Developing pragmatic comprehension and production: corpus-based teaching of formulaic sequences in an EFL setting

Abstract

The present study aims to explore the effects of corpus-based teaching on English language learners’ pragmatic comprehension and production of 19 formulaic sequences (FS), categorized under agreements, disagreements, self-clarifications and other-clarifications. The study had a quasi-experimental research design with a pre-test, immediate post-test and delayed post-test. A total of 35 students participated in the study and were divided into two groups. The experimental group (N=19) received corpus-based teaching whereas the control group (N=16) was exposed to traditional instruction and did not receive treatment at all. The results showed that there was a significant difference between the pre-test and immediate post-test and between immediate post-test and delayed post-test regarding the production of the targeted items for the experimental group. The findings indicate the effectiveness of corpus-based teaching in oral production, and the need for learners to engage with the real language data, corpus data, to improve their pragmatic competences.

Keywords

• English as a foreign language; competence; comprehension; production; corpus

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