of recast provided in the present study, which might have made the target forms more perceptually salient to learners Nonetheless, despite the different magnitudes of instructional effects found between the current study and Martínez-Flor and Fukuya (2005), the findings of the current study were generally consistent with the findings of both Fuykuya and Zhang (2002) and Martínez-Flor and Fukuya (2005) Overall, the present study has shown that although constructive criticism is a challenging speech act, requiring a high degree of both linguistic complexity and pragmatic sophistication, it seems responsive to input enhancement and recast activities (especially in the aspect of learners’ appropriacy, accuracy and usage of external modifiers) The results of the current study, therefore, have made another case for the benefits of inducing noticing of forms via input enhancement and recasts, particularly when the two techniques are combined (see Han, Park, and Combs 2008) Indeed, input enhancement served to provide positive evidence of target forms and at the same time to induce learners’ noticing of these forms in an unobtrusive manner In this study, the learners were engaged in input enhancement activities whose primary focus was on meaning, requiring them to respond to the content of the input Thus, any attention to form would arise incidentally within a meaning-focused context where learners were more likely to see the relationship between language form and communicative function For example, by completing the communicative tasks based on NS peerfeedback samples (e.g answering comprehension questions, evaluating the content of the feedback, or matching problems with corresponding feedback) that contained bold-faced target forms, the learners might be able to notice that certain linguistic resources could be used to undertake the act of criticizing in a tactful manner, such as hedges and modal structures for marking politeness Recasts, on the other hand, served to provide learners with both positive (i.e what is possible in the TL) and negative evidence (i.e what is not possible in the TL) of TL input In particular, it indicated to learners the gap between the target form and their output, making them aware that their choices were disfavored, while at the same time providing the preferred alternative (Saxton 1997) It should be noted that while enhanced input alone was unlikely to cause learners to process the noticed form further (Izumi 2002), the combination of input enhancement activities and recasts promoted both the processes of noticing the form and noticing the IL-TL mismatch, thus aiding acquisition of the form As pointed out by Egi (2010), the latter process may represent a higher level of cognitive activity because it requires the learner to make a cognitive comparison and notice the gap between the target form and their own output, thus facilitating the integration of this form into their knowledge system Particularly, the current study improved the perceptual saliency of recasts by artificially manipulating learners’ attention (e.g by the teacher stressing the error and Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 05:33 09 April 2015 16 M.T.T Nguyen et al repeating the correct version in a rising voice) Also, the recasts were subsequently written on the blackboard at the end of the lesson to promote noticing According to Doughty (2001), the effectiveness of recasts can be improved when their saliency is enhanced, for example, by repeating the non-target-like part of a learner’s utterance and reformulating it in interrogative form (also see Sheen 2006, for further discussion on this point) One noteworthy point, however, is that although learners scored significantly higher in the two posttests than in the pretest with regard to both appropriacy and accuracy, their posttest mean scores were not as high as expected (i.e below points out of a maximum possible score of points for each aspect) A close analysis of individual scores also showed that learners did not make similar gains In fact, their mean gains (calculated by averaging the gains from the pretest to each of the two posttests) ranged between 11 and 1.24 (M = 65, SD = 30) for appropriacy and between −.15 and 1.24 (M = 53, SD = 38) for accuracy Similar observations were also made for the learners’ usage of external and internal modifiers Despite a general postexperimental improvement in these two areas, the learners’ mean gains varied greatly from −.09 to 0.63 for external modifiers (M = 27, SD = 33) and from −.017 to 0.27 for internal modifiers (M = 07, SD = 11) These results suggested that the intervention may not work equally successfully for every learner These results may have been linked to the possible variation across learners in terms of their use of target feedback instances and forms during communicative practice (i.e peer-feedback sessions) In particular, since there was no specification on the amount of feedback one needed to provide on a peer’s work, this amount may vary from learner to learner, leading to possibly different amounts of practice among them Additionally, since some learners may have made more errors than others, they may also have received greater amount of recasts directed at them Although recasts directed at individual learners may be available to the rest of the class as hearers (Sheen 2010), not every learner may be attentive enough to benefit from the feedback that was not addressed to them directly An alternative explanation for the varying learning outcomes among the learners may also be related to possible variations in terms of the learners’ prior knowledge of the target form as well as cognitive orientation (i.e whether their attention is oriented toward form or meaning) (see a further discussion on this point in Ellis and Sheen 2006; Sheen 2008) In the latter case, the learners might benefit from training in noticing strategies, so that they know what to look for in the provided input Such training, however, was absent in the current study Conclusion In sum, the present study explores the possibility of implementing an under-researched type of pragmatic instruction, namely combining input enhancement and recast for a less commonly taught speech act, i.e giving constructive criticism in the L2, within the context of a writing class On the one hand, findings of this study show that these two instructional techniques can work alongside each other during meaning-based lessons to improve both of learners’ sociopragmatic and of pragmalinguistic knowledge related to the above speech act, as well as their frequency of modifying their criticism both externally and internally, making another case for the efficacy of the methods This insight is relevant for pedagogical purposes Conventionally, L2 pragmatics has been taught explicitly by means of the presentation of pragmatic rules and the use of consolidation exercises The findings of this study have shown that the two above implicit techniques can also legitimately be added to the variety of methodological Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 05:33 09 April 2015 Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching 17 options available to the teacher On the other hand, this study also raises issues in improving the effectiveness of the techniques First, it is assumed that intensive, prolonged instruction limited to only a few forms may produce more effects The current study targeted at 15 pragmalinguistic conventions and types of modifiers, which might have overloaded learning capacity Potential individual variation in terms of amount of practice could also have been more effectively controlled to enhance instructional effects For example, detailed protocols may be given to learners to guide them with respect to how much feedback they should aim to provide to peers in each session Further, some learner training in what to attend to in positive and negative input might also help produce better learning outcomes, particularly when learners are not sufficiently formconscious In this study, it is assumed that the two instructional techniques were not maximally effective perhaps due to a lack of such training Finally, it is believed that opportunities for sustained practice are important for maintaining instructional effects on less salient, yet structurally more complex, pragmatic features such as internal modifiers In this study, the short-lived effects of the instruction on the learners’ usage of internal modifiers were attributed to the absence of these opportunities Despite the insightful findings, the current study, nevertheless, suffers from limitations that need to be addressed in future research The sample size of the current study was relatively small and gender-biased (2 males and 39 females), thus affecting the generalizability of the findings The delayed posttest was given only to the treatment group, limiting the comparison with the control learners Other problems include a lack of consideration of individual learner variables such as working memory, cognitive orientation, language anxiety, or motivation that may affect learners’ receptivity (Egi 2010; Ellis and Sheen 2006; Sheen 2008) Similarly, research has shown that learners’ perceptions of their own cultural identity may lead to the resistance to NS norms and thus the teacher’s correction of sociopragmatic choices (see Thomas 1983) Unfortunately, these issues have not been considered in the present study, but they may be worth investigating in future research Finally, while it is believed that input enhancement used alongside another attention-getting device such as recasts may lead to greater learning success, this combination, nonetheless, can make it difficult to identify the source of improvement Future research may as well single out each technique to test, thus furthering our understanding of their separate effects on L2 pragmatic development Notes As noted by Jeon and Kaya (2006), the distinction between explicit and implicit instruction tends to constitute a continuum rather than a dichotomy in previous L2 pragmatic research As such, the concept of implicit instruction is not absolute but may represent a wide variety of pedagogical interventions varying in degrees of implicitness These may range from extremely implicit conditions (e.g sole exposure to TL input without any form of manipulation of learners’ attention to target forms) to instructional techniques lying on the adjoining points of the explicitimplicit continuum toward the implicit end (e.g visual input enhancement) The current study shares Jeon and Kaya’s view of the relative nature of explicitness and implicitness As pointed out by Ellis and Sheen (2006), recasts are far from homogeneous and monolithic but have been operationalized differently in the literature Contrary to Long’s (1996, 2006) view that as an implicit type of corrective feedback recasts not include an overt focus on form, Ellis and Sheen point out that recasts may in fact lie at various points on a continuum of linguistic implicitness-explicitness In other words, depending on the linguistic signals that encode them and the discoursal context, recasts can be more or less implicit or explicit For example, a conversational recast (a reformulation of a student utterance in an attempt to resolve a communication breakdown that is often formulated as a confirmation check) may be considered more implicit than a didactic recast (a reformulation of a student utterance in the absence of a Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 05:33 09 April 2015 18 M.T.T Nguyen et al communication problem) However, both types of recasts are deemed less explicit than explicit and metalinguistic correction (see Lyster, Saito, and Sato 2013) The learners, however, were blind to the real purpose of the study and were only told that the researchers were interested to know what they did and talked about in a peer-feedback session This is to avoid inadvertently influencing their behavior and biasing the collected data The criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of criticism were mainly based on Tracy, van Dusen, and Robinson (1987) Tracy, van Dusen, and Robinson (1987) investigated the characteristics of ‘good’ criticism as perceived by people from different cultural backgrounds via an open-ended questionnaire They found some stylistic characteristics that distinguish ‘good’ from ‘bad’ criticism For example, ‘good’ criticism needs to display positive language and manner The changes suggested in it must be specific enough, and the critic must offer to help make them possible The reasons for criticizing must usually be justified and made explicit and the criticism compensated for by being placed in a larger positive message ‘Good’ criticism also does not violate the relationship between interlocutors and is accurate While adopting these criteria, we acknowledge, however, that for some activities, such as responding to sample essays, it was difficult for the learners to evaluate the effectiveness of their and the NS feedback without knowing how it would have been co-constructed by the target hearer Nonetheless, the real purpose of these activities was to incidentally expose the learners to the target structures rather than to teach them how to evaluate criticism, which they had already learned in the first session and continued to practice in the subsequent reflection tasks It should be noted that although the corrected part was stressed phonologically, we cannot be certain that the recast was understood the way it was intended This may particularly be the case for Type where there were more than one error to deal with Unfortunately, we did not interview the students to find out whether or not they noticed the focus of the correction However, the students’ postexperimental improvement has attested to the efficacy of the treatment Notes on contributors Minh Thi Thuy Nguyen is an Assistant Professor at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Her research interests and recent publications include pragmatics and language learning, language pedagogy, and language teacher education Hanh Thi Pham is a Lecturer at the Faculty of English Language Teacher Education at the University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi Her professional and research interests are curriculum development, testing and assessment, SLA, and teacher education Tam Minh Pham is a Lecturer at the Faculty of English Language Teacher Education at the University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi Her research interests include language pedagogy and language teacher education References Alcón-Soler, E 2005 “Does Instruction Work for Learning Pragmatics in the EFL Context?” System 33 (3): 417–435 doi:10.1016/j.system.2005.06.005 Alcón-Soler, E., ed 2008 Learning How to Request in an Instructed Language Learning Context Bern: Peter Lang Ammar, A., and N Spada 2006 “One Size Fits All? 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people who travel to the city to work each day use only public transport?’ Read her work carefully Try to identify at least one unsatisfactory point about her paragraph What comments you want to give her regarding this point? Make notes of your comments and be ready to share them with the class (Sandra’s essay provided) Worksheet Instruction: Meredith is giving Sandra some comments on her writing Please look carefully at the lines in bold face type and underline all the instances of critical feedback that you can find there On what aspects of the essay does Meredith give feedback to Sandra? Do you agree with her? Compare your own comments with Meredith’s Which you think would be more effective? Why? Meredith: Alright, Sandra, I thought your essay was pretty good, especially taking into consideration that we have pretty limited time, we didn’t get to research it or anything like that but it was still strong research I thought in your topic sentence you sort of have listed about the benefits of public transport then you followed through in the next sentences I thought it followed along fairly well Just in the fourth sentence you sort of changed from ‘people’ and the generic ‘we’ to ‘you.’ I think maybe you could have kept one or the other, because later you went back to ‘people,’ so it was a bit inconsistent but it’s nothing too major In the end I thought that you didn’t really answer the question, because you sort of had to disagree or agree, and you said you strongly agree that people should use public transport, but then you said but it’s up to them, so it’s sort of contradictory (A longer feedback episode with highlighted target features continues) Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching 23 Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 05:33 09 April 2015 Worksheet 8: Reflection checklist (1) What aspect did you focus on when giving feedback on your friend’s essay? (2) How effective you feel your feedback was? (3) How you think your friend would feel about your feedback? Why? (4) If you could this feedback task again, what would you like to change about your feedback? Why? ... retained by the time of the delayed posttest, suggesting the durable effects of the instruction on these three aspects of the learners’ pragmatic performance On the other hand, there was a lack of sustained... http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17501229.2015.1026907 The effects of input enhancement and recasts on the development of second language pragmatic competence Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 05:33 09 April 2015... means of the presentation of pragmatic rules and the use of consolidation exercises The findings of this study have shown that the two above implicit techniques can also legitimately be added to the