Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

• Amir Zand-Moghadam ¹
• Behzad Rahbar ²
• Nastaran Rostamzadeh ³

¹ Allameh Tabataba'i University

² Department of Linguistics, Allameh Tabataba'i University, Tehran, Iran

³ Allameh Tabataba'i University

Abstract

In spite of the increasing attention paid to heritage language education, the pragmatic development of young heritage learners, particularly in the realm of speech acts, such as apologies and requests, has not received much momentum, which constitutes a significant gap in the extant body of literature. In an attempt to address this gap, this study aimed to unpack the speech acts of apology and request production in young Persian heritage learners (HLs). In order to evaluate the pragmatic competence of 85 young participants and to look into the influence of explicit and implicit instructions on the teaching of the speech acts of apology and request, an Oral Discourse Completion Task (ODCT) was administered as a pre-test and post-test to 41 boys and 44 girls from grades three and four. The findings demonstrated that students' speech act production is significantly influenced by both explicit and implicit teaching. As a critical finding, the study signposted that implicit mode could potentially be equally functional in specific contexts, calling for a reconceptualization of instructional strategies in speech acts education, which encourages curriculum and materials developers to move beyond traditional reliance on explicit instruction and adopt a more comprehensive approach that prioritizes both explicit and implicit learning.

Keywords

• explicit and implicit teaching
• heritage language
• heritage learners
• pragmatic competence
• speech acts

Main Subjects

• Interlanguage Pragmatics (ILP)