زهرا فاخر عجب شیر

Collaborative dialogue proposed by Swain (2000) has been grounded on co-construction of knowledge by L2 learners drawing upon their shared resources. Thus far, most of the studies on collaborative dialogue have focused on micro-level grammatical and lexical aspects, and they have rarely focused on discoursal and pragmatic macro-level aspects. The current study investigates the collaborative dialogue produced by Iranian EFL learners during collaborative tasks on L2 pragmatics. The purpose was to identify the effect of collaborative dialogue on acquisition of request and apology speech acts. Moreover, the study explored whether the frequency and resolution of pragmatic-related episodes (PRE) s during collaborative problem-solving tasks differed across High-High, High-Low and Low-Low dyads. The participants were 89 EFL learners who were assigned to High-High, High-Low and Low-Low dyads based on their L2 pragmatic proficiency. The dyads were engaged in collaborative problem-solving tasks for seven sessions during which samples of their collaborative dialogues were audio recorded and analyzed in terms of the frequency and outcome of PREs. Findings revealed the positive effect of collaborative dialogue on development of L2 pragmatics in all dyads. Also, H-H dyads were found to produce PREs more frequently than H-L and L-L dyads. Regarding the outcome of PREs, H-H dyads resolved most of PREs correctly while the number of incorrectly solved episodes was roughly similar in production of H-L and L-L dyads. The findings offer pedagogical implications to EFL teachers and educators on how to best pair learners in collaborative activities.