| Summary: | The present study investigates the effect of study abroad on Chinese learners' L2 pragmatic development longitudinally. Using the Multimedia Elicitation Task (MET) and the Appropriateness Judgment Task (AJT), the study collected data from 20 Chinese graduate students studying abroad (SA) and 20 Chinese graduate students studying at home (A H) at three different points during one academic-year. The SA students also completed a retrospective verbal report (RVR) in each phase of the data collection. Overall the study has evidenced the complexity in the effect of study abroad on learners' L2 pragmatic development. The results revealed that study abroad did not affect the overall frequency of learners' choice of opt-outs, nor did it significantly influence their overall frequency of refusal modifications. However, study abroad did have an impact on the repertoire of pragmatic strategies among the SA students, although the same developmental trend was also observed in the AH students' refusals. Furthermore, a significant decrease in the overall frequency of refusal strategies was only observed in the SA students' data between Phase 2 and Phase 3. This study documented that study abroad did not affect the SA students' overall ratings in the AJT. However, analyses of the SA students' RVR evidenced that their noticing of pragmatic infelicities developed significantly during their study abroad, indicating a positive influence of study abroad in learners' L2 pragmatic perception development. The analyses of the SA students' RVR revealed that the SA students paid increasingly more attention to sociopragmatics when they read the MET, whereas fewer SA students reported employing Ll as the language of thought in fewer instances. The changes of the SA students' preference of directness/indirectness indicated that they became more aware of the social status during social interactions. Furthermore, the study also observed the SA students' pragmatic development across the three phases.
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