This study took a pragmatic approach to examining the effects of task difficulty on L2 oral output. Twenty native English speakers and 59 Japanese students of English at two different proficiency levels produced speech acts of requests and refusals in a role play task. The task had two situation types based on three social variables:…

This study examined development of pragmatic comprehension ability across time. Twenty native speakers and 92 Japanese college students of English completed a computerized listening task measuring ability to comprehend two types of implied meaning in dialogues: indirect refusals (k = 24) and indirect opinions (k = 24). The participants'…