Fostering the pragmatic competence of Yemeni EFL learners : the need for instructional and pedagogical intervention

Abstract EN

With every new study, there is a new contribution to our current understanding of second and foreign language teaching.

Recently, new theories based on interlanguage pragmatics research have meant a reappraisal of the way language is used in the classroom.

For Arab learners of English, the classroom is the only existing resource of target language (TL) input.

This hard fact leads to difficulties and sometimes failure in communicative proficiency in English.

Such pragmatic failure is attributed to various reasons such as the context of foreign language (FL) where they learn the use of English, and their loyalty to the native language and culture.

In an effort to support the Arab learners of English in avoiding miscommunication and its negative consequences at the personal and social level, this paper focuses on the importance of raising the pragmatic knowledge of these learners.

To this end, research in second language (SL) acquisition maintains that through instruction, SL or FL learners could be equipped with the necessary pragmatic norms and conventions of the TL as the instructed learners outperform the uninstructed ones .