This study intends to contribute to the methodological debate into L2 pragmatics research by examining the usability of immersive virtual reality (VR) for developing a pragmatics task. The study compared participants' speech act performance between two closed role-play tasks using different mediums: computer-based and VR-based. Sixty-two native…

This study explored the relationship between metapragmatic knowledge and transfer of learning from one speech act to another. Using a digital application, 105 Chinese learners of English received implicit instruction on how to formulate a high-imposition request to someone in a higher social status and larger social distance. Immediately after the…

Using the single-group pre-posttest design, this exploratory study examined whether L2 learners of English can learn a speech act by experiencing perlocutionary effects of the act as feedback (observing their interlocutor's reactions to their choice of speech act expressions). Sixty undergraduate English learners at a university in China played a…

This study investigated whether L2 English learners' prosodic properties in speech acts change as they are immersed in the English-speaking academic community over time, and if so, what individual and contextual factors (proficiency, orientation to language study, and target language contact) potentially affect these changes. Forty-seven Japanese…

Adopting Linacre's guidelines for evaluating rating scale effectiveness, we examined whether and how a six-point rating scale functioned differently across raters, speech acts, and second language (L2) proficiency levels. We developed a 12-item Computerized Oral Discourse Completion Task (CODCT) for assessing the production of requests, refusals,…

This study is the first to examine contributions of proficiency subskills to pragmatic development. We used the latent growth curve modeling to reveal the causal relationships between proficiency subskills and pragmatic competence in 109 American learners of Chinese across two data points over three months abroad in China. Proficiency was measured…

This study examined the effects of collaborative dialogue in learning the speech act of request. Seventy-four second-grade girls' junior high students were divided into three groups. The "collaborative group" (n = 25) received explicit metapragmatic information on request (request head act and modifications) followed by a dialogue…

This study investigated the effects of intercultural competence and amount of social contact in the development of pragmatic knowledge. All these variables were time-varying variables and measured twice over a 3-month study abroad. Participants were 109 American college students studying Chinese in a semester study-abroad program in Beijing. Using…

This study examined the effects of explicit instruction on the development of pragmatic competence in L2 English. The study is based on Taguchi's (2012) study conducted in an English-medium university in Japan, which revealed patterns of change in Japanese EFL students' production of requests in high- and low-imposition situations. Students showed…

This cross-sectional study examined the effect of general proficiency and study-abroad experience in production of speech acts among learners of L2 English. Participants were 25 native speakers of English and 64 Japanese college students of English divided into three groups. Group 1 (n = 22) had lower proficiency and no study-abroad experience.…

This longitudinal study asks 2 questions. The first one is: What patterns of pragmatic development can we observe among different pragmatic functions and attributes in a second language (L2)? The second question is: In what ways do individual differences and learning context affect the course of pragmatic development? Forty-eight Japanese college…

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:…