Are e-mails written by EFL learners polite? An experimental study on pragmatic performance and age

The present study analyses possible pragmatic problems that English as a foreign language learners (EFL) with different ages may encounter when writing e-mails to interlocutors with a higher rank. Since e-mail writing is a ‘hybrid’ between oral and written communication, e-mails have been commonly used to see how learners produce the FL pragmatics. Some studies have, in fact, used real e-mails between native and non-native speakers to examine what learners actually produce in such contexts. However, some experimental studies have also been carried out in this line. From a pedagogical perspective, these studies can help us see what the learners’ weaknesses are when writing e-mails, which can later be applied to classroom contexts to overcome possible communicative breakdowns. Therefore, the present study aims at filling two existing gaps of research: first, age effects on e-mail writing; and second, the use of an experimental design for pedagogical purposes. The participants are 40 Catalan/Spanish EFL learners with a B1 level divided into two age groups: 20 (age 18-20) and 20 (age 30-40). The former group is composed by undergraduates in the first year of their English Studies degree, and the latter consisted of professionals. They had to write an e-mail to a teacher in English, and a month later in their L1. A base-line data of English native speakers was also included (N=20). In order to examine pragmatic production, openings and closings, requests and apologies were analyzed. The e-mails were also given to a group of native judges, who rated them in terms of politeness and pragmatic appropriateness. The results show differences in terms of age: while undergraduates use more direct requests, very poor openings and closings and no apologies, professionals tend to write more polite e-mails regarding these pragmatic features. Such findings were supported by the native speakers’ perception of politeness. It should be highlighted, though, that the low degree of formality and politeness could be found in both L1 and L2 productions. This suggests that there is a need to focus on e-mail writing in classroom contexts, so as to avoid problems in pragmatic exchanges.