IRANIAN EFL LEARNERSʹʹ ILP COMPREHENSION AND THEIR LANGUAGE LEARNING PREFERENCES: THE EFFECT OF CONSCIOUSNESS-RAISING INSTRUCTION

Taking into account the significance of consciousness-raising in arousing learnersʹ interlanguage pragmatic (ILP) competence, on the one hand, and in recognition of their preferred learning styles, on the other hand, the present study aimed at exploring the effectiveness of awareness-raising instruction on Iranian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learnersʹ perception of the speech act of apology and of their learning preferences. To conduct the study, from a language institute in a north-eastern city of Iran, thirty two upper-intermediate English learners (15 females and 17 males) were asked to voluntarily take part in a 14-session instructional period during which listening materials enriched by consciousness-raising tasks were utilized as the input to teach the speech act of apology and to boost the participant learnersʹ comprehension of this illocutionary act. Based on the analysis of a multiple choice discourse completion task (MDCT), which was adopted as a pre-test and post-test, the effectiveness of explicit teaching of apology through input and consciousness-raising activities was verified. Moreover, the results from a questionnaire (used as both pre-test and post-test) yielded no significant difference, except for ʹthe expression of satisfaction in English progressʹ, in the learnersʹ language learning preferences before and after the treatment. The findings may provide implications for curriculum writers and teachers.