| Summary: | The present paper explored how plays could contribute to pragmatic development when employed as a medium of implicit or explicit instruction. 80 undergraduate English-major students were divided into four experimental groups two of which were literary and two nonliterary. Implicit Literary, as one of the literary groups was exposed to typographically enhanced plays containing the speech acts of, refusal, apology, and request. Explicit Literary, the other literary group received the same speech acts and metapragmatic instructions on the acts as well. For the nonliterary groups, dialogs which contained the given functions served as the medium of instruction for either Implicit Nonliterary containing enhanced input or Explicit Nonliterary having input plus metapragmatic information. All participants took a Multiple- Choice Discourse Completion Test (MDCT) and a Written Discourse Completion Test (WDCT) both before and after the instruction. Analysis of the participants’ performance on the pretest and posttest WDCT did not reveal any significant difference between the literary and nonliterary groups. Concerning the mode of instruction, explicit groups outperformed the implicit ones. Pre and posttest analyses of the participants’ performance on the MDCT revealed no significant differences among the groups in terms of the four teaching conditions implying that EFL learners’ knowledge of speech acts can be boosted by pragmatic instruction irrespective of the medium or mode of instruction.
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