This paper presents the findings of a quasi-experimental study designed to examine the possible effect of explicit or implicit teaching of pragmatic routines regarding the significance of exploring ways to foster interlanguage pragmatic competence considering the fact that language learners, at least, could benefit the real-life language use presented them since they do not have many opportunities to communicate in the target language. In sense, 134 tertiary level EFL learners were recruited as participants in treatment and control groups and taught predetermined target routines appropriately for their assigned groups. Following a five-week treatment session, a post-test was administered to the participants in order to evaluate the effect of the treatment on comprehension, and their spoken discourse was analyzed to detect the effect of the treatment on production. Qualitative data of the study were comprised of participants' reflections based on the use of metaphors related to the pragmatic routines and their effects. Thus, the study provides findings to review a highly discussed issue in applied linguistics and offers further data employing an elaborate research method: using metaphors.