The impact of integrating pragmatics instruction in grammar teaching on EFL learners' use of tenses

Abstract EN

Grammar has always held a central role in EFL classrooms, but the fact of being introduced as decontextualized system of rules, disregarding the social aspects of the grammatical structures, led EFL learners to fall in the trap of misunderstanding in their attempts to use the grammatical patterns accurately and correctly.

The current researcher work aims at scrutinizing the effect of pragmatics instruction, as a technique of language teaching, on EFL learners' grammar use and precisely the English tenses.

To conduct the current research, an experimental method was carried out along five (05) weeks with a control group and an experimental group that were selected from the population of first year students from the Department of English at the University of M'sila.

The experimental group received explicit pragmatics instruction by means of integrating meta-pragmatic information into the principles and uses of tenses, whereas the control group was not exposed to the planned instructional treatment.

The obtained results have revealed that pragmatics instruction does have a positive impact over students' grammatical achievement, as it raises students' awareness of the importance of the pragmatic dimension in grammar learning.

Therefore, it is necessary to integrate pragmatic insights in grammar courses in order to ensure both learners' acquisition and production of context-appropriate language.