Alicia Martínez

Only a few empirical studies have explored Focus on Form in the pragmatic realm. By operationalising this theoretical construct for an implicit condition, this study examined the effects of two types of pragmatic instruction (explicit and implicit) on learning head acts and downgraders in suggestions. Eighty-one Spanish learners of English took one of the three sections of a computer science class for a 16-week university semester.

Current Trends in the Development and Teaching of the four Language Skills builds connections from theory in the four language skills to instructional practices. It comprises twenty-one chapters that are grouped in five sections. The first section includes an introductory chapter which presents a communicative competence framework developed by the editors in order to highlight the key role the four skills play in language learning and teaching.

La importància d’aspectes discursius en l’ensenyament i aprenentatge de segones llengües s’ha fet palesa en les últimes dècades, sobretot a partir de la presència de l’enfocament comunicatiu en l’ensenyament. Com a conseqüència d’aquesta visió, diversos estudis s’han dut a terme tot considerant el desenvolupament i la promoció de la competència comunicativa dels aprenents.

This study explores the effects of teaching apologies at a discourse level on a group of Spanish learners of English as a foreign language both in the short and in the long-term. It adopts a one-group pre-, postand delayed post-test design to particularly examine the effectiveness of a pedagogical model on learners’ appropriate use of apology formulas not only after immediately receiving instruction, but also five months later. An interactive discourse completion test was used to analyse learners’ performance when apologising in different contrasting scenarios.