Eva Alcón Soler

Jaume I University | UJI · Department of English Studies

A study abroad (SA) period is considered an optimum environment for developing pragmatic competence because of the unparalleled target-language access it provides. Within this context, pragmatic development has received extensive attention over the last two decades, during which we have seen an evolution in research orientations. Existing studies e...

The present study explores the role of three individual variables, namely proficiency, cultural background, and attitude towards the target-language (TL) culture, on learners’ recognition and production of pragmatic routines. Eighty-seven international students in their first semester of study in a US university completed a vocabulary knowledge sca...

This study investigates pragmatic development in the English-medium instruction (EMI) setting of the Valencian Community in Spain. More specifically, the study examines whether the intensity of EMI influences functional adequacy (FA) in second language (L2) writing. Participants were 102 EMI learners, each of whom wrote three motivation letters ove...

The present study investigates second language (L2) learners’ pragmatic development during study abroad (SA) programs by focusing on the recognition of pragmatic routines, and how sociocultural adaptation and intensity of interaction influence pragmatic gains. It is a longitudinal investigation that employed a mixed-method approach. Thirty-one Braz...

The present study examines whether task supported language teaching (TSLT) has an impact on L2 English learners’ use and knowledge of request mitigators, assessing the impact of student-students vs. teacher-students interactions on students’ attention to pragmatics during task-based interaction. Forty-eight students of English at a Spanish universi...

Research has shown that being multilingual is a valuable asset for learning pragmatics. By adopting a multilingual turn perspective, this study investigates patterns of pragmatic development in the multilingual classroom setting of the Valencian Community in Spain, where English, Catalan and Spanish coexist. Participants were 313 learners of Englis...

The present study explores pragmatic learning during study abroad (SA) programs, focusing on gains in learner recognition and production of pragmatic routines, and considers whether proficiency and type of routine play a role in this. One hundred and twenty-two international students in their first semester of study at US universities completed a p...

Previous research has shown that adolescent second language learners benefit from pragmatic instruction during study abroad (Alcón-Soler, 2015). As a follow-up investigation, the present study looked at late adolescent study-abroad learners, and it examined both the immediate effect of pragmatic instruction and the pragmatic trajectories that adole...

El presente artículo aborda el tema de la evaluación de la docencia desde una perspectiva crítica, intentando aportar elementos para el debate y la construcción de ideas. Para ello, hemos contado con las voces de diferentes docentes sobre los instrumentos y repercusiones de la evaluación docente. Las opiniones de los docentes reflejan la complejida...

El presente artículo aborda el tema de la evaluación de la docencia desde una perspectiva crítica, intentando aportar elementos para el debate y la construcción de ideas. Para ello, hemos contado con las voces de diferentes docentes sobre los instrumentos y repercusiones de la evaluación docente. Las opiniones de los docentes reflejan la complejida...

The present study explores pragmatic learning during study abroad (SA) programs, focusing on gains in learner recognition and production of pragmatic routines, and considers whether proficiency and type of routine play a role in this. One hundred and twenty-two international students in their first semester of study at US universities completed a p...

The study deals with the effect of instruction and study abroad (SA) on pragmatic knowledge. More specifically, the focus is on gains in explicit knowledge of request mitigators, and whether learners draw on this knowledge when they perform email requests. Email requests produced by 60 Spanish students staying abroad (30 treatment/30 control group)...

This study explores to what extent multilingual learners’ production of metadiscourse markers (MMs) may be related in three languages present in their school curriculum, and how instructional input influences their choices and production of accurate forms. Twenty-two secondary school students wrote opinion essays in English, Catalan, and Spanish. M...

The study explores to what extent pragmatic instruction and length of study abroad (SA) influence learners ability to mitigate requests in e-mail communication. Sixty Spanish students, who were all enrolled for one academic year in six international language schools in the South of England, participated in the study. Whether participants were instr...

The study analyses teenagers’ e-mail requests during academic cyber-consultation, exploring how the performance of request modifiers is influenced by participants’ perceptions of the degree of imposition of the speech act and social distance with the recipient. A total of 295 e-mail requests, 145 produced by British English speakers (BES) and 15...

The present study analyses the use of request strategies and mitigation devices during academic cyber-consultation. More specifically, it explores whether the degree of directness and mitigation in academic virtual communication is conditioned by the type of request. A total of 295 e-mail requests, 145 produced by British English speakers (BES) and...

The present study focuses on the benefits that teaching the speech act of refusal from a discourse perspective can have on third language learners' pragmatic knowledge. Additionally, it also explores whether receptive and productive bilinguals resort to pragmalinguistic, sociopragmatic, and linguistic information in different ways during the planni...

Propuestas de trabajo I Factores que infiuyen en el aprendizaje del inglés en la tercera edad ! 101 Factores que influyen en el aprendizaje del inglés en la tercera edad Entre el alumnado que acude a la ml\¡pr<:lr1r¡r1 recibir una formación nPrmr1n<ma yores, un colectivo que presenta unas caracterfsticas muy específicas que inciden en el aprendizaj...

p class="REDUTEXTORESUMEN"> El denominado proceso de Bolonia ha contribuido a plantearnos una serie de prioridades, siendo la internacionalización una de ellas. En la actualidad las dimensiones de esa internacionalización son múltiples: la movilidad académica, la internacionalización del currículum, la evaluación y la acreditación a partir de indic...

The benefits of instruction on learners’ production and awareness of speech acts is well documented (see Alcón and Martínez-Flor, 2008, for a review of pragmatics in instructional contexts). However, few studies examine the influence that instruction may have on the cognitive processes involved in speech act production (Félix- Brasdefer, 2008). In...

The benefits of instruction on learners’ production and awareness of speech acts is well documented (see Alcón and Martínez-Flor, 2008, for a review of pragmatics in instructional contexts). However, few studies examine the influence that instruction may have on the cognitive processes involved in speech act production (Félix- Brasdefer, 2008). In...

This descriptive study reports findings on the relationship between focus on form, learner uptake and subsequent lexical gains in learners' oral production. The data for the study consisted in 17 45-minute audio-recorded teacher-led conversations, 204 learners' diaries (17 sessions × 12 learners) reporting what they had learned after each conversat...

A lot of research addressing learners' development of pragmatics has recently been conducted (Kasper and Schmidt 1996; Bardovi-Harlig, 2002; Kasper and Rose 2002). From this same approach, a review of theoretical perspectives on pragmatic learning and how they have been operationalised in interlanguage pragmatic research is presented. Second, by pa...

This chapter addresses the issue of how unplanned focus on form is accomplished in an English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom and its effect on adolescents' learning outcomes. The findings support previous research indicating that adolescents benefit from interaction in foreign language classrooms as well as claims that for adolescents, as wi...

This study examines the effectiveness of teachers' incidental focus on form on vocabulary learning. Seventeen 45-minute audio-recorded teacher-led conversation, 204 learners' diaries (17 sessions x 12 learners) reporting what the participants had learned after each conversational class, 204 post-test translations, and 204 delayed post-test translat...

During the last two decades the European Commission and the Council of Europe have taken political initiatives to promote multilingualism. The underlying assumption to encourage multilingualism is the need to find a balance between an integrated identity as a European citizen and the necessity of maintaining linguistic and cultural diversity. From...

The role of instruction to develop learners' pragmatic competence in both second and foreign language contexts has recently motivated a great deal of research. However, most of this research has adopted an explicit instructional approach with only a few studies attempting to operationalise a more implicit condition for pragmatic learning. In order...

The book focuses on investigating pragmatic learning, teaching and testing in foreign language contexts. The volume brings together research that investigates these three areas in different formal language learning settings. The number and variety of languages involved both as the first language (e.g. English, Finnish, Iranian, Spanish, Japanese) a...

This volume attempts to address an issue that deserves further attention on the part of language acquisition researchers: that of intercultural learners in instructed language contexts. Given the fact that most speech communities where such learning takes place are at least bilingual, and the idea that English is studied for the purposes of communi...

This paper is based on a study which attempted to examine the efficacy of instruction at the pragmatic level. Specifically, the main purpose of the study was to investigate to what extent two instructional paradigms – explicit versus implicit instruction – affected learners’ knowledge and ability to use request strategies. One hundred and thirty-tw...

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Taking into account severa1 limitations of communicative language teaching (CLT), this paper calls for the need to consider research on language use and learning through communication as a basis for language teaching. It will be argued that a reflective approach towards language teaching and learning might be generated, which is explained in terms...

In spite of the theoretical claims and research supporting the relationship between conversational interaction and language learning, the effect of interaction on the acquisition of pragmatic competence has received scant attention. This paper reports on the results of a study carried out to further understand the effect of teacher–students versus...

This article discusses the nature of oral interaction in the classroom as the usual setting where learning of a second language takes place. Its author reviews the literature on the impact of oral interaction upon second language acquisition, and suggests the need of articulation between teachers and researchers when having to adopt a methodology w...

In this study the use of "well" as a discourse marker is analysed in sixteen episodes of a television series and in two English language textbooks to illustrate what communicative language teaching can get from work on discourse analysis. Results of the analysis show that the meaning of well as a mainly interactive device signalling acceptance due...

The role of input is a major issue in second language research. The term input is taken from information processing and is deemed as oral/written data which learners are exposed to. Since learners do not take in everything they are exposed to, one central issue in second language learning is what part of the potentially processible data permeates t...

This study investigates the influence of interaction on foreign language production and development. In the last decade research has focused on the way in which nonnative speakers interact with native speakers and other nonnative speakers, but little is known about the effect of conversational interaction on the development of a foreign language. T...

The following study was undertaken to further understand the effect of content knowledge on learners’ participation in interactions between non-native speakers. 120 male students, all of them Spanish, were paired to form 20 dyads whose members had equal content knowledge, but different levels in oral proficiency, 20 dyads in which fluent learners w...

Studied the importance of negotiated interaction for the awareness and acquisition of linguistic input in 12 Spanish speakers learning English. 17 teacher-led conversations and postlesson diaries were used to relate learners' uptake to the students' interactive work. Students' acquisition of the uptake was measured in post-lesson translation tests....

This article is based on a study which attempted to examine the use of high cognitive questions in non-native student group classroom discussions. The main purpose of the study was to determine if higher frequency of high cognitive questions in NNS group classroom discussions had an effect on foreign language learning. Two groups of non-native Span...

One of the aims of the European higher education project is to prepare citizens for the new century. This, as stated in the Declaration of Bologna (1999), requires an awareneness of shared values and belonging to a common social and cultural space. In addition, the Council of Europe has launched different projects and programmes in order to foster...

This dissertation investigates the effects of instruction on the acquisition of pragmatic competence in the classroom setting, and specifically in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom. In particular, we examine the effects of instruction on learners pragmatic development of a specific speech act, that of suggestions, with the goal of e...