This chapter examines how pragmatic demand, operationalised as high versus low power, distance, and degree of imposition (PDR), influences Chinese EFL learners’ task engagement in face-to-face real-time communication. In addition to behavioural, cognitive, and social dimensions, this study introduces pragmatic engagement, offering a novel contribution to task engagement research. Thirty Chinese EFL learners completed two pragmatic oral tasks on request-making, and their spoken discourse was analysed and compared. The findings reveal that learners were more behaviourally and pragmatically engaged in the PDR-high task than in the PDR-low task, while no significant differences emerged in cognitive and social engagement. These findings highlight the role of pragmatic factors in shaping engagement and suggest that task design can account for the level of pragmatic engagement to better support L2 learners’ communicative development.