The effect of instructions on pragmatic development has often been a focus of studies on interlanguage pragmatics. However, the instructions applied in these studies have not been thoroughly discussed and thus have not been expounded upon any further than the familiar dichotomous instructions; e.g., implicit/explicit teaching. For this reason, the author reviews the previous studies that dealt with the effect of instructions, focusing particularly on Japanese EFL learners, and attempts to recategorize them into more appropriate approaches. By doing this, a guideline for the effect of instruction on pragmatic development can be proposed for future research so that the limitations concerning these studies can be addressed. Initially, this paper defines the study on the effect of instruction since numerous studies unfortunately failed to confirm the effect of instruction but confirmed the teachability of certain pragmatic features. Second, it sorts out instructions in these studies based on their purposes, revealing that the traditional explicit/implicit dichotomy may not necessarily be feasible. Third, it discusses the part of pragmatic competence for which the newly categorized instructions are effective. Finally, the paper concludes that these three considerations should be taken into account for further research on the effect of instruction on pragmatic development.