EFL Learners’ Production of Implicit Compliments

In contrast to explicit compliments, only very few studies have addressed the pedagogical aspects of teaching implicit compliments in English to EFL learners. The present study, designed to help fill the gap, compared Korean EFL learners' pragmatic ability to produce implicit compliments with that to produce explicit compliments and examined proficiency dependent differences in their ability to produce implicit and explicit compliments, as well as two types of implicit compliments. A total of 45 participants, assigned to low, intermediate, and high proficiency groups, performed a pragmatic production task and took part in a post-task interview. Results showed that EFL learners performed significantly worse in producing implicit compliments than in producing explicit compliments, which was attributed to the unformulaic nature of implicit compliments. Concerning the impact of proficiency on EFL learners' ability to produce implicit compliments, it was importantly found that significant differences existed between any two groups of the three proficiency groups. Further, proficiency was revealed to differently affect EFL learners' production of two types of implicit compliments. In terms of pedagogical implications, the study suggests that the explicit teaching of implicit compliments to EFL learners taking into account proficiency levels should be seriously discussed.