Developing Junior High School Students' Email Pragmatic Competence for Specific Purposes

Ming-Fang Lin ； Yu-Fang Wang

《Taiwan International ESP Journal》 11卷1期 (2020/08) Pp. 40-72

https://doi.org/10.6706/TIESPJ.202008_11(1).0003

摘要

This article presents the course design of teaching apologetic emails for specific purposes using a genre-based approach implemented in a rural EFL junior high school classroom. The study explored the learners' perceptions of the teaching and the benefits gained from the genre-based instruction. The instruments included the learners' email scripts from a written discourse completion task (WDCT) as the pre- and post-tests, in-class group work email tasks, retrospective verbal reports (RVRs), learning journals, and a perception questionnaire of learning reflection. The course design was depicted in detail according to the four stages: setting the context, modelling, joint construction, and independent construction. Results indicated that learners exhibited positive attitudes towards the instruction, and expressed their learning preferences for email construction and learning difficulties in adopting apology strategies. On the other hand, the findings not only showed the learners' improvement in apologetic email writing, but further demonstrated their increased pragmalinguistic awareness. This report concluded with pedagogical implications for teaching email pragmatics in the era of English as a lingua franca (ELF).

關鍵字

pragmatic instruction ； email ； apology ； genre-based ； learners' perceptions ； English as a lingua franca (ELF)

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