The Effects of Conversational Implicature Training on the development of TEFL Omani Students’ Language Proficiency and Pragmatic Competence

Abstract

According to several EFL scholars in pragmatics, pragmatic competence is seen as an essential part which a foreign language teacher should have. One of the basic areas in pragmatics is Gricean conversational implicatures. Hence, the current research aims to investigate the effects of interpreting conversational implicature training (TEFL) on the development of Omani Undergraduate Students Pragmatic Competence and Language Proficiency. The participants of the study were 20 undergraduate students from Sultan Qaboos University. Two instruments were used in this research, the TOEIC test for language proficiency and the pragmatic competence test. The two tests were given to the students as pre-test and post-test and then both results were compared. The findings of the study statically proved that there is an effect of instructional implicature on students' pragmatic competence and their language proficiency development. In addition, the findings show that a significant correlation occurred, at the level of 0.720, between the pragmatic competence of the participants and their language proficiency. Based on the findings, TEFL teachers should have sufficient pragmatic competence knowledge through their study program. Consequently, it is suggested that there should be more research on this topic in the Omani context.