The ‘why’, ‘what’ and ‘how’ of pragmatics pedagogy in EFL/L2: meta-analysis review

Abstract

This study reviewed the theoretical assumptions and empirical study evidence of pragmatics and the significance of incorporating pragmatic instruction (PI) in EFL/L2 to learners’ communicative competence (CC) development. Research indicates that communicative language teaching (CLT) has faced challenges of theoretical assumptions that were primarily intended to teach English-asa-second-language (ESL) learners but not for EFL learners and practical classroom implementation difficulties since its inception in improving EFL/L2 learners’ CC. Conversely, pragmatists advocate the incorporation of PI in EFL/l2 to target language (TL) learners’ CC development. Informed by studies of pragmatists; the present study reviewed the significance of incorporating the explicit and implicit approaches of PI in EFL/L2 on learners’ CC development. The study implemented a meta-analysis to assess the significance of PI in improving TL learners’ CC. The findings of the review revealed that both the explicit and implicit approaches of PI improve TL learners’ CC while most explicit groups significantly outperformed their implicit counterparts. Only one study of the reviewed articles revealed that the implicit instruction was not effective. Finally, the findings of this study were in agreement with the theoretical assumptions and previous study findings of PI and its positive significance on EFL/ L2 learners’ CC development. The findings also imply that incorporating PI in EFL/L2 familiarises educators, researchers, curriculum developers and material writers with the ‘why’, ‘how’ and ‘what’ of pragmatics.