The effect of instruction in developing Persian speech act of apology among high school Iranian students

Drawing on Schmidt (1993) noticing hypothesis, this study aims at answering two questions: Does learners’ pragmatic awareness of speech act of apology in their native language improve after instruction , andWhich type of instruction (i.e., explicit or implicit) is more effective to develop learners’ pragmatic awareness ofapology To answer these two questions, 75 female high school Iranian students participated in this study. These participants were selected from three intact classes (25 students in each class): the first group received explicit metapragmatic explanation on speech act of apology for 10 sessions; the second group received implicitmetapragmatic instruction in the form of watching some film segments containing apology and answering someleading questions by the instructor; the third group received no instruction whatsoever. In order to measure theeffects of instruction on participants’ awareness of speech act of apology, a pre-test/post-test design was used. Results of the study illustrate that learners awareness of the speech act of apology benefits from both explicit and implicit instruction. Also, it should be noted that in line with the previous research, the findings alsoshowed the superiority of the explicit instruction group over the implicit instruction group. However, this better performance was not statistically significant. The results of the study can provide some pedagogical implications for both L1 and L2 teachers.

Keywords:

L1 pragmatics , L2 pragmatics , Explicit Instruction , Implicit Instruction , Noticing Hypothesis