The Effects of Learner Profiles on Pragmalinguistic Learning by Iranian EFL Learners: Explicit versus Implicit Intervention

Rose (1999) defines pragmatic competence as the concept that is related to ability to use available linguistic resources (pragmalinguistics) in an appropriate context. This concept has been given little attention in foreign language classroom settings and corpus design, especially in Iran. Thus, this study aimed to investigate the effects of implicit and explicit instructions to suggest a more facilitative tool to improve language learners pragmatic skills. On the other hand, learners individual differences, namely, motivation, ambiguity tolerance, and listening proficiency were considered as effective factors on learner s acquisition process. Therefore, 60 Iranian intermediate students were divided randomly to implicit and explicit groups. Motivation and ambiguity tolerance questionnaires were administered along with Oxford Listening Placement Test to measure and check individual differences (ID) variables. After pre-test, through 6 sessions, learners were received the instruction of bi-clausal request forms explicitly and implicitly by watching parts of an English learning program. Then a post-test was conducted to compare the performances of both groups. It was concluded that, explicit teaching of pragmatics is more advantageous than implicit instruction and the effects of each variables were explained accordingly.