VERBAL REPORT IN INTERLANGUAGE REQUEST PRODUCTION OF CROATIAN EFL LEARNERS
VERBAL REPORT IN INTERLANGUAGE REQUEST PRODUCTION OF CROATIAN EFL LEARNERS

Summary/Abstract: The present small-scale exploratory study investigates cognitive processes underlying the performance of speech act of requesting by Croatian learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). The study focuses on retrospective verbal reports of 30 learners (beginners, intermediate, advanced) elicited in conjunction with their responses to 28 situations in Discourse Completion Task (DCT). Qualitative analysis indicates that the type of thoughts most commonly reported by the learners were related to difficulties they had with retrieving appropriate vocabulary items. The low-proficiency learners could not perform simple language tasks automatically and unconsciously and were more concerned with the propositional meaning of their utterances than with pragmatics. More proficient learners performed these tasks automatically and were able to consider the pragmatic aspect of their utterances. They verbalized their thoughts more clearly and eloquently than the low-level learners. The study shows that verbal reports are crucial for discovering cognitive processes behind the learners’ pragmatic production.

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