a comparative study on the effects of synchronous metapragmatic awareness-raising instruction versus form-focused instruction on l2 learners’ speech act production: the speech act of gratitude in focus

Pragmatic competence, as one of the important features of learning any second or foreign language, and instructional methods to increase language learners’ pragmatic awareness have been of great significance among researchers and scholars. moreover, the recent closure of educational institutes due to covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance and the role of online synchronous instruction using different media in teaching different aspects of a second or foreign language, including pragmatics. to this end, this study aimed to investigate the comparative effects of synchronous metapragmatic awareness-raising and form-focused instructions delivered via video-based lessons on iranian english as a foreign language (efl) learners’ production of the speech act of gratitude. accordingly, a total of 60 female iranian efl learners aged 16-20 studying at intermediate level were selected and randomly assigned to three groups of online, synchronous instruction: the first experimental group (n = 20) who received metapragmatic awareness-raising instruction, the second experimental group (n = 20) who received form-focused instruction, and the control group (n = 20) experiencing topic-based discussion practices with no focus on pragmatics. all three groups engaged in ten 45-minute instructional sessions. a researcher-made discourse completion task was used to test learners’ performance in pretest and posttest phases. the results of the study revealed that both types of explicit instruction (i.e., metapragmatic awareness-raising and form-focused) were significantly effective on improving iranian efl learners’ appropriate use of the speech act of gratitude in different communicative situations. moreover, it was found that form-focused instruction was slightly, though not significantly, more effective than the metapragmatic awareness-raising instruction in enhancing learners’ performance. these results highlight the efficiency of using online synchronous platforms and explicit methodology to teach efl learners english pragmatic issues via videos