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This study mainly aims to present a literature review on the factors that are thought to have an impact on EFL learners' acquisition of pragmatic competence in target language. The present study is composed of five sections; the importance of input and feedback on instruction; the impact of explicit and implicit instruction on learners' acquisition of pragmatic norms; the association of individual differences with pragmatic development; context and discourse practices; speech acts and semantic formulas. Emphasizing the inadequacy of the related studies, particularly in Turkish context, this study is anticipated to prompt more linguists to investigate pragmatic factors that affect Turkish EFL learners' acquisition of target language sociocultural norms.
Keywords: Pragmatic competence, EFL learners, Language context, Individual differences.
Introduction
Pragmatics has long been one of the most important aspects of language for learners to understand and be understood in a variety of contexts. Pragmatics is 'the study of language from the point of view of users, especially of the choices they make, the constraints they encounter in using language in social interaction and the effects their use of language has on other participants in the act of communication' (Crystal, 1997:301). Pragmatic competence or the ability to use language appropriately in a given context has been one of the basic matters of EFL studies for more than two decades (Ifantidou, 2013).
Many studies have been carried out in the past two decades on speech acts, such as; requests, refusals, apologies and compliments (Ahn, 2007; Halenko & Jones, 2011; Koike & Pearson, 2005; Macaulay, 2001; Takimoto, 2009). But the studies on understanding the way how second language (L2) learners produce particular speech acts are limited in number and there has been little investigation on how learners learn pragmatic norms (Ahn, 2007; Bardovi-Harlig, 1999; Martinez-Flor & Fukuya, 2005; Soler, 2005). Numerous studies have investigated the factors which are considered to be effective on learners' communicative interactions, such as; motivation, individual variables, instruction, feedback, input, speech acts and others. However, only one or two of these factors have been examined at a time in these studies. For instance, in a study on explicit instruction, Shively (2010) found that explicit instruction plays an important role in providing learners with appropriate L2 pragmatic norms. Takimoto (2009) focused on structured input...