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Interlanguage Pragmatic Development: Internal and External Modification in L2 Arabic Requests
Author(s) -
Al Masaeed Khaled
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
foreign language annals
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.258
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1944-9720
pISSN - 0015-718X
DOI - 10.1111/flan.12293
Subject(s) - interlanguage , linguistics , psychology , politeness , contrast (vision) , arabic , language proficiency , modality (human–computer interaction) , english as a foreign language , foreign language , second language , semitic languages , mathematics education , computer science , artificial intelligence , philosophy
This study investigated the way in which American university students learning Arabic as a foreign language in the United States developed the ability to make and modify requests both internally, through an addition of mitigating or aggravating modality markers, and externally, via supportive moves before or after the main request in formal and informal situations. Data were gathered from spoken discourse completion tasks for 56 university students from four different proficiency levels. While previous studies showed that learners at lower proficiency levels relied heavily on politeness markers, lower‐proficiency students in this study most frequently used grounders. Also in contrast to previous studies, the ways in which advanced learners mitigated their requests diverged from those used by Arabic native speakers. Pedagogical implications are discussed.