EFL learners’ pragmatic competence has been the focus of second language (L2) acquisition in the field of pragmatics. Pragmatic competence concerns the appropriate and effective use of language in social-cultural communicative contexts. However, there are often pragmatic failures occurring in cross-cultural communication due to the lack of pragmatic knowledge. Speech act and the ability to perform speech acts largely overlap with students’ pragmatic competence. Thus, speech act instruction is crucial for EFL students’ pragmatic competence. Based on the theories of speech act and pragmatic instruction, the present study advocates an explicit way of speech act instruction for developing students’ pragmatic competence in EFL teaching. And possible suggestions are put forward for speech act instruction including increasing speech act input and strategies, teaching speech acts in contexts, providing classroom settings for practice and employing explicit approach throughout speech act instruction. In this way can EFL students improve their pragmatic competence comprehensively.
Keywords: EFL teaching, act instruction, explicit speech, pragmatic competence
