Rose, K. R. (2000). An exploratory cross-sectional study of interlanguage pragmatic development. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 22 (1), 27-67.

Reports the results of an exploratory cross-sectional study of pragmatic development among three groups of primary school students in Hong Kong who completed a cartoon oral production task designed to elicit requests, apologies, and compliment responses in EFL or in Cantonese -- the first two speech acts being in their curriculum but not the third. They found little evidence of pragmatic transfer from Cantonese. The subjects were approximately 40 children at levels P-2, P-4, and P-6 respectively, half receiving the prompts in English, half in Cantonese. They were to tape record what they thought the character in the cartoon would say. In requests, there is at best only weak evidence of any situational variation. It would seem that the children had not yet developed the pragmatic competence in English to exhibit such situational variation. It could also be that the instrument did not adequately capture the relevant contextual features. In apologies, all three levels had similar responses regarding the strategy of expressing an apology. However, P-6 demonstrated more control over intensifiers. They also acknowledged responsibility more and offered repair -- a pattern that was not found in the Cantonese data. There was little evidence of situational variation however. Compliments were not in the curriculum. The most frequent strategy was acceptance of the apology -- in Cantonese as well, so the patterns were similar. There was a marked increase in both frequency and range of strategies used with the P-6 group. No background questions were asked so there is no way of knowing about exposure to English-speaking domestic helpers, parents' English proficiency, and attitudes towards English.