El desarrollo de la competencia pragmática en estudiantes de espa?ol nivel principiante: un estudio sobre las peticiones

摘要

The study of pragmatics attempts to determine what is considered socially appropriate given the context in question. Many studies now suggest that pragmatic errors are perceived as more severe than other types of errors, such as grammatical or vocabulary errors. Additionally, pragmatic competence is key in students communicating effectively in the foreign language. As such, it is more important than ever that foreign language teachers include pragmatic lessons in their classes, especially considering that communicative language textbooks lack pragmatic descriptions. To this end, the present study sought to incorporate pragmatic lessons regarding requested strategies in a first year, second semester L2 Spanish class in the United States. Control and experimental groups were established, and the three requested strategy lessons were only included in the experimental group. Prior to the first lesson, students took two pre-tests (written and an oral), then after the lessons, the tests were taken again (post-tests). It was found that the experimental group experienced greater increases in pragmatic competence (regarding requests); however, the increase was not found to be of statistical significance. The professor of the course was satisfied with the increase and plans to continue implementing pragmatic lessons in future semesters.