The Effects of Instruction on Chinese University Students'Productions of Complaint Behaviors in American English

This paper reports on efficacy of instruction in L2 complaints in an EFL classroom. There were eighty participants in this study, with two native groups (American and Chinese) serving as baseline groups, and two Chinese learner groups (high and low-proficiency) as experimental groups. The learners were asked to engage in pre- and post-DCT tasks, and their performances were then compared to the American and Chinese native-speaker productions to see if there were deviations from the native norm and if such deviations were a result of L1 transfer. The findings show that L1 transfer is closely related to L2 proficiency and that explicit instruction in semantic formulas, semantic content, and linguistic forms is beneficial to learners. We therefore conclude that instruction in L2 pragmatics should be implemented in an EFL classroom to enhance learners' pragmatic competence. 本文旨在紀錄在一個以英語為外語課堂中，實施外語抱怨語教學的效果。此研究共有八十名參與者，包括兩組母語組（一為英語、一為中文）以及兩組以中文為母語的學習者（一為高程度、一為低程度）；其中母語組將當作基準組別，而兩組學習者則為實驗組。這些學習者將回答前測以及後測的言談情境問卷，所蒐集到的資料與兩組母語組相互比較，比較的結果可探討出是否與母語標準有所偏差，而其偏差便是第一語言轉化的結果。研究結果顯示第一語言（母語）的轉化與第二語言能力息息相關；再者，教授語意模式、語意內容對學習者來說是有幫助的。因此，我們斷定若要提升學生的語用能力，英語課程中需包含語用教學。