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Teaching email requests in the academic context: a focus on the role of corrective feedbackThi Thuy Minh Nguyena*, Thi Thanh Ha Dob, Anh Tuan Nguyencand Thi Thanh ThuyPhamb a English Lan

On: 24 April 2015, At: 21:54

b Faculty of Linguistics and Cultures of English-SpeakingCountries, University of Languages and International Studies,Vietnam National University, Pham Van Dong, Cau Giay, Hanoi,Vietnam

c Faculty of English Language Teacher Education, University ofLanguages and International Studies, Vietnam National University,Pham Van Dong, Cau Giay, Hanoi, Vietnam

Published online: 17 Apr 2015

To cite this article: Thi Thuy Minh Nguyen, Thi Thanh Ha Do, Anh Tuan Nguyen & Thi Thanh Thuy

Pham (2015): Teaching email requests in the academic context: a focus on the role of correctivefeedback, Language Awareness, DOI: 10.1080/09658416.2015.1010543

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09658416.2015.1010543

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Teaching email requests in the academic context: a focus on the role of corrective feedback

Thi Thuy Minh Nguyena*, Thi Thanh Ha Dob, Anh Tuan Nguyencand Thi Thanh ThuyPhamb

a

English Language and Literature Academic Group, National Institute of Education, NanyangTechnological University, 1 Nanyang Walk, 637616, Singapore;bFaculty of Linguistics andCultures of English-Speaking Countries, University of Languages and International Studies,Vietnam National University, Pham Van Dong, Cau Giay, Hanoi, Vietnam;cFaculty of EnglishLanguage Teacher Education, University of Languages and International Studies, VietnamNational University, Pham Van Dong, Cau Giay, Hanoi, Vietnam

(Received 25 July 2014; accepted 19 January 2015)

As email requests from students to professors have become increasingly common inacademic settings, research has also shown second-language (L2) students’ unfamiliaritywith email etiquette in L2 has adversely affected their communication with theirprofessors The present study examines whether giving corrective feedback on students’performance during pragmatics-focused activities leads to their subsequent improvement

in producing and recognising pragmatically appropriate email requests in the abovecontext Two intact classes of Vietnamese EFL (English as a foreign language)intermediate level students were randomly assigned to either direct-feedback condition

or meta-pragmatic feedback condition, but received similar explicit pragmatic instruction Another intact class was randomly selected as a control group Students’pragmatic performance was measured by means of a pre-test, an immediate and delayedpost-tests, which consisted of a production and a recognition task The results indicatethat the treatment groups performed significantly better than the control group in theproduction task, but there was no significant difference between the two treatmentgroups On the other hand, students who received meta-pragmatic feedback significantlyoutperformed those receiving direct feedback and the control group in the recognitiontask These findings indicate the varying effects of the two types of written correctivefeedback on different areas of L2 pragmatic competence

prKeywords: meta-pragmatic feedback; direct feedback; meta-pragmatic instruction; mail requests; pragmatic awareness; pragmatic production

e-Introduction

Previous studies of intercultural and interlanguage pragmatics have repeatedly indicatedthat learning to comprehend and produce speech acts in a second language (L2) can be achallenge for many L2 learners, including those with relatively advanced grammaticalcompetence (Nguyen,2008,2013) Difficulties arising from cross-cultural variations thatexist between learners’ first language (L1) and L2 often cause miscommunication(Thomas,1983), and, in many cases, ‘carry serious social complication’ (Blum-Kulka &Olshtain, 1986, p 169) Prior interlanguage pragmatics research has also shown thatalthough some aspects of L2 pragmatics can be acquired naturally (Taguchi,2007,2008),many other aspects may not be noticeable enough for learners to acquire without the

*Corresponding author Email:thithuyminh.nguyen@nie.edu.sg,thuyminhnguyen@gmail.com

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09658416.2015.1010543

benefits of pedagogical interventions (see Kasper & Rose,2002; Rose & Kasper,2001) Ithas been therefore argued that pragmatic instruction is necessary to raise learners’ prag-matic consciousness, particularly in foreign-language contexts where learners generallyhave limited opportunities for pragmatic input, and classrooms therefore serve as the onlyregular source of target language (TL) pragmatic knowledge (see Rose,2005) Since it isunderstood that the necessary condition for pragmatic learning to happen is attention topragmatic information to be acquired, a key issue is how to best facilitate this attentionthrough classroom instruction Previous studies examining the different effects on learn-ing of more than one type of instruction have generally indicated that explicit teaching(i.e instruction including the provision of meta-pragmatic information) can better drawlearners’ attention to target pragmatic features than implicit teaching (i.e instructionwithholding meta-pragmatic information) (for a full review, see Jeon & Kaya, 2006;Kasper & Rose,2002; Rose,2005) Some recent attempts have also been made to investi-gate how a range of corrective feedback (CF) techniques may be used during classroominstruction to trigger learners’ noticing of form
function
context mappings in the TL(e.g Koike & Pearson,2005; Nguyen, Pham, & Pham,2012) Along this line of research,the present study looks into the effectiveness of two written feedback options when com-bined with explicit meta-pragmatic instruction to improve a group of Vietnamese EFLlearners’ production and recognition of pragmatically appropriate email requests address-ing authority figures in the academic context These feedback options include direct feed-back (i.e involving the provision of the correct answer, but without explaining theanswer) and meta-pragmatic feedback (i.e involving the provision of meta-pragmaticcomments on the nature of the error, but without providing the correct answer) The learn-ers constitute a cohort of TEFL (teaching English as a foreign language) student-teacherswho have had quite limited exposure to English use outside formal instruction time.

In relation to our focus on pragmatic instruction, one thing to note is that traditionallythe goal of pragmatic competence was seen by many teachers and researchers in terms ofapproximation to NS competence, and therefore variations from NS norms were oftentreated as instances of deficiency (for a further discussion on this point, see McKay,

2002) However, this view has been increasingly challenged in recent scholarship as ithas been observed that not every L2 learner may be willing to adopt NS pragmatic norms,particularly when these norms are found to clash with the learner’s own system of culturalbeliefs and values (Ishihara,2010) In this respect, the learning of pragmatics may be dif-ferent from that of grammar and lexis because deviations from NS usage may not becaused simply by L1 interference but also by learners’ exercise of agency that is guided

by their cultural identity and subjectivity (Taguchi,2011) In light of this discussion, gestions have been made that instead of an insistence on NS approximation, pragmaticcompetence should include the notion of learners’ awareness of differences between theirown pragmatic norms and those of their interlocutors and the capacity to negotiate suchdifferences (Basturkmen & Nguyen,in press) This awareness and capacity are of particu-lar importance to successful intercultural communication in the era of English as an inter-national lingua franca In this context, language learners are assumed to encounter notonly the NS but rather a diversity of cultural communities, resulting in various pragmaticnorms that need to be constantly negotiated among speakers (House, 2010; McKay,

sug-2003) In order for learners to develop intercultural awareness and the capacity to ate subjectivity as said above, it has been suggested that pragmatic instruction should pro-vide a range of realistic pragmatic options in the TL for learners to critically evaluate theextent to which they would feel comfortable accommodating to these norms as well as toweigh the possible benefits and risks of their pragmatic decisions (Taguchi, 2011)

Concurring with this view, we argue that, as future English teachers, the participants inour study need to be equipped with TL pragmatic knowledge so that they can assist theirlearners in making informed choices that both fit their systems of values and do not breakdown communication.

Rationales for the study

There are two main rationales for the present study First, the last two decades have nessed a move in the medium of student
faculty interaction, from comprising mainlyconventional face-to-face office hour consultations to including increasingly more

wit-‘cyber-consultations’, e.g through email correspondence (Biesenbach-Lucas, 2006).Since email communication ‘represents a similar speech event, yet occurring within a dif-ferent [written] medium’ (Biesenbach-Lucas,2006, p 81), it is often seen as a hybridform of communication (i.e an interface between spoken and written language) that mayspan great stylistic variations (Harvey, 2013) Hence, as email communication hasbecome a more regular practice in academic contexts, research has also shown that thediversified registers afforded by this medium have presented many students with consid-erable uncertainties regarding making stylistic and pragmatic choices appropriate for thehierarchical student
professor relationship (Biesenbach-Lucas,2006,2007; Chen,2006;Economidou-Kogetsidis,2011) For L2 learners, the above challenge may even be accen-tuated due to their limited linguistic proficiency, lack of pragmatic sophistication as well

as incognisance of how discourse shapes and reflects power relations in the TL culture(Chen, 2006) As pointed out in previous research, discourse addressing interlocutorswith greater authority is expected to demonstrate high formality, politeness, and confor-mity with conventional norms (Biesenbach-Lucas,2007) In academic settings, this may

be translated into interaction that is pitched at an appropriate level of directness or that isadequately mitigated when request speech acts are involved (Biesenbach-Lucas, 2006;Economidou-Kogetsidis, 2011) Nonetheless, email requests written by L2 students areoften described by their professors as status-incongruent, i.e either inappropriatelystraightforward or overly casual, thus capable of pragmatic failure and risking to beturned down (Akikawa & Ishihara, 2010; Biesenbach-Lucas, 2006, 2007; Chen, 2001,2006;Economidou-Kogetsidis,2011; Hendriks,2010) While it has become clear that L2learners need to be made aware of language forms and socio-cultural norms required forsuccessful email writing in the above context, there has been surprisingly little researchdevoted to examining the effectiveness of such an intervention to inform classroom peda-gogy (Ford,2006) This is in stark contrast to the substantial body of literature that hasdocumented the effectiveness of teaching L2 oral requests (e.g Alc
on-Soler,2005,2007;

Li, 2011; Mart
ınez-Flor, 2008; Safont, 2003; Salazar, 2003; Takahashi, 2001, 2005,Takimoto,2006,2009) The present study is therefore conducted to address this gap Thepresent study is also of particular relevance to the population of L2 learners under inquiry

As reported in prior research, since politeness strategies in requesting operate differently

in Vietnamese and English (see Nguyen & Ho,2013,2014), this cross-cultural variationmay cause considerable difficulty to Vietnamese learners learning to make requests inEnglish In particular, because requests are understood to pose a threat to the hearer’s neg-ative face, i.e the freedom of action and freedom from imposition (Brown & Levinson,

1987), a value that is strongly emphasised in the Anglo-Saxon tradition (Wierzbicka,

1985), it is important that requests in English are realised by means of conventional rectness and distancing elements (such as modal structures and hedging devices) to givethe hearer optionality (Barron,2008; Blum-Kulka & Olshtain, 1984; Ogiermann 2009;

Searle,1975; Woodfield,2008) In contrast, due to a lack of emphasis on negative ness but rather a focus on values such as involvement, bond, and interdependence in theVietnamese culture, Vietnamese speakers have been found to prefer a high level of direct-ness in making requests and to rely more considerably on supportive elements with polite-ness effects such as address terms, honorifics, and alignment markers for maintainingsocial harmony (Nguyen & Ho,2013; Vu,1997,1999) Arguably, Vietnamese EFL learn-ers hence need to be made aware of the L1
L2 difference so that they can function effec-tively in real-world communication.

polite-The second rationale for the study lies in that, despite the pivotal role of giving CF in guage pedagogy, relatively few studies have been devoted to investigating how feedbackmay be used in complementary to instruction to promote various areas of L2 pragmaticdevelopment As a result, whereas the benefit of explicit meta-pragmatic instruction hasbeen documented in previous research (e.g see Jeon & Kaya,2006; Rose,2005; Takahashi,

lan-2010; Takimoto,2012), it remains little known how its combination with the different types

of feedback impacts L2 pragmatics learning As pointed out by Lyster, Saito, and Sato(2013), feedback and instruction may be best seen as complementary in pedagogical terms.Thus, it can be argued that the question of whether feedback provided in conjunction withinstruction enhances the effectiveness of learning can be a worthwhile investigation Alsocrucial is the question of which type of feedback is more effective while at the same timemeaningful to learners and manageable to teachers (see Hartshorn et al., 2010) In thisrespect, the two written feedback options under inquiry in our study serve to provide learnerswith different types of linguistic evidence While meta-pragmatic feedback provides negativeevidence (i.e information about what is not possible in the TL), direct feedback providesboth positive (i.e exemplars of TL forms) and negative evidence (because due to its explicit-ness, learners can perceive direct feedback as an indication of the presence of an error) (seeLyster et al.,2013) Thus, it can be hypothesised that these two types of feedback engagelearners in different levels of cognitive processing, thus possibly leading to different learningoutcomes (see Schmidt,2010; Sheen,2007) Pedagogically, some previous studies have indi-cated students’ preference for feedback types that afford them opportunities for guided learn-ing and problem solving (i.e indirect feedback such as metalinguistic feedback) rather thanfeedback that simply supplies them with corrections (i.e direct feedback) (see Ferris,2010).However, taking time to write down meta-pragmatic explanation may be burdensome for theteacher who may already have several teaching duties at hand to complete It would therefore

be useful to understand how comparatively the two types of written feedback outlined abovework in tandem with instruction in order to assist teachers in making informed classroomdecisions that both fit their classroom needs and their own timetable This line of inquirywould also fit well with the current call for ‘CF research invested with educational value’ dis-cussed in the review article of research on the role of CF in second-language classroom byLyster et al (2013, p 2)

Literature review

As noted above, a general agreement has been reached in previous L2 pragmaticsresearch that explicit instruction (i.e typically including teacher-fronted instruction onpragmalinguistic forms or/and sociopragmatic rules of the TL community) is more effec-tive than implicit instruction (i.e typically including learners’ induction and self-discov-ery of target features from given input) in improving learners’ use and comprehension of

a range of pragmatic features such as discourse markers, pragmatic routines, speech acts,and conversational implicatures (for a review, see Jeon & Kaya, 2006; Rose, 2005;

Takahashi, 2010) Some recent studies have also indicated that explicit instruction thatincludes some sort of input enhancement (that is, in the sense of Sharwood Smith [1993],externally induced techniques used to increase the salience of target features such as con-sciousness-raising, input processing, and CF) can make target pragmatic features moresalient for learners to notice (e.g Mart
ınez-Flor, 2008; Rose & Ng, 2001; Takahashi,

2001; Takimoto,2006,2009) For example, Mart
ınez-Flor(2008)employed an

inducti-ve
deductive teaching approach to teaching request modifiers The participants wereengaged in guided discovery activities and classroom discussion as well as receivingteacher explanation on requests Results of the study show an improvement in learners’production of both external and internal request modifiers Similarly, Takimoto (2006)has demonstrated that processing instruction engaging L2 learners in structured inputtasks (i.e tasks that require learners to process and understand pragmatic form
meaningconnections) proves effective in raising learners’ awareness of English request modifiers

In addition to the above studies, a limited but growing body of L2 pragmatics researchhas also pointed to the facilitative role of CF in promoting L2 pragmatics acquisition.Koike and Pearson(2005)studied the comparative effects of explicit and implicit CF

on acquiring suggestions and suggestion responses in L2 Spanish in four different ment conditions: (1) explicit pre-instruction plus explicit feedback, (2) explicit pre-instruction plus implicit feedback, (3) implicit pre-instruction plus explicit feedback, and(4) implicit pre-instruction plus implicit feedback Explicit instruction included the provi-sion of meta-pragmatic information, whereas implicit instruction comprised simpleengagement with pragmatic input via consciousness-raising exercises Explicit feedbackinvolved the provision of correct answers, accompanied by meta-pragmatic explanation,and implicit feedback took the form of clarification requests (questions seeking clarifica-tion of meaning, e.g ‘What was that?’) Results of the immediate post-test indicated thatthe learners in the first treatment condition significantly outperformed their peers in theother treatment conditions and the control group with respect to the recognition task Thestudents in the fourth condition, on the other hand, fared significantly better in the produc-tion task Such gains, however, were no longer evident when measured by the delayedpost-test, although students in the first condition were found to score slightly better thanother peers in the recognition task while students in the second condition were slightlybetter in the production task Taken together, these findings suggest the beneficial effects

treat-of CF, either explicit or implicit, on L2 pragmatic development

In another study, Nipaspong and Chinokul (2010) compared the relative effects ofexplicit correction versus prompts (a form of implicit correction) on the recognition ofappropriate refusals by a group of Thai EFL learners Explicit correction involved theprovision of correct answers plus metalinguistic or sociopragmatic information (e.g ‘Youshould say “I had booked it” It’s the past perfect tense’) while prompts comprised elicita-tion (e.g ‘How do we say that in plural?’), repetition (e.g ‘I were told?’), and metalin-guistic cues (e.g ‘Do we say “scaring” in English?’) The two treatment groups wereexposed to the same instructional materials and learning activities and compared against

a control group who received delayed explicit correction to provide baseline data ings from the post-test indicated that the learners who received prompts developed greaterawareness of the target pragmatic features than those in both the explicit and controlgroups These findings are consistent with those of L2 grammar studies that show thesuperiority of output-prompting feedback, i.e feedback that requires students to producelanguage, over feedback that does not require such production (Lyster & Saito,2010)

Find-On the other hand, there have also been studies that report no effect for CF Takimoto,

in the above-mentioned 2006 study, compared the efficacy of explicit feedback in

conjunction with instruction versus instruction alone for teaching L2 English requestmodifiers One treatment group was given explicit feedback (e.g ‘No, the appropriatenessscore here should be four or five because the request is very polite with the use of lexical/phrasal downgraders’) alongside structured input instruction, but the other treatmentgroup received only the above instruction While both of the treatment groups signifi-cantly outperformed the control group, neither of the two treatment groups did better thanthe other The results led the researcher to conclude that opportunities for in-depth proc-essing of input may be more important for L2 pragmatic learning than CF alone.

Overall, although a topic of both theoretical and practical interest, the role of CF isunder-researched in the field of L2 pragmatics This is in contrast to the substantial litera-ture on the effects of CF in L2 grammar acquisition (see a review in Li,2010; Lyster &Saito,2010; Lyster et al.,2013; Russell & Spada,2006; Sheen,2010) The results of thefew available studies are also conflicting as to whether CF is necessary for fostering L2pragmatic knowledge, and, if yes, which type works more effectively Further research isrequired for a better understanding of the role of a range of CF in L2 pragmatic acquisi-tion (Lyster et al.,2013)

Methodology

Research questions

The present study is conducted with a view to contributing additional insight into the role

of CF in the teaching and learning of L2 pragmatics, particularly regarding the researched speech act of writing email requests to professors in the academic context asdiscussed above We aim to explore the efficacy of each of two CF types under inquiry(i.e direct and meta-pragmatic feedback) as well as their comparative effects on bothpragmatic production and awareness that constitute important aspects of L2 pragmaticcompetence (Basturkmen and Nguyen,in press) In particular, we seek to answer the fol-lowing research questions:

under-(1) What are the short- and long-term effects of each type of feedback, provided inconjunction with explicit meta-pragmatic instruction, on L2 learners’ production

of pragmatically appropriate email requests?

(2) What are the short- and long-term effects of each of the two aforementioned ments on L2 learners’ recognition of pragmatically appropriate email requests?(3) Which type of treatment produces more effects
both in short and longer terms

treat-on learners’ productitreat-on of pragmatically appropriate email requests?

(4) Which type of treatments produces more effects
both in short and longerterms
on learners’ recognition of pragmatically appropriate email requests?

Participants

This study adopted a quasi-experimental, pre-test/post-test design with a control group.The study was set in a teachers’ college in a large city in Vietnam Three intermediate-level EFL writing classes (N D 64) were recruited The participants, all females, agedbetween 19 and 20, were pre-service EFL teachers studying in the first year of Englishmajor at the time of data collection Their lengths of studying English varied between sixand nine years None of them had ever resided in an English-speaking country They hadhad restricted exposure to English in their daily lives and limited opportunities to use

English for intercultural communication outside the classroom For admission into thisfour-year teacher education programme, the students had to pass a national universityentrance exam that tested them on English grammar and reading comprehension (along-side math and literature in Vietnamese) Although the students received heavily gram-mar-based English instruction prior to university studies, they were trained in all fourlanguage skills in the current programme Concerning learners’ prior knowledge ofrequests in the TL, they had learned a range of basic forms for making requests in gram-mar and communicative skills classes Nonetheless, they were unfamiliar with the prag-matics of email requests, particularly for addressing authority figures in academiccontexts, due to a lack of emphasis on this genre in their syllabus Furthermore, sincepragmatic instruction was given less attention than instruction in other aspects of Englishlanguage learning (such as grammar, lexis, pronunciation, and four language skills), thestudents may have possessed greater linguistic competence than pragmatic competence.The three classes were randomly assigned to one of these conditions: control (ND25), meta-pragmatic feedback (MF; ND 16) and direct feedback (DF; N D 23) Instruc-tional procedures for the treatment and control groups are described below Given thefact that the study included a gender- and age-biased sample, the results should be gener-alised with caution.

Choice of target features

Three email request scenarios, including requests for face-to-face appointments with theprofessor, requests for feedback on work-in-progress sent in an attachment, and requestsfor extension of a due date for an assignment, were the focus of our study These scenar-ios were selected because they were found commonly occurring in student
professor e-mail communication, yet challenging for L2 learners as reported in the literature (seeBiesenbach-Lucas, 2007) The scenarios described an unequal power (CP), familiar(¡D) social relationship The imposition level (R) of the requests can be said to varyalong two dimensions: across request types and within request types Across requesttypes, requests for an appointment represent the lowest level of imposition Requests forteachers’ feedback are considered more imposing than requests for an appointment, butless imposing than requests for extension of a due date Within request types, requesting

an appointment on the same day may cause more inconvenience than requesting anappointment later in the week or next week, but less than requesting cancelling a sched-uled appointment and rescheduling it Similarly, asking for teachers’ feedback on the firstdraft is less inconvenient to teachers than asking for further feedback on the revised draft

or on more than one draft Requesting an extension before the due date is also consideredmore likely to be granted than requesting an extension after the due date (Biesenbach-Lucas, 2007) Request forms and politeness strategies included in the instruction werebased on corpora of pragmatically appropriate email samples collected by Akikawa andIshihara (2010) and Biesenbach-Lucas (2007) Request forms consisted of both directstrategies (such as ‘I would like to meet you’ or ‘Please let me know what you think/ifyou have any comments/ suggestions’) and conventionally indirect requests (such as

“Could I meet with you’ or ‘Would it be a problem if I turned it (assignment) on ’).Politeness strategies included showing consideration for the teacher (such as “if you arebusy’ or ‘if you feel that this notice is too short”), giving the teacher enough time (avoid-ing phrases that emphasise the temporal aspects of the request such as ‘I need your adviceimmediately’), putting the teacher in a positive mood (such as ‘I’m enjoying the class

immensely” ), explaining reasons for the requests (such as ‘because I was sick last week’)and other syntactic devices with politeness effects such as past tense (I wondered), pro-gressive (I was wondering), embedding (I would appreciate it if ) and interrogative(Would it be possible .?) Apart from the above pragmatic features, discourse featuressuch as the organisational structure of emails were also taught.

Instructional procedures

Meta-pragmatic pre-instruction was implemented for each of the two treatment groups for

a total of approximately six hours over a four-week course The instruction comprisedthree major components:

(1) Consciousness-raising: this component, lasting approximately 45 minutes, aimed

to raise students’ awareness of form
function
context mappings in makingrequests as well as to give them an opportunity to think about the request fromthe perspective of both the requester and addressee In particular, the studentsreflected on their past experience and challenges in writing email requests to pro-fessors in the three scenarios described earlier, the professors’ reaction to theiremails, and the way in which they would have liked to improve their past emails.The students also worked on different samples of the three types of email requestsmentioned above Using a set of guiding questions provided to them, the studentscompared the samples in terms of discourse structure, formality, directness, andpoliteness, and commented on the possible reaction of the addressee based ontheir understanding of the P, D, and R factors in each email The samples wereconstructed based on the empirical data reported in Chen (2001, 2006) andBiesenbach-Lucas(2007)

(2) Meta-pragmatic explanation: this component, also lasting approximately 45minutes, aimed to provide the students with explicit instruction in email discourse

as well as language forms for making requests and politeness strategies (see sectionChoice of target features for examples of the target features) Another aim was todebrief the students on how the P, D, and R variables may influence various lin-guistic choices in English The students also reflected on the operation of the threecontextual variables in their L1, discussed the politeness strategies they would like

to adopt, and evaluated the possible consequences of these pragmatic decisions.(3) Communicative practice: this component was conducted over three weeks,each focusing on the practice and revision of one type of email requests thatwas taught to the learners earlier The procedure was the same in each week

In the first 30-minute session, the learners were guided to analyse the tual factors in the given email scenario and then, based on this analysis, pro-duced an email request that was subjected to three subsequent rounds ofteachers’ feedback and revision In each round that lasted approximately 20minutes, the learners received feedback from teachers on their first drafts,revised these drafts accordingly, and resubmitted the revised work for the nextreview cycle (see the next section for further details) The total approximateamount of time allocated for the practice component was therefore four and ahalf hours (90 minutes£ 3 weeks)

contex-The two treatment groups participated in identical instructional activities(described above) and worked on identical materials, only differing in the type of CFthey received on their email samples (seeTable 1) As both treatment groups received

the same instruction but different CF treatments, any effects observed between thesegroups in the post-tests can be attributed to the CF treatments (Li,2010) The controlgroup did not receive any equivalent intervention but followed the normal schedulewhere they received meta-pragmatic instruction in requests in the everyday and work-related contexts but did not receive feedback on their classroom performance Thethird and fourth authors taught the treatment groups In order to minimise possible dif-ferences caused by teachers’ different teaching styles, instruction implementation forthe treatment groups was alternated between the two teachers That is, one teachertaught both groups in the odd weeks and the other in the even weeks The controlgroup was taught by a different teacher.

Revision and feedback

We included multiple drafting as part of the instructional procedures for all three ment groups, since research has shown providing opportunity for revisions may enhancethe effects of CF (Chandler, 2003; Hartshorn et al., 2010; Shintani, Ellis, & Suzuki,

treat-2014) Multiple revisions also likely create higher chance of multiple corrections of thesame problematic features, thus making the corrections more focused and effective (seeEllis, Sheen, Murakami, & Takashima,2008; Shintani et al.,2014) Three practice tasks,each requiring students to produce one type of email requests described earlier, wereemployed for this purpose For each practice task, three rounds of revision were con-ducted In each round, students’ work was returned with the errors underlined and corre-sponding CF provided in the margin (seeTable 1for the definition and example of each

CF type) Errors receiving treatment included those relating to the organisational structure

of the email, request forms, politeness, and general language usage Students were given

as much time as they needed to read the CF These copies were then collected back bythe teachers and clean copies of students’ original work were distributed for them torevise The revision cycle is illustrated inFigure 1

‘Please give me moretime to complete mywork’

‘I was wondering if Icould have moretime’

‘Please give me moretime to complete mywork’

‘The teacher has ahigher social statusthan you She is alsonot obliged to giveyou the extension’

‘Would I turn in late?’ ‘Is this a request

form?’

of each scenario was adjusted to prevent the possibility of students memorising answersfrom the practice tasks (see an example in Appendix 1 which is available as a supplementalfile to the online version of this article at www.tandfonline.com/rmla) DCT data wereselected over naturally occurring emails for two reasons First, although naturalistic datawere considered desirable, this type of data did not allow researchers to control relevantsocial and contextual variables (Yuan,2001) For example, one problem that could arise inthis study was the variations in terms of the seniority of the teacher and degree of familiar-ity across student
teacher pairs Since these two variables may influence the pragmaticchoices made by the learners, the variations could well affect the comparability of the data.Second, it was also not easy to gather a large enough pool of authentic emails in all threescenarios This is because some learners may have encountered only one scenario whileothers may have encountered more Compared to naturalistic data, the DCT was consideredmore effective in collecting a large amount of data while at the same time allowing forresearcher control of the pertinent variables (Beebe & Cummings,1985) A word of cau-tion, however, was in order That is, although the written production elicited by DCTs can

be appropriate for investigating written genres (such as letters and computer-mediated munication) (Bardovi-Harlig,2010), the main difficulty associated with the DCT is that it ispretence without consequences for the participants For this reason, it is important thatresults from the DCT be interpreted with discretion

com-Data on students’ pragmatic awareness were elicited by means of a rating scale in theform of a multiple-choice questionnaire (MCQ) that comprised two components In thefirst component, the students were required to rate sample email requests in four scenar-ios, i.e appointment, cancellation of an appointment, feedback, and extension, withrespect to (1) the directness level of the requests, (2) the appropriateness level of therequests, and (3) the appropriateness level of the overall emails In the second component,

1 Students submit

2 Teacher feedbacks &

returns

3 Students read feedback, revise &

resubmit

4 Teacher feedbacks

If errors have been corrected, teacher gives positive feedback (e.g puts a tick next

to each correction, praises

Figure 1 Procedures for giving CF

the students were required to write down explanations of their ratings, making reference

to the specific linguistic features from the email samples It is argued that the combination

of both quantitative ratings and qualitative comments would provide us with more prehensive information in order to assess the students’ pragmatic awareness

com-Although both of the DCT and MCQ were not empirically piloted in the current study,their validity and reliability were ensured in another way First, the scenarios employed inthe two tasks were based on Biesenbach-Lucas(2007) As mentioned in Section ‘Choice

of target features’, these scenarios were reported to commonly occur in student
professoremail communication Thus, it was hoped that the participants found the scenarios famil-iar enough and hence had less difficulty to imagine themselves in the scenarios when per-forming the tasks (see Bonikowska,1988, who pointed out that elicitation tasks shouldonly ask participants to assume roles that they are familiar with so that they can performthe task naturally, which helps to increase the validity of the data) The email samplesincluded for rating in the MCQ were also adapted from the empirical data of previousstudies (e.g Biesenbach-Lucas,2007; Chen, 2001, who collected both native and non-native English speaking students’ email requests to faculty) This hopefully helped toincrease the authenticity of the task Finally, the MCQ rating scale was adapted from a set

of teaching resources that had been previously pilot-tested by Akikawa and Ishihara(2010)with a group of intermediate- and advanced-level English learners This also hope-fully helped to strengthen the validity and reliability of the rating scale Nonetheless,despite all these best efforts, it is acknowledged that a lack of empirical validation of thetasks would still warrant some caution when interpreting the findings of the current study.Regarding the procedure of data collection, the DCT was conducted before the MCQ toprevent inadvertently altering their pragmatic behaviour The same three DCT and fourMCQ scenarios were counterbalanced for the pre-test and two post-tests The pre-test wasconducted at the onset of the study The immediate post-test was conducted at the end ofthe study and the delayed post-test four weeks after to measure long-term retention, if any.All the treatment and control groups participated in the pre-test and the two post-tests

Data analysis

After we eliminated from the data pool those students missing one or more of the DCTand MCQ pre- and post-tests, DCT data from 53 students (controlD 20, MF D 15, DF D18) and MCQ data from 53 students (controlD 20, MF D 13, DF D 20) were included forstatistical analyses A defined five-point rating scale was adapted from Akikawa and Ishi-hara(2010)to grade the collected DCT emails, with 5 being the highest (appropriate) and

1 the lowest (completely inappropriate) (see Appendix 2 online) The full possible markfor each scenario was 5; thus, the total possible mark for the DCT was 15 (5 marks£ 3scenarios) Grading was based on four aspects: (1) goal (i.e whether the communicativeintent was understood), (2) appropriate register in the given context of P, D, and R (evi-denced in the chosen level of formality, directness, and politeness), (3) overall discourse(i.e organisational structure and coherence), and (4) language usage (i.e grammar,vocabulary, and punctuation), with heavier weighting assigned to appropriateness thanaccuracy

Another defined five-point rating scale was developed by the researchers to grade thestudents’ performance in the MCQ task, with 5 representing the highest level of prag-matic awareness and 1 the lowest Note that the marking was based on both the quantita-tive ratings and qualitative explanations by the learners with heavier weighting assigned

to qualitative comments (see Appendix 2 online) The full possible mark for each scenariowas 5; thus, the total possible mark for the MCQ was 20 (5 marks£ 4 scenarios)

The grading procedures were conducted as follows First, the four researchers pendently rated a small sample of the data Then the grades were compared and cases ofdiscrepancy were discussed until full agreement was achieved among the researchers.After this standardisation process, the remaining scripts were divided between the thirdand fourth authors for independent ratings Finally, one-third of the total data were cross-checked and cases of discrepancy were moderated by the first author.

inde-In order to statistically test the pre-to-post-experimental difference among the threegroups in the DCT, a mixed between
within subjects Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) testwas conducted after preliminary checks, which indicated no violation of the assumption ofnormality and homogeneity of intercorrelations Due to a significant difference in the MCQpre-test scores of the three groups, however, two separate statistical analyses were conductedfor this set of data A one-way repeated-measures ANOVA was conducted for each group toexplore the pre-to-post-experimental improvement (i.e within-subject contrast) after check-ing that the assumption of normality was not violated Next, two one-way Analysis ofCovariance (ANCOVA) tests were conducted to compare the immediate and delayed post-test results of the three groups (i.e between-group contrasts) after checking that the assump-tions of normality, linearity, and homogeneity of regression slopes were met

Results

Results from the DCT

Results of a mixed between
within subjects ANOVA revealed a significant main effectfor time across the three DCT tests (F(2,96)D 77.0, p < 001, hp2D 62) A significantmain effect for group for the two treatment groups and control group was also found (F(2,48)D 34.2, p < 001, hp2D 59) In addition, the results revealed a significant interac-tion effect between group and time (F(4,96)D 17.3, p < 001, hp2D 42) (seeTable 2).Further statistical analyses illustrate four important results of the DCT: (1) there were

no significant differences among the three groups in the pre-test (F(2,48) D 1.02, p >.05); (2) while the two treatment groups displayed improvement from the pre-test to thetwo post-tests (MF: F(2,13) D 84.13, p < 001, hp2D 93; DF: F(2,16) D 35.73, p <.001,hp2D 82), the control group did not (p > 05); (3) for the treatment groups, thestatistically significant difference was located between the pre-test and the immediatepost-test (p< 001) but not between the two post-tests (p > 05); (4) both of the treatmentgroups significantly outperformed the control group in the two post-tests, but there was

no significant difference between the two treatment groups with regard to their post-testresults (also seeTable 3andFigure 2)

Table 2 Results of mixed between
within subjects ANOVA for the DCT scores gained by threegroups in the three tests