Abstract:
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Acknowledgements
First and foremost, heartfelt praises goes to Allah who guided us through all the stages of this study.
We are massively grateful to our honourable teacher and supervisor Dr. Baghdadi Assia for her immense support, guidance, and patience. Without her valuable feedback, this work would not have been possible.
We are very thankful to the jury members for accepting to read and to evaluate our research. Their priceless comments will surely help us enormously enhance this work.
We are indeed indebted to Miss Laadjal Karima for taking the full responsibility of the experiment, and for helping us throughout the course of this work.
We are also thankful to second year students at the Department of English of the University of M’sila for taking part in this research.
We would like to thank all the teachers of the English Department at the University of M’sila with special thanks to teachers who participated in the interview.
We also take the full responsibility for the mistakes and flaws in our research. Any consequences are not endorsed by our supervisor.
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Abstract
Despite the fact that grammar and pragmatics hold an important place in foreign language education, the integration of pragmatic insights in grammar lessons is still neglected within the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of M’sila. The present study aims at investigating the effectiveness of pragmatics instruction on EFL students’ grammatical achievement regarding the use of tenses. The study targets second year students from the Department of English at the University of M’sila. In order to achieve valid results, a triangulated research method was applied encompassing three data collection tools: A descriptive method was implemented via a questionnaire to second year EFL students, and an interview to grammar teachers at the Department of English at M’sila University; and an experimental method whereby pre and post tests were conducted on both control group and experimental group. The experimental group received explicit pragmatics instruction by means of integrating meta-pragmatic information into the principles and uses of tenses, whereas the control group was not exposed to the planned instructional treatment. The obtained results have revealed that grammar teachers do not make use of pragmatics instruction, and that pragmatics instruction does have a positive impact over students’ grammatical achievement, as it raises students’ awareness of all about the importance of the pragmatic dimension in grammar teaching. Henceforth, teachers of grammar should integrate pragmatics insights into their lessons for the sake of helping FL students produce contextually appropriate language.
