Abstract This study investigated the development of the ability to interpret conversational implicatures in English as an L2. The study followed a cross-sectional design and used a methodologically innovative audio-visual interpretation task with an oral production component. By orally reporting their interpretations, participants demonstrated comprehension of conversational implicatures viewed in a video, rather than employing a predetermined response approach used in earlier studies, which neither explore nor reveal how L2 learners understand implicatures. Fifty participants, forty-five learners at three proficiency levels and five native speakers of English, took part in the study. The results indicated that the comprehension of conversational implicatures showed a significant improvement as L2 proficiency increased. Learner responses were additionally coded based on stages of implicature calculation, which demonstrated that not only learners’ correct interpretations but also their incorrect responses provide insights into their interlanguage development. Such a finding further illustrates the superiority of a free response approach over a predetermined one since the former approach can better shed light on L2 learners’ true pragmatic competence in conversational implicatures.

中文翻译：

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理解英语中的会话含义

摘要这项研究调查了将英语作为第二语言理解会话含义的能力的发展。该研究遵循横断面设计，并采用了具有方法论创新性的视听口译任务以及口头制作成分。通过口头报告他们的解释，参与者展示了对视频中观看的会话暗示的理解，而不是采用早期研究中使用的预定响应方法，既没有探索也没有揭示L2学习者如何理解暗示。这项研究包括50名参与者，35名熟练程度为45的学习者和5名以英语为母语的人。结果表明，随着L2水平的提高，对会话含意的理解得到了显着改善。根据隐含计算的阶段，还对学习者的回答进行了编码，这表明不仅学习者的正确解释，而且他们的错误回答都为他们的中介语言发展提供了见识。由于前一种方法可以更好地阐明二语学习者在会话暗示中的真实务实能力，因此这一发现进一步说明了自由响应方法优于预定方法。