The Relative Contributions of Explicit and Implicit Instruction in the Learning of EFL Apologies

Dina Abdel Salam El-Dakhs () and Fouzia Phyllis Amroun ()

Humanities and Social Sciences Letters, 2021, vol. 9, issue 2, 122-151

Abstract: This study aims to compare the influence of explicit versus implicit teaching on the learning of apology realization strategies in a foreign language context. To this end, 86 Arab elementary learners of English were divided into three groups: (1) a group that was introduced to the target realization strategies explicitly, (2) a group that was introduced to the target strategies implicitly, and (3) a comparison group that did not receive any instruction on the target strategies. Using a pre-/posttest design, the three groups completed a discourse completion task as a pretest, immediate posttest and delayed test. The apology-specific strategies the students produced in these tests were compared using mixed ANOVA and Bonferroni pairwise comparisons. The results revealed a positive influence for both the explicit and implicit teaching approaches with relatively more gains for explicit teaching. The effectiveness of the two approaches varied based on a number of factors including the time of test (i.e., immediate or delayed posttest), the learners’ prior knowledge, and the cultural acceptability of the apology-specific strategy. The results are interpreted in light of the existing literature and relevant theoretical hypotheses.

Keywords: Instructional pragmatics; Speech act; Apology; Explicit; Implicit; Pragmatic competence; Interlanguage pragmatics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pkp:hassle:v:9:y:2021:i:2:p:122-151:id:887

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