The Effect of Instructed Intercultural Pragmatics on the Metapragmatic Awareness and Interactional Competence of Tertiary Indonesian EAL Learners

Intercultural communicative competence (ICC) is a widely recognised goal for learners of English as an additional language (EAL). An important aspect of ICC is understanding how communication is shaped by cultural expectations (i.e., metapragmatic awareness). However, in some teaching contexts, such as the university in which the current study was based, there is little focus on raising metapragmatic awareness beyond native-speaker norms. This approach may limit the opportunities available to learners to develop ICC. This situation led me to design a novel pedagogic intervention named instructed intercultural pragmatics (IIP), which draws from McConachy’s (2018) view of metapragmatic awareness and task-based language teaching. This approach aimed to foster the metapragmatic awareness and interactional competence of the Indonesian EAL learners in the study. The research was situated in an English conversation course at a private Indonesian university and was conducted in two phases. Phase 1, a situation analysis, examined the learners’ interactional needs and whether the existing instructional approach was congruent with these needs. The curriculum was analysed, and two program directors, four teachers, four learners, and three graduates were interviewed. Analysis of the syllabus, textbook materials, and teacher interviews showed an emphasis on learning pragmatic rules and memorising expressions from monolingual native-speaker discourse. In contrast, analysis of learner and graduate interviews showed their perceived need for pluricultural competence. These findings suggest that the instructional approach insufficiently addressed the learners’ interactional and intercultural needs. Drawing on these findings, Phase 2 investigated the impact of an IIP intervention on intercultural learning outcomes (metapragmatic awareness and interactional competence) using a quasi-experimental design. Three intact classes were assigned to one of three conditions: an IIP treatment emphasising reflexive metapragmatic discussion (n = 20), reflective metapragmatic discussion (n = 23), or a comparison group which followed the conventional teaching approach (n = 20). Data were triangulated from multiple sources: an appropriateness judgment questionnaire, exit slips, roleplays, and stimulated recalls. The questionnaire measured perceptions towards pragmatic utterances ranging in politeness and indirectness before and after the intervention. Results showed that the reflective group’s perceptions moved significantly closer to an English monolingual group, whereas no significant change was observed in the other groups. Results from the 190 exit slips, which gathered perceptions towards the lessons, showed that the reflexive and reflective groups made more frequent references to cultural aspects of the lessons when compared to the comparison group. Roleplays and stimulated recalls captured interactional competence before and after the intervention. A comparison of the pre- and post-data showed that the reflexive and reflective groups used a wider range of indirect conversation strategies after the intervention, while the comparison groups remained focused on following pragmatic rules. These findings cohere to suggest that an IIP intervention had a positive impact on learners’ metapragmatic awareness and interactional competence. Pedagogically, this study showed how a novel instructional intervention (IIP) was developed and implemented in two modes (reflexive and reflective). While the results showed positive learning outcomes for both reflexive and reflective modes, there were clear differences in the specific learning outcomes. The reflexive class became more aware of how culture informed their personal pragmatic practice, whereas the reflective class expanded their pragmatic repertoire. These findings provide guidance for teachers wishing to develop different aspects of intercultural communicative competence. Further, these results add to the growing empirical evidence supporting theoretical claims advocating for an intercultural stance in instruction on L2 pragmatics.