Enhancing Saudi Female EFL Learners' Complaint Strategies

This study examined the impact of explicit instruction on the development of appropriate complaint strategies among English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners. Specifically, it focused on students' ability to produce both direct and indirect complaints in various social and academic contexts. Given the importance of pragmatic competence in effective communication, the study aimed to determine whether explicit instruction could enhance learners' ability to formulate complaints that align with sociocultural norms in English. A true-experimental design was employed, involving 70 university students at the B2 CEFR level, randomly assigned to either an experimental or a control group. A Computer-Animated Production Task (CAPT) was used as a pre-test and post-test to measure differences in complaint production between the groups. Data were collected through a production task designed to assess students' ability to generate pragmatically appropriate complaints. The effectiveness of explicit instruction was measured immediately after the intervention. The findings revealed that students in the experimental group significantly improved their ability to produce appropriate complaint strategies, outperforming the control group in the post-test assessment. These results underscore the effectiveness of explicit instruction in fostering pragmatic competence among EFL learners, reinforcing the need for incorporating pragmatic instruction into language curricula.