Pragmatic strategy use in English as a lingua franca in academic settings: evidence from Chinese learners in English for academic purposes

Abstract The internationalisation of higher education has consolidated English as a lingua franca in academic settings (ELFA) as a principal medium of academic intercultural communication. Research on ELFA interaction increasingly demonstrates that communicative effectiveness depends less upon conformity to standardised linguistic norms than upon speakers’ adaptive deployment of pragmatic strategies to negotiate meaning and sustain interactional coordination in multilingual communication. These interactional realities challenge dominant English for academic purpose (EAP) pedagogies, which continue to privilege form-focused and norm-oriented models of academic communication despite the fluid and collaboratively negotiated character of ELFA interaction. Drawing on approximately 30 h of naturally occurring ELFA study-group discussions involving Chinese MA students and peers from diverse linguacultural backgrounds at a UK university, this study employs conversation analysis supplemented by semi-structured interviews to examine both the situated deployment and developmental trajectories of pragmatic competence in interactions in academic settings. The findings demonstrate that participants effectively mobilised a range of strategies to negotiate understanding, manage communicative contingency, and sustain interactional alignment in real time. Importantly, participants attributed the development of such competence primarily to sustained engagement in authentic multilingual interaction rather than to explicit ELFA-aware instruction within pre-sessional EAP or IELTS-oriented contexts. The study consequently identifies a persistent misalignment between form-focused EAP pedagogy and the interactionally negotiated realities of ELFA communication. In response, I propose an ELFA-aware pedagogical framework organised around awareness-raising, task-based enactment, and sustained engagement with authentic multilingual interaction. By foregrounding communicative adaptability, interactional flexibility, and learner agency, the study contributes to the pedagogical operationalisation of ELFA-aware principles within EAP-oriented pragmatic strategy instruction.