Investigating the effect of VR-mediated pragmatics instruction on L2 refusal strategies

Pragmatic competence remains a vital yet often overlooked area in instructed second language learning, particularly in the domain of refusal speech acts. This quasi-experimental study investigated the effect of VR-mediated explicit pragmatics instruction on L2 learners’ refusal strategies. Fifty-two intermediate-level EFL Turkish university students were drawn from two intact B1-level classes assigned to experimental (N = 27) or control (N = 25) conditions. Inferential analyses were conducted on the 37 participants (experimental: N = 19; control: N = 18) who completed three testing phases. The experimental group received six hours of VR-based pragmatics training through ThingLink , a non-immersive VR platform, practicing refusal strategies in interactive virtual environments with immediate feedback, whereas the control group received traditional coursebook instruction that implicitly addressed pragmatics. Discourse Completion Tests elicited refusal responses across interlocutor status conditions, and performance-based tasks complemented the DCTs using an adapted pragmatics assessment rubric. A mixed-design ANOVA with Bonferroni-corrected contrasts examined group, time, and interaction effects, and a parallel multilevel model fitted on the full observed sample (N = 52, 132 observations) verified robustness. DCT responses were coded using an established refusal strategy taxonomy, and retrospective interviews were thematically analyzed. Results showed that VR-based instruction significantly enhanced learners’ pragmatic competence, with findings stable across both analytical frameworks. The experimental group demonstrated substantially larger gains, maintained a significant advantage three weeks post-instruction, and reported greater confidence in real-life communication compared to the control group, which showed significant but smaller and less sustained improvement. These findings indicate non-immersive VR as a promising pedagogical tool for developing pragmatic competence in EFL contexts.