The purpose of this study is to investigate the teachability of Situation-Bound Utterances (SBUs hence) in a Modern Chinese foreign language classroom. Specifically, the basic question to be examined is this: to what extent two instructional paradigms--explicit versus implicit instruction--affect learners' knowledge and ability to use SBUs. For this study, SBUs were defined by Kecskes (2000) as "highly conventionalized, prefabricated pragmatic units whose occurrences are tied to standardized communicative situations" (p. 606). SBUs consist of strings such as "I'll see you later," and "You can say that again," which are used predictably by native speakers in certain contexts.;The researcher has the following findings: 1. Explicit teaching of SBUs increased the frequency of their use by students. 2. Findings showed that students' awareness in SBUs changed significantly after the explicit teaching of SBUs. 3. The qualitative analysis demonstrated that students' attitudes toward the explicit teaching of SBUs and their usefulness changed positively. 4. The study resulted in a better understanding and description of student transformative learning outcomes.;The purpose of the present study is to bring attention to the necessity of including SBU instruction in modern Chinese language classes, especially at the elementary-level. One key point of this study is that the classroom is where learners can immerse themselves in a controlled, yet authentic foreign language environment. Ultimately, then, it is here where language codes and cultural learning should merge.
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