Developing Students’ Illocutionary Competence Through Conversational Implicature-based Instruction

Abstract

Implicatures are culture-bound features of everyday language use. Understanding these features in an EFL/ESL context promotes learners’ appropriate production and interpretation of various illocutions. This study explores the effect(s) conversational implicature instruction may have on developing EFL students’ illocutionary competence. To bring about the objectives, an interview was devised and distributed on 10 teachers and a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) that targeted 35 third year EFL students at the English Language and Literature department of M’sila University was adapted to assess both students’ ability to produce and work out contextualized conversational implicatures. The study used a mixed method approach and a correlational research design to correlate teachers’ CI instructions with students’ performance in CI small-scale tests. Findings revealed a significant positive correlation at the level 0.62 between teachers’ CI instruction and students’ test performance leading to a positive effect CI instruction has on developing the respondents’ illocutionary competence. It is then advocated that CI instruction be laid importance in EFL classes to help students elicit pertinent illocutions and minimize miscommunication in naturally occurring English conversational exchanges.