Assessing pragmatic comprehension competence in Farsi as a second/foreign language: From the perspective of speech acts in Farsi

Farsi's pragmatic comprehension development as a second or foreign language is examined in this paper with an eye toward learners' capacity to understand inferred meaning and contextually appropriate language use. Although pragmatic competence is quite important in efficient communication given the high-context character of Farsi, little study has looked at how L2 learners pick up these abilities in Farsi. Using both judgment tasks and reaction time measurements, the mixed-methods designevaluates the pragmatic comprehension of two groups: native and non-native speakers. The latter group was also divided into beginner and intermediate Farsi learners. 60 people in all finished a set of discourse completion tasks (DCTs) meant to assess sensitivity to indirectness, politeness, and speech act interpretation in formal and informal settings. With intermediate students performing more nearly to native speakers, quantitative data revealed notable variations in both accuracy and reaction times between competency levels. Learners who received explicit pragmatic instruction also showed faster response times and better comprehension than those without such instruction, therefore underscoring the success of formal teaching interventions. Particularly in informal settings, qualitative analyses exposed ongoing difficulties identifying indirect requests and culturally nuanced expressions. These results highlight the importance of educational resources and curricula including explicit pragmatic awareness training since they imply that both proficiency level and instructional method greatly influence pragmatic comprehension in Farsi. • Focus on Pragmatic Comprehension • High-Context Language Challenge • Mixed-Methods Design • Role of Instruction • Cultural Nuance Difficulties