ERIC Number: EJ808314
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2008
Pages: 18
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0026-7902
EISSN: N/A
The Effects of Deductive and Inductive Instruction on the Development of Language Learners' Pragmatic Competence
Takimoto, Masahiro
Modern Language Journal, v92 n3 p369-386 Fall 2008
The present study investigated the effects of deductive and inductive teaching approaches to the acquisition of pragmatic competence on learners of English as a foreign language. In this study, 60 adult native speakers of Japanese with intermediate-level proficiency in English were each randomly assigned to 1 of 4 groups, which consisted of 3 treatment groups and 1 control group. Each treatment group received one of the following kinds of instruction in English pragmatics: (a) deductive instruction, (b) inductive instruction with problem-solving tasks, or (c) inductive instruction with structured input tasks. Both the deductive and inductive approaches constituted different types of explicit input-based instruction. The purpose was to teach the learners how to use lexical/phrasal downgraders and syntactic downgraders in English to perform complex requests. All participants completed a pretest, a posttest, and a follow-up test. Each test included 2 receptive judgment tasks and 2 production tasks. The 3 treatment groups performed significantly better than the control group (p less than 0.006). However, for the listening test, only the participants in the deductive instruction group showed a reduction in the positive effects of the treatment between the posttest and the follow-up test.
Descriptors: Control Groups, Listening Comprehension Tests, Native Speakers, English (Second Language), Pragmatics, Teaching Methods, Instructional Effectiveness, Second Language Learning, Adults, Japanese, Problem Solving, Linguistic Input, Syntax, Pretests Posttests, Logical Thinking, Second Language Instruction
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A