Why Do Children Who Solve False Belief Tasks Begin to Find True Belief Control Tasks Difficult? A Test of Pragmatic Performance Factors in Theory of Mind Tasks

The litmus test for the development of a metarepresentational Theory of Mind is the false belief (FB) task in which children have to represent how another agent misrepresents the world. Children typically start mastering this task around age four. Recently, however, a puzzling finding has emerged: Once children master the FB task, they begin to fail true belief (TB) control tasks. Pragmatic accounts assume that the TB task is pragmatically confusing because it poses a trivial academic test question about a rational agent’s perspective; and we do not normally engage in such discourse about subjective mental perspectives unless there is at least the possibility of error or deviance. The lack of such an obvious possibility in the TB task implicates that there might be some hidden perspective difference and thus makes the task confusing. In the present study, we test the pragmatic account by administering to 3- to 6-year-olds (N = 88) TB and FB tasks and structurally analogous true and false sign (TS/FS) tasks. The belief and sign tasks are matched in terms of representational and metarepresentational complexity; the crucial difference is that TS tasks do not implicate an alternative non-mental perspective and should thus be less pragmatically confusing than TB tasks. The results show parallel and correlated development in FB and FS tasks, replicate the puzzling performance pattern in TB tasks, but show no trace of this in TS tasks. Taken together, these results speak in favor of the pragmatic performance account.

Study Abroad and Its Effect on the Pragmatic Performance of English Requests by Hong Kong English Language Students

<p>This thesis investigates the study abroad experience and its effect on the pragmatic development of second language learners. The research first describes affective and environmental dimensions of the study abroad experience as undertaken by a group of Hong Kong learners over a nine-month period of study at an Australian university. Second, it investigates changes in the way these learners performed requests in English over the duration of the study abroad experience. This data provides insights into their pragmatic development in English. Comparisons of request devices were made with a matched group of learners who continued their studies in Hong Kong and with a group of Australian native speakers. Finally the research examines the relationship between affective and environmental dimensions of the study abroad experience and changes in the performance of requests across the nine month study abroad period by the learners. This research takes a quantitative and qualitative approach to data analysis. A quantitative approach, using inferential statistics (ANOVA) was used to analyse learner self-report data gathered before and during the study abroad period using the Language Contact Profile. This data included information on time spent interacting or listening in English, attitudes and reasons for learning English, perceptions of the target language community, perceptions of Australia, self-rated proficiency and self-rated confidence scores. Similarly, inferential statistics (ANOVA and chi-square tests) were used to analyse and compare request performances obtained through oral Enhanced Discourse Completion Tests (EDCTs) and role-plays by three groups: the study abroad learners; an equivalent group of students in Hong Kong; and by a group of Australian native speakers. Finally, Spearman’s rho correlation was used to analyse the relationship between study abroad learners’ pragmatic performance and the affective and environmental dimensions of their experience. Qualitative data in the form of interview data and student entries in introspective diaries was collected to provide in-depth explanations for responses to the oral EDCTs and role-plays. Three main findings emerged from this study. The first finding relates to the environmental and affective dimensions of learners’ study abroad experience. Analyses revealed that, unsurprisingly, there was an overall increase in the number of hours study abroad learners listened and interacted face-to-face in English. Nevertheless, this increase plateaued after the first four months of learners’ sojourn in Australia and their interactions were mostly with other English learners who were their classmates, flat mates or friends through the Hong Kong Association at the university. These findings suggest learners established their network of friends in the first months of their sojourn in Australia, and it was unlikely learners went beyond this circle of friends during their stay in Australia. Thus, learners’ contact with fluent/native English speakers was limited. Additionally, and contrary to the common belief that there is a ‘homestay advantage’, learners living with a host family did not necessarily have more face-to-face interaction with fluent/native English speakers than those living in a student dormitory. Interaction between the host and the learner depended heavily on the individual learner’s attitude towards the host family. Furthermore, learners’ English input and face-to-face interaction correlated significantly with the increase in learners’ self-perceived confidence in speaking, communication and grammar, but not self-perceived proficiency. The second main finding concerns the pragmatic performance of English requests by at-home and study abroad learners, focusing specifically on three features of requests: request heads, softeners and external modifications. Results showed no change in the occurrence of these three features in requests made by the at-home learners at the beginning of the data collection period and again four months later. Similarly there was no change in the type of request heads and softeners used by the study abroad learners by the end of ninth months study in Australia. However, they had begun to use some of the request external modifiers that were frequently employed by native speakers of Australian English and used significantly more request external modifiers. These results lend support to the Complexification Hypothesis (Trosborg 1995) because learners first used the more routinised features before developing proficiency in the non-formulaic features of request external modifiers. More importantly, this study offered further support for the Bulge Theory (Wolfson 1986). The results in this study indicated that after nine months of being in Australia, the learners used a less familiar structure ‘conventional indirect request’ in close distance situations, such as with friends. However, in maximum social distance interactions between higher and lower status interlocutors, the learners employed direct requests to reduce cognitive burden to free more processing capacity for using external modifiers to express politeness. The third main finding relates to the effect of environmental and affective factors on the study abroad learners’ performance of English request devices. This study showed the number of request external modifiers study abroad learners used significantly increased with time. Furthermore, the results showed that by the end of the nine months, the number of request external modifiers study abroad learners used correlated significantly with a number of environmental and affective factors: learners’ overall English input, learners’ face-to-face interaction with English speakers in the living environment, as well as learners’ self-perceived proficiency and self-perceived confidence in speaking and communication, but not with their self-perceived proficiency in grammar. Overall, the research shows that learners can improve their pragmatic performance through exposure to English in the target language community in ways that are not seen in the language development of learners learning in an English as a foreign language setting. However, the results also show that study abroad learners may have quite limited opportunities to interact with English speakers during their sojourn abroad.</p>

Study Abroad and Its Effect on the Pragmatic Performance of English Requests by Hong Kong English Language Students

<p>This thesis investigates the study abroad experience and its effect on the pragmatic development of second language learners. The research first describes affective and environmental dimensions of the study abroad experience as undertaken by a group of Hong Kong learners over a nine-month period of study at an Australian university. Second, it investigates changes in the way these learners performed requests in English over the duration of the study abroad experience. This data provides insights into their pragmatic development in English. Comparisons of request devices were made with a matched group of learners who continued their studies in Hong Kong and with a group of Australian native speakers. Finally the research examines the relationship between affective and environmental dimensions of the study abroad experience and changes in the performance of requests across the nine month study abroad period by the learners. This research takes a quantitative and qualitative approach to data analysis. A quantitative approach, using inferential statistics (ANOVA) was used to analyse learner self-report data gathered before and during the study abroad period using the Language Contact Profile. This data included information on time spent interacting or listening in English, attitudes and reasons for learning English, perceptions of the target language community, perceptions of Australia, self-rated proficiency and self-rated confidence scores. Similarly, inferential statistics (ANOVA and chi-square tests) were used to analyse and compare request performances obtained through oral Enhanced Discourse Completion Tests (EDCTs) and role-plays by three groups: the study abroad learners; an equivalent group of students in Hong Kong; and by a group of Australian native speakers. Finally, Spearman’s rho correlation was used to analyse the relationship between study abroad learners’ pragmatic performance and the affective and environmental dimensions of their experience. Qualitative data in the form of interview data and student entries in introspective diaries was collected to provide in-depth explanations for responses to the oral EDCTs and role-plays. Three main findings emerged from this study. The first finding relates to the environmental and affective dimensions of learners’ study abroad experience. Analyses revealed that, unsurprisingly, there was an overall increase in the number of hours study abroad learners listened and interacted face-to-face in English. Nevertheless, this increase plateaued after the first four months of learners’ sojourn in Australia and their interactions were mostly with other English learners who were their classmates, flat mates or friends through the Hong Kong Association at the university. These findings suggest learners established their network of friends in the first months of their sojourn in Australia, and it was unlikely learners went beyond this circle of friends during their stay in Australia. Thus, learners’ contact with fluent/native English speakers was limited. Additionally, and contrary to the common belief that there is a ‘homestay advantage’, learners living with a host family did not necessarily have more face-to-face interaction with fluent/native English speakers than those living in a student dormitory. Interaction between the host and the learner depended heavily on the individual learner’s attitude towards the host family. Furthermore, learners’ English input and face-to-face interaction correlated significantly with the increase in learners’ self-perceived confidence in speaking, communication and grammar, but not self-perceived proficiency. The second main finding concerns the pragmatic performance of English requests by at-home and study abroad learners, focusing specifically on three features of requests: request heads, softeners and external modifications. Results showed no change in the occurrence of these three features in requests made by the at-home learners at the beginning of the data collection period and again four months later. Similarly there was no change in the type of request heads and softeners used by the study abroad learners by the end of ninth months study in Australia. However, they had begun to use some of the request external modifiers that were frequently employed by native speakers of Australian English and used significantly more request external modifiers. These results lend support to the Complexification Hypothesis (Trosborg 1995) because learners first used the more routinised features before developing proficiency in the non-formulaic features of request external modifiers. More importantly, this study offered further support for the Bulge Theory (Wolfson 1986). The results in this study indicated that after nine months of being in Australia, the learners used a less familiar structure ‘conventional indirect request’ in close distance situations, such as with friends. However, in maximum social distance interactions between higher and lower status interlocutors, the learners employed direct requests to reduce cognitive burden to free more processing capacity for using external modifiers to express politeness. The third main finding relates to the effect of environmental and affective factors on the study abroad learners’ performance of English request devices. This study showed the number of request external modifiers study abroad learners used significantly increased with time. Furthermore, the results showed that by the end of the nine months, the number of request external modifiers study abroad learners used correlated significantly with a number of environmental and affective factors: learners’ overall English input, learners’ face-to-face interaction with English speakers in the living environment, as well as learners’ self-perceived proficiency and self-perceived confidence in speaking and communication, but not with their self-perceived proficiency in grammar. Overall, the research shows that learners can improve their pragmatic performance through exposure to English in the target language community in ways that are not seen in the language development of learners learning in an English as a foreign language setting. However, the results also show that study abroad learners may have quite limited opportunities to interact with English speakers during their sojourn abroad.</p>

Pragmatic Performance in Focus: The Case of Saudi Graduates Giving Advice in English: الأداء البراغماتي: تقديم المشورة باللغة الإنجليزية من قبل الخريجين السعوديين

This mixed-method study was conducted to investigate the pragmatic performance of different groups of Saudi individuals when speaking English. More specifically, the study compared the types of strategies employed by graduates in the humanities, science, and English when giving advice in English. The study also examined the extent to which the participants varied their choices of advice-giving linguistic realizations according to their interlocutor’s social status. The possible influence of gender on strategy use was also explored. A total of 212 participants took part in this research, and the data were triangulated from a variety of sources: a discourse completion task (DCT), role plays, and retrospective interviews. The data analysis revealed that the participants’ linguistic competence seemed to have a significant influence on their pragmatic performance in terms of the variety of advice-giving structures available to them and their abilities to adapt their use according to the social situation. There was, however, evidence of pragmatic transfer across all groups’ responses, which could be attributed to their lack of awareness of the target community’s speech conventions. The study concluded with a discussion of the pedagogical implications of the findings and suggestions for future research.

The Importance of Utilizing Pragmatics in EFL/ESL Context

Pragmatics research in the last few years has gained eminence under the impact of Soler and the succeeding paradigms of Communicative Competence. Amid the diverse components of communicative competence, a great number of L2 studies have attended to the concept of pragmatic competence, that deals with both pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic knowledge. Hence, pragmatics interlanguage research is concerned with the pragmatic competence and pragmatic performance of L2 learners; though, teaching pragmatics to Non-native Speakers, particularly EFL learners, is a prickly subject. Hence, pragmatic competence has been noticeably absent from ELT curricula, notwithstanding the fact that it has been guaranteed a place in diverse models of Communicative competence. This is mainly due to the hindrances of teaching and learning pragmatics in the ESL/EFL classes. Hence, the study primarily aims at discoursing challenges and lacunas in teaching and learning pragmatics within the confines of EFL classrooms drawing on the existing published literature and proffers recommendations to overcome these problems. Thus, the paper concentrates on these central and prominent fields: the EFL/ESL setting, ELT materials, and available to teach learners, teacher competence, and evaluating pragmatic ability.

The effects of corrective feedback with and without revision on enhancing L2 pragmatic performance

This study investigated the efficacy of different feedback conditions in developing accurate and fluent production of L2 English email requests. Sixty-nine intermediate-level Vietnamese EFL university students were randomly assigned to one control and three experimental groups. All the four groups received three hours of explicit metapragmatic instruction on email requests, but only the experimental groups received written corrective feedback on their pragmatic production. One experimental group received feedback without opportunity for revision. Another experimental group received one cycle of feedback and revision, and the third group two cycles of feedback and revision. Results of a Discourse Completion Task (DCT) pre-test, immediate post-test, and delayed post-test indicated that the combination of instruction and feedback had a positive effect on the accuracy of learners’ pragmatic performance. However, no clear-cut evidence for the effect of revision on the fluency of learners’ pragmatic performance was found in the study. The findings highlight the effectiveness of corrective feedback and revision in consolidating emergent L2 pragmatic knowledge, but further research is needed to understand how much revision is sufficient to facilitate fluency development.

How does childhood bilingualism and bi-dialectalism affect the interpretation and processing of pragmatic meanings?

Recent research has reported superior socio-communicative skills in bilingual children. We examined the hypothesis of a bilingual pragmatic advantage by testing bilingual, bi-dialectal and monolingual children on the comprehension and processing of various pragmatic meanings: relevance, scalar, contrastive, manner implicatures, novel metaphors and irony. Pragmatic responses were slower than literal responses to control items. Furthermore, children were least accurate with metaphors and irony. Metaphors and irony were also the most difficult to process; for these meanings, pragmatic responses were slower than literal responses to the same critical items. Finally, pragmatic performance positively correlated with working memory. Despite this variation, we found no bilingual or bi-dialectal advantage over monolinguals in pragmatic responses or speed of pragmatic processing. This was also true despite bilinguals’ and bi-dialectals’ lower vocabularies as measured by formal tests. We conclude that bilingual children exhibit monolingual-like pragmatic interpretation, despite their often-reported weaker language knowledge in the target language.