the effect of teacher-led versus student-student interaction on iranian efl learners’ pragmatic competence

Pragmatic competence is simply defined as the ability to understand and use language conventions. second language (l2) context is more conducive to the acquisition of pragmatics as learners encounter more opportunities to use the language, and are generally exposed to the l2 more intensively. the current study investigated the difference between the effects of teacher-led interactions and student-student interactions on iranian intermediate efl learners’ pragmatic competence and their use of apologizing as a pragmatic strategy in efl classrooms. to this end, 60 female students, within age range of 18-26, participated voluntarily in this study. the participants were studying in a language institute in abadan, iran. the study adopted a pre-test posttest experimental design with the instructional period lasting for twelve 60-minute sessions. to ensure the homogeneity and proficiency of the learners, quick placement test (qpt) was administered. the final sample for the study included a total of 48 learners, whose scores were above the mean. the learners were, through systematic random sampling, divided into three groups, each receiving a different treatment. the results of the study indicated that employing student-student interaction and pair-work is more effective than teacher-led interaction. the findings of the present study suggest important pedagogical implications for teachers, learners and syllabus designers regarding teaching experience, learning pragmatic competence, and syllabus design and curriculum development.