The acquisition of pragmatic competence and the implication of the critical period hypothesis
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Date
2012
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University of Management and Technology
Abstract
Today many second language acquisition researchers are agree that the acquisition of pragmatic competence in foreign language is a challenge for learners. The difficulty is not always with the syntactic realisation, or the phonological system or lexicon etc. for these learners, but the actual problem arises when they struggle for the learning of target language pragmatics. The inappropriate use of L2 pragmatics, especially the request strategies leave the impression that these L2 speakers are rude, slow or impolite (Scollon and Scollon, 1983). However, the present study investigates the role that age plays in the acquisition of pragmatic competence. A total number of 30 participants took part in this study. They were divided into 3 groups, group A, British Native Speakers of English, Group B Post-Critical Period Hypotheses and Group C Pre-Critical Period Hypotheses. These participants were given 3 different situations (Higher to lower, Equal to equal, and Lower to higher) to produce responses in the form of requests. It is found that the British native speakers of English are inclined to use more indirect request strategies in the all situations. The Post-critical period hypothesis participants produced more direct responses. The Pre-critical period hypothesis participants were also found to be indirect, similar to the group A, the British Native speakers of English. It was found that age factor plays a crucial role in the learning of pragmatics competence, and there is an inter-cultural difference in the use of request strategies.
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M.Phil Thesis, Applied Linguistics, Hypothesis