Expressing gratitude is a speech act that normally does not form a specific content in textbooks for L2 Spanish, but it appears individually in the dialogues of different situations. Consequently, if teachers do not place emphasis on its context and the social factors in which it takes place, learners, especially beginners, might assume all expressions containing the word gracias function as thanking. In addition, nowadays pragmatic competence is an essential element in foreign language learning. In order to achieve a successful communicative interaction, not only linguistic and communicative competence are necessary, but also pragmatics. The main goal of this study is to analyze expressions of gratitude from a pragmatic perspective, as well as examine the perception of learners in different thanking situations. The data is collected through a questionnaire based on dialogues extracted from some L2 Spanish textbooks. Forty-nine Taiwanese A1 level Spanish students participated in this research. Subsequently, we performed a quantitative and qualitative analysis with the data obtained. The results of the analysis indicate that L2 linguistic competence is a determining factor for the development of pragmatic competence. In this way, integrating pragmatic components in the Spanish language classroom is crucial for appropriate interpretation and production within the communicative context of the target language.
