VietTESOL International Convention 2026

This study investigated the effects of pragmatic instruction on EFL students’ pragmatic awareness and written production of refusals in English. The study employed a quasi-experimental one-group pre-test–post-test design involving 34 Grade 11 students at a high school in Da Lat, Vietnam. Data were collected through Written Discourse Completion Tests (WDCTs) and written reflection tasks administered before and after a three-week instructional treatment. The instructional treatment included awareness-raising activities, explicit explanation, guided discussion, and authentic or semi-authentic audiovisual materials focusing on refusal strategies, politeness, and contextual appropriateness. Students’ responses were analyzed in terms of direct and indirect refusal strategies, mitigation devices, and levels of pragmatic awareness, including linguistic, pragmalinguistic, and sociopragmatic awareness. The findings showed that pragmatic instruction positively affected students’ written production of refusals. After instruction, students used more indirect and mitigated refusal strategies, including apologies, explanations, and alternative suggestions. In addition, students demonstrated increased awareness of contextual factors such as social relationships, power distance, and the interlocutor’s feelings. The written reflections also revealed greater pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic awareness in the post-test stage. The findings support Schmidt’s Noticing Hypothesis and previous research on instructed pragmatics, suggesting that explicit pragmatic instruction can enhance learners’ pragmatic competence and awareness in EFL classroom contexts.

Keywords: pragmatics, pragmatic instruction, refusals, pragmatic awareness, EFL learners, WDCT.