Thesis Type: Postgraduate
Institution Of The Thesis: Bursa Uludağ University, EĞİTİM BİLİMLERİ ENSTİTÜSÜ, EĞİTİM BİLİMLERİ ENSTİTÜSÜ, Turkey
Approval Date: 2023
Thesis Language: English
Student: MUSTAFA CİVELEK
Supervisor: Çiğdem Karatepe
Abstract:
AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY ON ENHANCING EFL LEARNERS’ PRAGMATIC AWARENESS AND PERFORMANCE THROUGH WEB 2.0 TOOLS ONLINE: IS TEACHER PRESENCE NECESSARY?
Despite the extensive research on online instruction to teach different aspects of language, research on the use of online facilities to enhance pragmatic competence remains scarce. Thus, the present study fills the research gap by comparing the efficacy of two online instruction delivery procedures for the development of pragmatic performance and awareness: teacher-led online pragmatics learning and self-paced pragmatics learning. The participants were 40 college-level students who were going to participate in the Work and Travel program. The participants were divided into two groups: the teacher-led group and the self-paced group. While the teacher-led group received pragmatics instruction on requests through synchronous computer-mediated communication guided by the teacher, the self-paced group completed the same activities through digitally-mediated self-access materials. Discourse Completion Tasks (DCT) were utilized as the pre-test and the post-test to find out the impact of two types of fully online pragmatics instruction procedures on pragmatic performance. The requests in the DCTs were scored based on pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics separately. Furthermore, Think Aloud (TA) protocols were used before and after the treatment to shed light on the effect of different online instruction procedures on pragmatic awareness. Furthermore, semi-structured interviews were conducted to reveal the learners’ perceptions of learning pragmatics through self-access materials. The findings reported that both instruction procedures significantly helped learners improve the production of requests. While no statistically significant difference was found regarding the improvement of sociopragmatic test scores, the self-paced group outperformed the teacher-led group in terms of the development in pragmalinguistic test scores. Furthermore, the analysis of TA protocols demonstrated that both instruction procedures contributed to the learners’ pragmatic awareness. Moreover, the analysis of semi-structured interviews revealed mostly positive perceptions about self-paced learning of pragmatics through digitally-mediated self-access materials. One major implication of the study is that teaching pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics is beneficial to the learners, regardless of the instruction procedures through which they are taught.
Keywords: computer-mediated communication, self-paced learning, pragmatic awareness, pragmatic performance, requests