On the afternoon of April 16 2014, Dr. REN Wei from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences gave a lecture entitled “L2 Pragmatics in Study Abroad Contexts” at the National Key Research Center for Linguistics & Applied Linguistics, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies.

Dr. Ren briefly introduced the current situation of second language (L2) pragmatics, with a focus on longitudinal studies on learners’ L2 pragmatic development in study abroad contexts, and pointed out methodological weakness in this field. Then he presented a longitudinal investigation into the effect of study abroad on the pragmatic development of Chinese students’ employment of internal modifications in their L2 English refusals. Using the Multimedia Elicitation Task (MET) and the Appropriate Judgment Task (AJT), the study collected data from 20 Chinese graduate students studying abroad (SA) and 20 Chinese graduate students studying at home (AH) at three different points during one academic year. The SA students also completed a retrospective verbal report (RVR) in each phase of the data collection. Results indicated that the two groups showed similar development in the range of internal modification types in their refusals. Furthermore, with respect to the frequency of internal modifications, the difference between the SA students and the AH students was not statistically significant. However, analyses of the participants’ use of individual internal modifications revealed different development patterns in the utilisation of ‘address term’. The analyses of the SA students’ RVR revealed that they paid increasingly more attention to sociopragmatics in context. It also evidenced the SA students’ pragmatic development across the three phases, reflected by the decrease of pragmatic difficulties and the increase of pragmatic knowledge acquired.

Finally, Dr. Ren pointed out the methodological implications and some trend for further studies.