Effects of pragmatic instruction on EFL teenagers’ apologetic email writing: Comprehension, production, and cognitive processes

This study examined the effects of explicit instruction on EFL learners’ apologetic email writing in terms of comprehension, production, and cognitive processes in pragmatic performance. Participants were 30 Taiwanese EFL eighth graders who received a 10-week pragmatic training on email apologies. Research instruments were a multiple-choice test (MCT), a written discourse completion task (WDCT), and retrospective verbal reports (RVRs). The results showed that the participants obtained higher scores in the MCTs after the instruction, illustrating the facilitative effects on the learners’ comprehension of email writing. As for the production, the learners made overall progress in email writing in the posttest. Regarding the cognitive processes, analysis of the RVRs revealed that after the treatment, the learners’ pragmalinguistic awareness was promoted in their paying more attention to pragmalinguistic features and planning their email writing according to the email moves more frequently. The findings were discussed with implications for pedagogy and future research.