The effects of instruction and study abroad on the development of pragmatic competence among Chinese EFL and ESL learners

The development of pragmatic competence has been one of the main research issues of the second language (L2) pragmatic acquisition and gained extensive investigation in the last two decades. Research on L2 pragmatic acquisition suggests that factors such as pragmatic instruction and study abroad play a role in L2 pragmatic development. However, to what extent these two factors influence the pragmatic development of Chinese learners of English as a foreign/second language (EFL/ESL) remains under-researched. To address the gap, this study investigated the effects of instruction and study abroad on the development of Chinese EFL and ESL learners’ pragmatic competence from two perspectives: pragmatic appropriateness and pragmatic strategy use. This study also explored individual factors that mediate the learners’ learning outcomes to provide a more complete picture of the learners’ pragmatic development. Data were collected from three L2 learner groups: a teaching group (n=30), study-abroad group (n=20), and control group (n=30), which were recruited from undergraduates enrolled in a Sino-UK educational collaboration program at a university in China; as well as an English native speaker group (n=25), which was recruited from undergraduates at a university in the UK.