Study Abroad and Interlanguage Pragmatic Development in Request and Apology Speech Acts among Iranian Learners

This research study empirically investigated the impact of study abroad context on L2 learners’ pragmatic development compared with study at home group in Iran. For the study abroad group the participants were selected from the Iranian students who registered in a six-month program in language institutes in India (Mysore) and for the study at home group the participants were chosen from the language learners at the most outstanding language institute in Iran (Iran Language Institute) at the intermediate level. A Discourse Completion Task (DCT) including request and apology speech acts was used to measure the gains in the two groups. The DCT was administered one at the beginning as a pre-test and then at the end of the six months course as a post-test. Overall, the study revealed significant development in study abroad learners’ pragmatic knowledge, whereas this change in at home group was meager. It was also found that a correlation governs the growth in apology and request proficiency in language learning. This comparative study moreover yielded this finding that gender is not a determining factor in the acquisition of pragmatic knowledge specifically in request and apology speech acts in language learning.


Introduction
Looking for ways to facilitate the demanding task of language learning, teachers, researchers, theoreticians, and applied linguists have been devoting time and energy to introduce methods or programs that can serve well to train successful language learners.To this end, a good number of studies have been done to investigate the fruitfulness of different methods.Having the advantages of acquisition versus learning, SLA versus FL, and learning context in mind, scholars have been thinking of a program enjoying these privileges.Study abroad program as one of the impacts of globalization and internationalization, has recently received language learning scholar's attention.
Study abroad is a program mixed of formal classes (the same as study at home) and native context.Simply "being there" is not enough for a fruitful attainment.The best way to maximize the learning of pragmatics is a combination of a sojourn with classroom support.There are many reasons why students join study abroad programs in the host culture.For example, to improve their foreign language proficiency, to get degrees, to acquire academic knowledge in areas of study, to promote their professional skills, to get credits or for more than one reason (Jackson, 2013).Therefore, Study abroad can be used in learning language, a field of study or both.
Study abroad seems to remain popular because the common sense is that the best way to learn a language is to live in the environment in which the language is spoken.As a matter of fact, research has repeatedly indicated that study abroad learners will make gains in all four language skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing.However, their best performance is manifested in their speaking skill areas regarding oral proficiency, oral fluency, vocabulary, discourse, narrative abilities and the last but not the least, pragmatics.These speaking skills seem to be difficult to achieve for students studying a language in their home country as a foreign language.
While regular language classes are good sources for providing linguistic knowledge, context which is study abroad program equipped with, seems to be a flourishing source for providing cultural and pragmatic knowledge through interaction with L2 natives.

Context of Learning in Study Abroad
The key feature in study abroad is the context from which the learners can make the most of it to succeed.In other words, context as a basin if used appropriately and fully, can help a language to be acquired profoundly concerning the seen and heard aspects of language along with the unseen aspects of language.
In study abroad program, the term context refers to both the environment and the learner's relationship with the environment in which he/she is learning the language.Therefore, using the context varies in different learners due to their individual differences.In other words, two learners in the same context may gain different amount of achievement.For example, one extrovert learner may make more exposure than an introvert one.Therefore, individual differences are also crucial in utilizing the potentialities of a learning context.
Learning a language in regular FL classes mostly relies on explicit teaching of language elements.In FL classes most output learners are passive knowers of language probably with a good knowledge on language elements than good language users.This is because of not genuine input given in FL classes.Here the phrase 'not genuine' means the language without knowledge about beyond that particular language such as knowledge on pragmatics, culture, lifestyle, likes and dislikes, norms, etc.
On the contrary, in SL classes the learners testify the input received in classes within the context to learn the use of that knowledge through the exposure and learn things needed to know beyond language elements.Therefore, it seems that the combination of formal regular classes and immersion in the native speech community serves well to facilitate language learning.
Studies by Freed (1995) and Huebner (1995) reported a perceived difference between language learning through SL and FL context.Moreover, in many studies namely by Carrol (1967), Spada (1986), Brecht, Davison, & Ginsberg (1993), Lennon (1995) it was revealed that studying a second language in a study abroad program can be beneficial in an L2 learning.Pragmatics as one of the fruits bestowed by context in study abroad program, has been paid much attention the same as culture, norms, etc. in applied linguistics research.Some researchers (Freed, 1995;Huebner, 1995) have noted that there is a perceived difference between learning a language in a second language (SL) context and learning a language in a foreign language (FL) context.Moreover, many researchers (Brecht, Davison, & Ginsberg, 1993;Carroll, 1967;Lennon, 1995;Spada, 1986) have found that studying L2 in SL context (for example on a study abroad program) has a positive effect on learning a language.
In a study by Lafford (1995, cited in Freed, 1998) it was found that study abroaders "have a far broad repertoire of communicative strategies for initiating, maintaining, expanding, and terminating a communicative situation than do those whose learning has been limited to the formal language classroom" (p.44).All the works mentioned above suggest that a sojourn abroad learners' linguistic knowledge is bolstered by linguistic, sociological and pragmatic knowledge.Scholars such as Douglas (2004), Kramsh (2000), Swain (2000), Tarone (2000), Lantolf (2000) believed that language acquisition is a process influenced by social and contextual factors.Study abroad influences student learning and personal development (Carsello & Creaser, 1976;Kuh, 1995;Limburg-Weber, 2000).Investigations have shown that study abroad improves students' global perspective, world mindedness and cross-cultural awareness (Bakalis & Joiner, 2004;Douglas & Jones-Rikkers, 2001;Kitsantas, 2004;Kitsantas & Meyers, 2001).Study abroad has also been found to make students aware of their own national identity and influences how they view people from other nationalities (Dolby, 2004;Drews and Meyer, 1996).
As a result, many students, teachers, parents, and administers strongly believe that students learning a language through a study abroad program are ultimately much more proficient and fluent language users than their counterpart study at home learners in formal FL language classes.Consequently, a great number of students annually leave their home for the countries in which their selected language is spoken and expect to return with highly improved language skills.

Pragmatic Development in Study Abroad Context
In language use, this fact is clear that what we say is not always what we really mean.That is why we are not sometimes understood.Language is used to manipulate, challenge or change ideas, but how?How is language used to show power in a social context?All these questions can be explained by linguistic pragmatics which has opened a wide scope of research areas that can elucidate what we really mean when we say something.There are many reasons for this amount of attention given to this issue.As Archer, Aijmer, and Wichman (2012) suggest, lots of phenomena on context need to be analyzed in pragmatics.They debate that concepts such as presupposition are too difficult to be analyzed in semantics and therefore a pragmatic solution is needed for clarification.They added that in addition to the linguistic features, "there are prosodic phenomena such as stress and intonation which can be related to the function of an utterance or to features of the context such as speaker attitudes or power relations" (p.4).
In simple words, pragmatics is nothing but the study of language in context or it is "the study of those relations between language and context that are grammaticalized, or encoded in the structure of a language" (Levinson, 1983, p. 9).Pragmatics research, in applied linguistics, mostly focuses on the relationship between language use and the social and interpersonal context of interaction (Roever, 2010).
As already mentioned, research studies support that study abroad learners improve better in language skills specially, in oral proficiency when compared with at-home L2 learners.This can be because of the amount participation and interaction in the authentic contexts which is not available for study at home learners.However the gains vary between groups and within groups because of environmental and individual factors.But what is it that makes study abroaders better and faster in language learning?What do they learn in context that makes them different?Hassall (2013) mentioned some characteristics that study abroad learners are granted in the authentic context: Formulaic expressions: Expressions that are used to perform different kinds of speech acts (e.g., "Hi," "Bye," "May I help you," "Yes please," "No thanks," …).
Informal style: developing informal speech styles or understanding the colloquial language.
Sociopragmatics: Acquiring the capability to assess the social context and use the appropriate forms in the target culture.
Modifiers: Acquiring the speech act elements that are used to mitigate or soften a speech act (e.g., Could you possibly give me a lift?).

General sensitivity:
The ability to recognize the pragmatic errors as a result of a raise in pragmatic awareness.Placenia and Garcia (2013) asserted that research areas have been determined through the concerns and different methodologies in different fields and subfields of studies.According to them, five major areas of inter-linked research areas can be identified: studies in cross-cultural pragmatics, interlanguage pragmatics, intercultural pragmatics, variational pragmatics, and historical pragmatics.

Interlanguage Pragmatics (ILP)
Kasper and Rose (1999) define ILP as the study of second language use, and assert that interlanguage pragmatics is the study of non-native speakers' comprehension, production and acquisition of linguistic action in L2, or put briefly, ILP investigates how to do things with words in a second language.Kasper and Rose (2002) introduce interlanguage pragmatics as interdisciplinary or hybrid because interlanguage pragmatics belongs to both pragmatics and SLA.Kasper (1997) defines interlanguage pragmatics as "the study of non-native speakers' use and acquisition of L2 pragmatic knowledge" (p.145).ILP utilizes pragmatic theories, frameworks and principles to examine how foreign/second language learners encode and decode meaning in their L2 (Schauer, 2009).

Speech Acts
It has long been believed by linguists and language philosophers that language is not merely used to describe events but it is also used to do certain things such as requesting, apologizing, complaining, praising, etc. (Golato & Golato, 2013).They defined speech acts as "the acts a speaker performs when uttering a sentence under normal circumstances" (p.5332).
John L. Austin (1911Austin ( -1964) ) a British philosopher of language has been considered as the pioneer to study speech acts.He is remembered as the father of speech act theory.Prior to Austin, linguistic and analytic philosophers had been focusing on merely statements, assertions, and propositions.This led to contradictions when analyzing certain types of statements.Austin stated that we use language to do things as well as to assert things, and that a statement like "I promise to do so-and-so" is best understood as doing something i.e. it is making a promise rather than making an assertion.This concept is discussed in one of his best-known works: "How to do Things with Words".

Speech Acts Research
In general term, speech acts research is concerned with "examining what people do with language in interaction such as exchanging greetings, make requests, complaint, congratulations or express sympathy to others" (Placenia & Garcia, 2013, p. 5336).
People use these exchanges to do things in different ways for different purposes.Needless to mention that, the way we request (e.g., a close friend to do something) is likely to be different compared with a professor to do something for us.Speech acts research is a wide-ranging research that covers both the theoretical inquiry and empirical studies in different languages and their social contexts as one of the copious areas within pragmatics.Empirical studies in speech acts research are generally concerned with the functions of the given utterances in given contexts (Jacobs & Jucher, 1995) or in other words, empirical research in speech acts deals with mapping the utterances to function, for example to investigate how Persian speakers and English speakers perform a request in a comparable situation by setting up role-play scenarios.

Request and Apology Speech Acts
Among the list of speech acts request and apology are the most frequents ones.Requests are mostly used to start conversations and apologies are used to settle down situations to avoid further problems.Requests are illocutionary acts through which a speaker wants the hearer to perform an act for the speaker.A request can be verbal (e.g. for information), non-verbal (e.g. to do sth.).In this speech act, the requester asks the requestee to carry out something.Because of the impositive nature of a request and as the speaker imposes the hearer to perform an act for his or her own benefit, it can be a face-threatening act, i.e. it can have unpleasant result if it is asked unskillfully.Whenever a request is asked, the requestee's negative face (i.e. the wish to be unimpeded) is threatened, because the requester is showing power by requesting.If the hearer refuses to carry out the required act, the speaker is eminent to lose face.The difference between a request and other acts such as suggestions, warnings, or pieces of advice, is the fact that this speech act totally lies in the interest of the speaker and is at the cost of the hearer (Trosborg, 1994).
On the other hand, apology means an acknowledgment expressing regret or asking pardon for a fault or offense.Therefore it is needed that language learners to be equipped with apology strategies and also to know the appropriate strategy to use for a specific context or situation otherwise there will be a misunderstanding which may lead to unpleasant outcomes.The speech act of apologizing is rather different from that of requesting, since apologies are generally post-event acts, while requests are always pre-event acts.As an apology, the utterance succeeds if it is taken as expressing regret for the deed in question; as an act of seeking forgiveness, it succeeds if forgiveness is thereby obtained.

Research Questions
 Does the study abroad context affect language learners' interlanguage pragmatic development in request and apology speech acts? Does gender play a role in the overall success regarding interlanguage pragmatic development?
 Is there any relationship between L2 learners' development in request and apology variables between and within SA and SH groups?

Methodology
In the present research study, the researcher is willing to compare the amount of interlanguage pragmatics achievement in the study abroad and study at home groups.This study was conducted at two English language teaching centers in India (as study abroad groups) in which a number of Iranian students registered for a six-month language course and at Iran Language Institute in Iran (as study at home group) at the intermediate level.

Participants
The sample selection in this research study is that of available samples.As in both groups the samples are already placed at the intermediate level through a placement test and interview in the study abroad group and passed the test for the pre-intermediate level test in the previous term successfully, they were chosen as the participants.Moreover, giving them a TOEFL test to make them homogeneous in proficiency is disadvantageous in both wasting money and time.Moreover, language institutes may not agree to give so much time to the researcher to cover all the tests.Furthermore the learners are previously leveled through the institute's own procedures.

Instruments
In the current study the researcher is going to use an open questionnaire called Discourse Completion Task (DCT) on request developed by Schauer (2009) and another DCT on apology which is a modified version of 'Discourse Completion Test' used in Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP) (Blum-Kulka, 1982).The abovementioned CCSARP project focused on two speech acts (requests and apologies) in eight languages or varieties.

Procedure
The required data will be elicited through manipulating the above mentioned instruments step by step as follows:

Study Abroad (SA) learners
Step 1: Pre-test (DCT on Request and Apology).
Step 2: (six months later) Post-test (DCT on Request and Apology).

Study at-Home (AH) learners
Step 1: Pre-test (DCT on Request and Apology).
Step 2: (six months later) Post-test (DCT on Request and Apology).

Final step:
For the SA and SH groups, the pretest and post test papers will be scored by three native speakers based on the Speech Act Measure Rating Criteria prepared by Cohen et al. (2005) (Appendix A).

Overall success
Table 3 below illustrates the amount of gains in request and apology in both study abroad and study at home groups.As it can be seen, in study abroad group the mean in pre-test was 2.74 which increased to 4.21 in post-test, while in study at home group the amount of gain is less (pre: 2.63, post: 3.12).Therefore, there is a significant difference between the two groups at the level of p= .05.Moreover, comparing the amount of gain the two groups (study abroad = 1.47 and study at home = 0.49) obviously represents that study abroad is advantageous.

Findings
This overview of the relationship between language learning and the study abroad experience suggests that there are indeed differences between the language proficiency of those who have had the opportunity to reside abroad and those whose language learning has been limited to the formal language classrooms at home.Much of the research discussed above brings welcome empirical support to the long-held popular belief in the power of a study abroad experience to profoundly influence learners' linguistic skills.
The results of this research through quantitative analysis suggest that learners' overall performance on the requests and apologies has been higher after one semester studying abroad i.e. those who have been abroad appear to access more on interlanguage pragmatic development in using request and apology strategies.
Moreover, this study through a profound correlational study revealed that there is a significant positive relationship between request and apology development in both study abroad and at home groups.
This study also tackled with the role of gender in developing knowledge on request and apology.The results made clear that gender plays no role in the development of request and apology speech acts.

Conclusion
This study has come out to be an empirical support for the common belief in the linguistic and pragmatic advantage of study abroad.Regardless the effectiveness of the combination of classroom language teaching and context, this study focused on the impact of a six-month study abroad and study at home programs on the learners' pragmatic development in request and apology speech acts.This comparative study on study abroad and study at home revealed the proficiency in the study abroad learners outshine their counterparts in communicative knowledge in general and pragmatic proficiency in particular because of their sojourn in the native context with a classroom support.The results support the folk belief that study abroad is an excellent means to develop learners' pragmatic mindset.The measured gains in the pre-test and post-test in both groups confirmed the significant improved pragmatic ability of sojourners in study abroad group.In other words, learners living and studying in an L2 context are more likely to make progress in language use.

Table 1 .
Samples in the study

Table 2 .
Tools for data collection

Table 3 .
The overall success in SA and SH groups

Table 4 .
Correlation between variables within SA and SH groups

Table 4
depicts a set of correlations between variables in different phases.The results in this table yield this fact that there is a significant relationship between request and apology speech acts.This high correlation between these two speech acts, as shown in the table above, means that in language learning, request and apology speech acts develop simultaneously.Sig of .295which is higher than .05which in return reveals that there is no relationship between gender and development in interlanguage pragmatics in using request and apology speech acts.The tables above illustrate the results in this study pertaining to gender and interlanguage pragmatic development both in SA and SH groups.