TY  - EJOU
AU  - 
T1  - The Relative Contributions of Explicit and Implicit Instruction in the Learning of EFL Apologies
T2  - Humanities and Social Sciences Letters

PY  - 2021
VL  - 9
IS  - 2
SN  - 2312-4318

AB  - This study aims to compare the influence of explicit versus implicit teaching on the learning of apology realization strategies in a foreign language context. To this end, 86 Arab elementary learners of English were divided into three groups: (1) a group that was introduced to the target realization strategies explicitly, (2) a group that was introduced to the target strategies implicitly, and (3) a comparison group that did not receive any instruction on the target strategies. Using a pre-/posttest design, the three groups completed a discourse completion task as a pretest, immediate posttest and delayed test. The apology-specific strategies the students produced in these tests were compared using mixed ANOVA and Bonferroni pairwise comparisons. The results revealed a positive influence for both the explicit and implicit teaching approaches with relatively more gains for explicit teaching. The effectiveness of the two approaches varied based on a number of factors including the time of test (i.e., immediate or delayed posttest), the learners’ prior knowledge, and the cultural acceptability of the apology-specific strategy. The results are interpreted in light of the existing literature and relevant theoretical hypotheses. 
KW  - Instructional pragmatics
KW  - Speech act
KW  - Apology
KW  - Explicit
KW  - Implicit
KW  - Pragmatic competence
KW  - Interlanguage pragmatics.
DO  - 10.18488/journal.73.2021.92.122.151