La ense？anza del acto de habla de los cumplidos a estudiantes de inglés como lengua extranjera

the pragmatic component is vital in teaching foreign languages. this article reports the effects of teaching compliments to a level-b1* group that studied english as a foreign language. this case study was carried out in medellín, colombia. data were gathered through the discourse completion test (dct), which students took before and after the explicit teaching of compliments, and through the notes on the process that the teacher-researcher had registered in his field diary. finally, an interview was conducted in order to triangulate all the information. the results show that students improved their level of semantic precision when giving and receiving compliments after the explicit teaching of these speech acts. * according to the standards of the common european framework for languages.