Abstract
The present study attempts to record and analyze developments in the L2 pragmatic competence of a group of university-level Japanese learners of English as a result of time spent studying intensively in a target language community. Adopting a longitudinal method, this study focuses specifically on the realization of two speech acts: requests and apologies. Realizations of these speech acts were measured using a Discourse Completion Test with four situations based on Brown and Levinson's (1987) categorizations and the test was administered twice in a pre/post design, before and after the overseas experience. A detailed analysis of the data was carried out focusing on pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic features. As a result of the study, some positive effects of the overseas experience were identified, with some specific findings on the development of syntactic, lexical, and semantic aspects. Furthermore, some implications for future research were suggested.
