In light of each topic, the participants are required to make a 5-minute free conversation. The qualitative analysis of the if-conditionals used in the participants’

CHAPTER FIVE CONCLUSION

The present study has investigated how Taiwanese EFL learners use English if-conditionals in spontaneous communication. In this chapter, we will summarize the result of the study first and address pedagogical implications. Then, limitations of the study and suggestions for further research will be discussed.

5.1 Summary of the Present Study

The study examines how English if-conditionals are used by 18 EFL college freshmen in Taiwan. They are randomly paired into groups to conduct three situated conversations, where the topics assigned are Topic 1 Lottery, Topic 2 Winter/Summer Vacation and Topic 3 the 921 Earthquake. These topics are selected based on the degree of hypotheticality in order to elicit the use of diverse types of if-conditionals.

In light of each topic, the participants are required to make a 5-minute free conversation. The qualitative analysis of the if-conditionals used in the participants’

conversations shows not only the problems they have in the production of if-conditionals but also possible factors that may influence their performance.

In terms of the form-construction of if-conditionals, counterfactual if-conditionals appear to be more difficult than open ones. The frequency of errors in Topic 3, which is expected to elicit more counterfactuals, is higher than that in Topic 1.

The participants tend to oversimplify the structure of a counterfactual if-conditional without backshifting the verb tense/aspect. This indicates that they are unaware of the functions that different verbal forms of if-conditionals are meant to perform – that is, the choice of verb tense/aspect of if-conditionals is highly correlated with the degree of hypotheticality and the speaker’s epistemic stance. Furthermore, the participants’

unsatisfactory performance on the form-construction of if-conditionals suggests that

they have little sensitivity to the hypotheticality of the three situated conversation topics. In other words, they are not attentive enough to the surrounding discourse context in oral communication. They are shown to encounter great difficulty mapping the proper form of an if-conditional with the intended meaning.

When probing into the general tendency of errors within if-conditionals, we find that the participants are unable to produce accurate forms to maintain the coherence of epistemic stance between the protasis and the apodosis of an if-conditional. Over two-thirds of the participants’ errors result from the epistemic disagreement within if-conditionals. The inconsistency of formal structures between the protasis and the apodosis usually obscure the meaning the speaker intends to convey. Such deficiency confirms that the participants are incapable of producing proper forms to maintain the congruence of epistemic stance not only between an if-conditional and its external discourse context but also between the internal clauses of an if-conditional.

Furthermore, the participants adopt many substitutes to avoid producing if-conditionals. For example, they completely drop the conditional marker if but retain the superficial sequence of the protasis and apodosis in an if-conditional. Or they use the comparative to paraphrase a conditional sentence. Or they choose the word maybe, which indicates options or possibilities, to replace the if-conditional construction.

Such avoidance strategies, evidenced by hesitating pauses and repairs, indicate the difficulty of acquiring English if-conditionals in the development of EFL learners’

interlanguage.

This study also investigates what discourse-pragmatic functions if-conditionals

are applied to perform in oral communication. With a careful look at the relation that

each if-conditional establishes with the preceding discourse context, we identify three

major discourse functions in the spoken data – assuming, contrasting and exploring of

options. Comparing the discourse-pragmatic functions used in the EFL learners’ data

with those in English native speakers’, we observe that the learners’ performance is roughly compatible to the native speakers except that they do not practice the more interactional/interpersonal use of if-conditionals like “polite directives” (Ford and Thompson, 1986). This phenomenon can be attributed to the nature of the assigned topics, the input received by the learners, or the learners’ unfamiliarity with

“interactional talks” (McCarthy, 1991).

In addition to investigating the learners’ problems in the performance of if-conditionals, we explore possible influences on the deficiency. The learners’ L1 transfer is the first major influence. Their poor ability to construct correct forms of if-conditionals may be related to the morphosyntactic differences between L1 (i.e.

Chinese) and L2 (i.e. English). In contrast, their capability to perform appropriate discourse functions of if-conditionals conforms to the positive transfer of the similarities that L1 shares with L2. Meanwhile, the study evaluates the effect of input received by the participants by analyzing the if-conditionals in a senior-high textbook (i.e. Far East English Reader). It is found that there is not enough input of counterfactual if-conditionals but more varieties of discourse-pragmatic functions are provided in the textbook. The input is generally reflected in the participants’ output, where they show unfamiliarity with the form-construction of counterfactual if-conditionals but more confidence in the manipulation of discourse-pragmatic functions. What is worth greater attention is that many if-conditionals in the textbook display interactional/interpersonal use. The participants still fail to use if-conditionals to serve interactional purposes. This implies either that the input of interactional if-conditionals is still not sufficient enough, or that the existing pedagogy focuses too much on form-decoding work but overlook communicative values.

Because of the problems encountered by the participants and the insufficiency in

current instruction of if-conditionals, we propose the need for a more systematic and

functional approach to teaching English if-conditionals. In the following section, we will suggest some teaching guidelines to show how teachers can introduce students the use of if-conditionals.

5.2 Pedagogical Implications

This research studies the deficiency of EFL learners’ grammatical and pragmatic competence in terms of if-conditional constructions. The deficiency also indicates the insufficiency of current grammar instruction in Taiwan. According to previous research, most EFL teachers consider grammar an essential part to instruct in order to improve learners’ ability to use the target language (Borg, 1999; Lai, 2004).

Traditionally, teachers tend to adopt an output-oriented approach in grammar teaching.

That is, learners are often required to produce what they have been taught right after teachers present the “rules” of certain grammar focus. Exercises in senior-high school textbooks are usually limited to mechanical drills for sentence-making. In light of the findings of the present study, however, this kind of instruction is apparently of little help, particularly when it comes to a more complicated grammar point like if-conditionals.

From the theoretical perspective of second language acquisition, evidence has been revealed that an input-oriented approach may benefit learners more in grammar instruction (Krashen, 1983; Ellis, 1995, 1997). Also, research has proved that an input-based grammar instruction does more good to learners’ acquiring English if-conditionals (e.g. Wu, 2003). According to Ellis (1997), learners can be guided to

“notice” the pattern of a certain structure as long as enough input is provided. Then

they can “compare” the variations of that structure by resorting to the discourse

context of the input. They can further “integrate” or systematize the variations into

their interlanguage system. In other words, effective comprehension task rather than

passive memorizing work leads to learners’ active production ability, as Figure 5.1 illustrates.

Figure 5.1

An Input-oriented Process of Developing Interlanguage (With Reference to Ellis’ Model, 1997: 119)

Based on the spirit of the input-oriented model, this section will discuss several teaching guidelines accompanied with a presentation of two comprehension tasks and one oral production task in order to give English teachers clearer ideas about how to teach if-conditionals effectively.

The first guideline is that instruction should adopt a more comprehensive and descriptive account of the use of if-conditionals instead of depending too much on oversimplified rules. Traditional account of the formal variations of if-conditionals relies on prescriptive and misleading formulations without introducing the correlation between verb tense/aspect and hypotheticality/epistemic stance. As indicated in the previous chapter, EFL learners are prone to make errors when dealing with counterfactual if-conditionals, which require verb-backshifting. In addition, a few if-conditionals like example (23) in Chapter Four are observed in the input of the textbook but none in the participants’ spoken data. These imply EFL learners’

unawareness of the conception of form-and-function mappings in if-conditional

Noticing Comparing Integrating

Input Short-term Output

memory:

INTAKE

Long-term memory:

INTERLANGUAGE

SYSTEM

constructions. Thus, it is suggested that teachers highlight “the continuum of hypotheticality” in order to help learners establish a holistic system of this construction in their interlanguage (Comrie, 1986). To understand the significance of formal variations in if-conditionals is the first step to use this construction appropriately.

Second, with the descriptive explanations of if-conditionals as a foundation, teachers should provide materials with discourse-level context in order to offer learners chances to notice and compare the real language use of different types of if-conditionals. As discussed in the previous chapters, the choice of verbal forms of if-conditionals is usually discourse-bound. For example, in written text, learners should be guided to seek information from the preceding or succeeding context to decide what kind of if-conditionals is appropriate. The following is the first comprehension task, in which the text is taken from a senior-high school textbook, Sanmin English (Chen, 2005). This task aims to illustrate how teachers can promote learners’ awareness of proper form-construction of if-conditionals in discourse context.

(1) Book IV, Unit 2 The Chain of Love (p. 26)

She asked him how much she owed him and said any amount would be all right. She shuddered to imagine all those awful things

that could have happened if Joe had not helped. But Joe never thought twice about the money. It wasn’t a job but helping someone in need, and there were plenty of people who had lent him a helping hand in the past. He told her that

if she really wanted to repay him, she could help the next person whom she found in need.

After students read through the paragraph, the teacher can ask them to underline all

the if-conditional sentences and to mark the verbal forms in each sentence. The

teacher can guide students to notice the differences between the two if-conditionals.

Next, students can discuss in groups about why these if-conditionals differ in verb tense/aspect. They are encouraged to look for supporting information from the discourse context. If they can comprehend the text, students should be able to recognize that the two if-conditionals express distinct degree of hypotheticality.

If-conditional (a) in (1) is counterfactual, rejecting a past scenario, while (b) is open and predictive. If they resort to the prior context, students should notice that (b) is embedded in another sentence He told her that … and the past-tense verb forms in (b) has nothing to do with counterfactuality but with the past-time frame of the overall discourse context. Given instances of if-conditionals in discourse-level context rather than sentence-level, learners can practice comprehending the text first, noticing and comparing sources of formal variations and finally integrating what they have digested. As long as learners can perceive what role the verb tense/aspect of an if-conditional plays in its interpretation, they will become more capable of producing this construction.

The third guideline is that in oral communication, learners should be encouraged

to pay more attention to communicative purposes or discourse-pragmatic functions

that if-conditionals can achieve. Yet, previous research in second language acquisition

has uncovered that L2 learners often show an imbalance between lexico-grammatical

knowledge (i.e. microlevel) and discourse-pragmatic competence (i.e. macrolevel)

with the latter lagging behind the former (Bardovi-Harlig & Dornyei, 1998). The

finding is evidenced in the study because we observe no if-conditionals used for more

interactional/interpersonal purposes in the participants’ spoken data but many

instances in the textbook (e.g. examples (24) and (25) in Chapter Four). It is

suggested that students are mostly too busy with the form-encoding work to notice the

communicative values of if-conditionals. To improve EFL learners’ pragmalinguistic

awareness – association of linguistic features and pragmatic functions – in

if-conditionals, teachers should make advantage of the dialogues in textbooks, which not only demonstrate the various discourse-pragmatic functions of if-conditionals but also are the excellent source of input that every EFL student can easily reach.

However, some research has found that the discrepancy between EFL learners’

grammatical and pragmatic competence is correlated more with learners’ motivation (e.g. Takahashi, 2005). To stimulate learners’ motivation, we recommend a better source of extended materials other than dialogues in textbooks – that is, sitcoms like Friends. Sitcoms usually provide “extended context” as contextual clues for better comprehension and are most close to the learners’ real-life communication (Ishihara

& Chi, 2004). Simply speaking, sitcoms display clear social context where the story takes place and depict the power or interpersonal relationship between characters.

These are clues for us to make pragmatic inference. Thus, sitcoms can function as a simulated platform for EFL learners to observe how we usually communicate. With instruction from teachers, learners will be able to appreciate the discourse-pragmatic functions of if-conditionals in real communication.

Here, a scratch of conversation from Friends is selected to demonstrate the second comprehension task in order to show teachers how to guide learners to notice and to acquire the discourse-pragmatic functions of if-conditionals.

(2) Friends, Episode 401

Ross: She wants me to take responsibility for everything that went wrong in our relationship. I mean she goes on for five pages about, about how I was unfaithful to her! (Both Joey and Chandler shrug their shoulders as to say “Well...”) (yelling) WE WERE ON A BREAK!!!!!

Chandler: Oh my God!

If you say that one more time, I’m gonna break up with you!

Ross: Fine! Fine! But this break-up was not all my fault, and she, she

says here, (reading from the letter) “

If you accept full

responsibility...” (to Chandler and Joey) Full responsibility!

“...I can begin to trust you again. Does that seem like something you can do? (yells at Joey) Does it?!!”

Joey: No?

Chandler: Look, Ross, you have what you want, you’re back with Rachel.

If you bring this up now you’re gonna wreck the best thing that even happened to you.

As can be seen in (2), there are three if-conditionals in such a short scrap of

conversation. With the visual support, students can easily understand how the story is

developed. Meanwhile, the teacher can pass down transcriptions of the dialogue and

ask students to mark the if-conditional sentences. Next, students can re-watch the

video clip with full attention to linguistic (i.e. language features) and nonlinguistic

context (i.e. tone, gestures, facial expressions, etc.). In this way, students will notice

that the three if-conditionals are more than to explore a hypothetical situation. For

example, (a) is a polite way for Chandler to mitigate the force of command Don’t say

that again! and (b) is an indirect way for Rachel to make a request to Ross. As for (c),

it is used to moderately warn Ross of a possible loss. These functions of

if-conditionals are highly concerned with conventions that people use to deal with

interpersonal relationship. However, the interactional use of if-conditionals is a

neglected area in traditional grammar instruction. We suggest that dialogues in

textbooks and sitcoms with semi-authentic input serve as good sources for learners to

discuss how if-conditionals are used in real communication. Teachers can make good

use of the materials to reinforce learners’ pragmalinguistic awareness. Most

importantly, through the above task, students can realize the significance of language

as a device for communication. Once they can appreciate the different communicative

purposes that different if-conditionals fulfill, they will become more motivated and

find the acquisition of this construction more meaningful and efficient. Besides, their

realization of the functions of if-conditionals can serve as the foundation to make association with appropriate formal structures (e.g. regrets can be manifested by counterfactuals). All these are believed to facilitate EFL learners’ acquisition of if-conditionals.

In terms of the training of learners’ oral performance of if-conditionals, we consider role play an effective production task. Teachers can create all kinds of daily-life situations that students may come across, such as making appointments, asking for help, having fights or so, as prompts for students to practice using if-conditionals in simulated conversations. To maximize the efficiency of this activity, teachers can offer many different roles of participants that may be engaged in a certain situation (e.g. a teenager asks his/her parents for a raise of allowance money) for learners to choose. By means of role play, learners will be able to experience how people in different power relationships achieve their goal without damaging the harmony of interpersonal relationship. Besides, teachers should encourage learners to practice using if-conditionals through the activity. If necessary, teachers can also give them examples from textbooks or extended materials. After the role play, students can be grouped and share with one another why they would use if-conditionals in that way.

The discussion session provides learners a chance to examine and to integrate their use of if-conditionals in communication. It is believed that role play offers EFL learners a great platform to practice the discourse-pragmatic functions of if-conditionals because a well-designed role play activity includes every possible element in daily-life communication. If learners’ knowledge of the discourse-pragmatic use of if-conditionals can be improved through constant practice in role play, they will have a better command of this construction in real-life interaction.

In sum, the better way to teach EFL learners correct and appropriate use of

if-conditionals is to provide descriptive accounts with discourse-level materials. We suggest teachers to introduce the continuum of hypotheticality in order to offer learners an iconic view on the construction. Discussion after reading or listening gives learners opportunities to notice and compare different uses of if-conditionals based on the given discourse context. And role play is highly recommended for the training of EFL learners’ oral production of if-conditionals. Particularly note that extensive input enables learners to accumulate and integrate a system of if-conditionals. Effective comprehension can further serve as the foundation of EFL learners’ active production ability in communication.

5.3 Limitations and Suggestions for Further Research

Through the study, we have indicated EFL learners’ problems in the form-construction of if-conditionals and suggested that the concept of the association between forms of if-conditionals and hypotheticality/epistemic stance should be the foundation on which learners rely to fully understand this construction. In addition, we have pointed out that EFL learners can perform the textual-level discourse functions of if-conditionals. The interaction-level discourse-pragmatic functions, though observed frequently in senior-high school textbooks, are what learners need to improve. We have also revealed the influence of L1 transfer and the input received on learners’ unsatisfactory performance in if-conditionals. In light of these observations, we propose a few teaching guidelines for EFL teachers to adjust their instruction of if-conditionals. However, there are still a few issues for the investigation of EFL learners’ use of if-conditionals which are not included in the study.

First of all, the number of if-conditionals collected is so limited that we can only make a qualitative analysis to show the general tendency of the learners’ performance.

If more groups of learners could be gathered, a quantitative analysis would be

conducted to make the study more holistic. Second, the language elicited is not representative enough of daily-life communication due to the confinement of the assigned conversation topics, so that no interpersonal use of if-conditionals has been observed. The non-application of interactional if-conditionals in the participants’

interlanguage does not necessarily suggest their inability to perform this function. If more daily-life conversation data could be collected, we would be able to evaluate whether the learners can actually use interactional if-conditionals. Third, the interpretation of the learners’ use of if-conditionals is mainly based on the discourse context. We cannot tell if our interpretation is exactly correct because what learners really think and intend to do while they are making a decision on which if-conditional to use is unknown. If an interview with participants after the experiment could be implemented, we would be able to double-check our interpretation with the learners’

principles of using if-conditionals. Fourth, in the present study, only the prominent discourse-pragmatic function that is straightforward to the analyst are taken into consideration. However, the possibility of having two or more than two pragmatic functions in one conditional construction is never excluded. Such overlapping functions of if-conditionals should deserve more research focus in future studies.

The limitations of the present study suggest a need for a more large-scale and holistic research on both EFL learners’ perception and production of if-conditionals.

Studies that include both comprehension test and production test on if-conditionals can show if there is any discrepancy between learners’ performances in the two language abilities. Furthermore, written language is usually different from spoken one because writers have more time to construct the language forms than speakers.

Research that compares the if-conditionals in EFL learners’ spoken and written

interlanguage can reveal differences in learners’ ability of producing this construction

in the two language forms. Finally, different participants in the study display different

ability to deal with if-conditionals. It is believed that learners’ different proficiency

levels affect how they rate the difficulty level of if-conditionals. For example,

beginners may face more problems in the construction of counterfactuals than

advanced learners. An investigation of how learners of different proficiency levels use

and interpret various types of if-conditionals can help teachers adjust instruction to

meet the need of different students. Therefore, a comparison of the use of

if-conditionals by beginners, intermediate learners and advanced ones is worth further

research.