Chapter 3. Amount of practice and pragmatic development of request-making in L2 Chinese

This chapter focuses on the amount of pragmatics practice needed for promoting accurate and speedy recognition and production of request-making forms in L2 Chinese. Over four consecutive days, an input group (n = 17) and an output group (n = 17) practiced using target request-making forms via computerized input-based and output-based practice activities, respectively. Meanwhile, a control group (n = 15) did Chinese reading comprehension exercises that did not contain the target pragmatic features. Two computerized instruments (a pragmatic listening judgment task and an oral discourse completion task) were administered to assess pragmatic development over time. The results showed that, regardless of practice modality (input-based and output-based), four instances of processing target pragmatic features were sufficient to enhance pragmatic performance accuracy, yet more than eight instances were needed for the development of performance speed.