Pragmalinguistic Awareness: Is it Related to Motivation and Proficiency?

Previous research on interlanguage pragmatics revealed that, under implicit pragmatic instruction, some learners noticed the target pragmalinguistic features, whereas others receiving the same instruction did not. This suggests possible effects of individual difference (ID) variables on learners' noticing of pragmalinguistic features. Among the ID variables, this study focused on motivation and proficiency, exploring their relationships with Japanese EFL learners' awareness of six types of L2 pragmalinguistic features under an implicit input condition. Eighty Japanese college students first completed a motivation questionnaire and a proficiency test. They then took part in a noticing-the-gap activity as the treatment task. The degree of the learners' awareness of the target pragmalinguistic features was assessed through a retrospective awareness questionnaire administered immediately after the treatment. The following two major findings were obtained: (1) The learners differentially noticed the target pragmalinguistic features; and (2) the learners' awareness of the target features was correlated with motivation subscales, but not with their proficiency. In particular, the learners' intrinsic motivation was found to be closely related to their pragmatic awareness. An attempt was made to further examine whether current models of attention in SLA are relevant in accounting for the noticing of L2 pragmalinguistic features.

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