زهرا فاخر عجب شیر

Although the effect of scaffolding on different domains of L2 has been widely investigated, when it comes to EFL pragmatics, one faces the paucity of the research studies. Building upon sociocultural theory of Vygotsky, the present study explored the effect of peer scaffolding on EFL learners' production of speech acts of requests and apologies. The participants included 125 EFL students who were randomly assigned to control and scaffolding groups. Following metapragmatic instruction on speech acts, the scaffolding group went through interactional problem solving tasks which demanded for peer scaffolding and drawing upon their collective resources to reach the ultimate solution. Prior to and following the treatment all participants completed a pretest on L2 pragmatics to assess their proficiency before and after the treatment. The results of paired samples test and ANOVA revealed that while control group did not made a statistically significant improvement from pretest to posttest, scaffolding group revealed a significant improvement. However, the improvement was found to be short-term and did not maintain over the period of four weeks. The findings have implications in language teaching and pedagogy and suggest that pragmatic knowledge is likely to develop through assisted performance.