Do Pragmatic Awareness and Grammatical Awareness Relate to Motivation and Severity Rating, and Do They Relate to One Another?
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Abstract
Motivation is one of the factors that are believed to be related to the awareness of the second language (L2) features and the L2 pragmatic learning. This study aims to determine if the pragmatic and grammatical awareness relates to motivation and severity rating, and if the pragmatic and grammatical awareness are correlated to one another. The subjects were 81 first-year English-major Thai students at Naresuan University. These students learned English within a foreign language (EFL) context. Two sets of analyses were carried out; one for each type of awareness being investigated. The first set, with the dependent factor being grammatical awareness, used the following independent factors: five types of motivation (ideal L2 self, ought-to L2 self, L2 learning experience, intended effort, L2 anxiety), the severity rating of the grammatical inappropriateness and the pragmatic awareness. The independent factors of the second set were similar to the first, except that the severity rating of the grammatical inappropriateness and the pragmatic awareness were changed into the severity rating of the pragmatic inappropriateness and the grammatical awareness, and the dependent factor was pragmatic awareness. The findings showed that the severity rating of the grammatical inappropriateness was the only factor that was significantly correlated to the grammatical awareness, and the severity rating of the pragmatic inappropriateness was the only factor that was significantly related to the pragmatic awareness. These findings suggest that L2 learners’ perception of the seriousness of the grammatical and pragmatic mistakes has a greater bearing on grammatical and pragmatic awareness than motivation or the other awareness factors.
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References
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