The Role of Corrective Feedback in Developing Pragmatic Competence: The Study of Intermediate Persian Language Learners

Given the fact that no original and genuine study has ever investigated the effect of corrective feedback on the development of the Persian language learners' pragmatic competence, the present study aimed at studying the effect of two main types of corrective feedback, namely recast and metalinguistic feedback, on the production of two speech acts of request and refusal among intermediate learners of Persian. To this end, 76 Persian learners were randomly selected and assigned to four groups: task-based instruction and recast, task-based instruction and metalinguistic feedback, traditional instruction and recast, and traditional instruction and metalinguistic feedback.  The instrument used in this study was a valid and reliable WDCT (Tajeddin, Keshavarz, and Zand Moghadam, 2012) that was used as a pre- and post-test. The treatment in each group took six weeks (12 hours). The results showed that the groups who received task-based instruction outperformed the other groups. It was also revealed that metalinguistic feedback during task based instruction was more effective than recast. This study has implications for Persian language teachers, syllabus designers and materials developers as well as test designers.