Mahmoud Afrouz - Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Foreign Languages, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran
Alyaa Alkawaz - Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Foreign Languages, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran
Daryush Nejadansari - Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Foreign Languages, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran
Azizollah Dabaghi - Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Foreign Languages,University of ‎Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran

L۲ learners' pragmatic development could be manifested by their proper speech act production. Due to the existing differences among languages, errors in speech act realization are inevitable. Employing well-established teaching methods could help L۲ learners overcome their problems in speech act production. This endeavor aimed to explore the effects of explicit metapragmatic instruction on Iraqi EFL learners' use of English requests, apologies, and refusals examining the possible intervening role of error type and gender. The study sample comprised ۸۰ English major B.A. students at Al-Kufa University, Iraq. Within six online sessions, the EG received instruction through direct awareness raising and being provided with metapragmatic information. Data analyses indicated that explicit pragmatic instruction significantly improved the students' speech act realization. Additionally, while the female learners benefitted more from the intervention and a higher percentage of sociopragmatic, compared to pragmalinguistic, errors were amended after the treatment, the variables of gender and pragmatic error types did not have significant intervening effects. The findings imply that developing pragmatic competence via direct pragmatic intervention and metapragmatic knowledge awareness needs to receive much attention on the part of Iraqi language instructors, materials developers, and curriculum designers, as it could greatly help learners avoid pragmatic failures.

explicit pragmatic instruction, metapragmatic instruction, sociopragmatic errors, pragmalinguistic errors, gender, speech act production