Pragmatic Attending Skills Training
for Oral Skills Classes
Angelina Van Dyke, SFU
William Acton, TWU
BC TEAL Conference
May 23rd, 2015
Pragmatics
The study of communicative action in its
sociocultural context.
Pragmalinguistics: linguistic resources for
conveying communicative acts and relational or
interpersonal meanings.
Socio-pragmatics: social perceptions
underlying interpretation and performance of
communicative action.
Importance in SLA: (Kasper and Rose, 1999)
Constrains linguistic forms and their
acquisition
Is a type of communicative knowledge
and object of L2 learning itself
Pragmatic Competence
 Pragmatic Competence
The ability to communicate your intended message
with all its nuances in any socio-cultural context, and
to interpret the message of your interlocutor as it
was intended (Fraser 2010)
o
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Context is both external (sociocultural) and
internal (cognitive inferential skills)
PC is the ability to trigger the appropriate mental
networks at the right time in each situation.
Teaching Pragmatics
Can pragmatic competence be taught?
(Kasper, 1997)
Is pedagogic intervention needed?
o Assisted performance may build pragmatic competence
(Alcón Soler, 2002).
o The way learning is organized impacts pragmatic
development (Ohta, 2001 in Taguchi, 2007 p. 328)
Teaching Pragmatics
Without intervention:
lack of metapragmatic consciousness in L2
pragmalinguistic knowledge  L1 / L2 corresponding
form-function mapping (Kasper, 1997)
grammatically incorrect but pragmatically appropriate
utterances vs. pragmatically inappropriate and
grammatically correct utterances (Bardovi-Harlig and
Dörnyei, 1998)
fluency and accuracy don’t develop concurrently
(Taguchi, 2005)
Teaching Pragmatics
Pedagogic intervention involves:
ochoice of communicative acts
ostrategies realizing these acts
 scripted expressions
 level of politeness
 level of directness (implicature)
 level of formality
olinguistic form
ocontent and semantics
MAKING AND RESPONDING TO
POLITE REQUESTS
Linguistic Forms
Meaning/Function Situation/Manner
Could I please have some
milk?
A polite request using
past tense of “can”
in a home – formally
asking the host or hostess
for something
Could you please close the
door?
Asking someone to do
something for you
in an office, home or car
formal and polite
Would you mind repeating
that, please?
Polite request using past
tense of “will”
student to a teacher or
two people on the phone
Would you mind if I opened
the window?
Polite request using
conditional distance
 Positive response
with intoned
appreciation
 Negative response
showing pragmatic
deference
in a car or on a public bus,
train or boat
 informal and polite
 Not at all!
 If you don’t mind, I’d
rather keep it closed.
 formal, using negative
politeness
Teaching Pragmatics
Sample Discourse Completion Task:
You are a member of a student organization.
You are in a meeting now. You would like to take
some notes, but you do not have a pen. The
president of the organization is sitting next to
you and might have an extra pen.
– You: ___________________________________________
– President: Sure. Here you go. Keep it, I have another one.
Pragmatic Intervention for ELLs
 Culturally situated  too difficult for
beginning ELLs?
 Accuracy and Fluency  concurrence?
Resources:
oPragmatic Universals  L1 transfer
oSmall Talk (Hunter, 2011)
oGood Psychology  Co-operative Attending
Skills Training (CAST)
oProsodic Pronunciation Practice  Acton
Haptic English Pronunciation System © 2014
(AH-EPS)
Some Pragmatic Universals
(Kasper, 1997)
All language learners know something about:
Principles of conversational organization
Conversational routines
Implied meaning
Principles of Politeness
Meta-pragmatic awareness
Levels of directness
Small Talk (Hunter, 2011)
Student-Led (adult intermediate)
o Choose topics and discussion questions
o Group discussion
Teachers Focus on Accuracy and CF
o Listen and record student errors
o Fluency is uninterrupted
o Repair and uptake list of errors
o Students fluently produce correct forms
o Promotes self-correction
Small Talk Worksheet
Treatment options for error transcriptions:
o Give written metalinguistic feedback
o Give error list and correct version in form of audio
recording or dictation
Sentence / Expression
Speaker
Pronunciation Context /
Vocabulary
This is the natural park
which called Kandling.
Speaker A
National
/natural?
Kandling is place
name?
Speaker B
Metalinguistic
Feedback
My favourite article use,
place
verb “to be”
missing article
Co-operative Attending Skills Training
(CAST)
First Application - training psychologists
Applied to ELT - Acton and Cope (1999)
Mid/high beginner +
o lowers affective filters
o raises participation
o instills genuine listening skills
 Teach students to listen - will develop a
winning disposition in any conversation.
Prosodic Pronunciation Practice
 Haptic Techniques
o movement + touch
o external heuristic that maps sounds on and around
the body
 Prosodic Elements
o Rhythm, intonation, expression
o Convey pragmatic intent: irony, emotion, implied
meaning
o Develop fluency, accuracy and “nuance”
 Systematic Practice
o increased retention through homework modules
o learned elements retrieved in spontaneous speech
Setting up CAST
Assign students to bring three stories
o Short and Specific (2-3 min.)
o Interesting
o Personal
Following Class - Groups of 3 or 4 in rounds
o Story Teller
o Attender (Listener)
o Observer 1 – observe attender and record what is said
on CAST checklist
o Observer 2 – observe effect of listener feedback on
storyteller
Setting up CAST
Uptake of Interactions
o Observers share observations
o Structures and functions are classified with
prosodic pronunciation practice
Levels and Class Formats
Discussion:
 How might attending skills integrated with haptic
techniques be applied to your class format and
level?
How might small talk be integrated with haptic
techniques in repair and uptake of errors?
i.e. articles and verb inflections?
Research References
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Acton, William and Cope, Corinne. (1999). Co-operative Learning. JALT Applied Materials, Eds. David Kluge, Steve McGuire, David
Johnson, and Roger Johnson.
Acton, W., Baker, A. , Burri, M., Teaman, B. (2013). Preliminaries to haptic-integrated pronunciation instruction. In J. Levis, K. Le
Velle (Eds.) Proceedings of the 4th pronunciation in Second Language Learning and teaching Conference, Aug. 2012. (pp. 234-244).
Ames, IA: Iowa State University.
Alcón Soler, Eva. (2002). Relationship between teacher-led versus learners’ interaction and the development of pragmatics in the
EFL classroom. International Journal of Educational Research 37, 359-377.
Arundale, Robert B. (1999). An alternative model and ideology of communication for an alternative to politeness theory.
Pragmatics, 9(1), 119.
Bardovi-Harlig, K. and Dörnyei, Z. (1998). Do Language Learners Recognize Pragmatic Violations? Pragmatic versus Grammatical
Awareness in Instructed L2 Learning. TESOL Quarterly, 3(2), 233-262
Brown, Penelope & Levinson, Stephen C. (1987). Politeness: Some Studies in Language Universals. Studies in Interactional
Sociolinguistics 4. Cambridge UP.
Fraser, B. (2010) Pragmatic Competence: The Case of Hedging. In: G. Kaltenböck, W. Mihatsch and S. Schneider (eds.), New
Approaches to Hedging (pp. 15–34). Bingley: Emerald.
Hunter, James. ‘Small Talk’: developing fluency, accuracy, and complexity in speaking. ELT Journal. doi: 10.1093/elt/ccq093
Kasper, Gabriele. (1997). Can Pragmatic Competence be Taught? Second Language Teaching & Curriculum Center, University of
Hawai’i.
Kasper, Gabriele. (2006) Speech Acts in Interaction: Towards Discursive Pragmatics. University of Hawai’i.
Kasper, Gabriele and Rose, Kenneth R. (1999). Pragmatics and SLA. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics (19), 81-104.
Recanati, Francois. (2006). Semantics and Pragmatics. Chapter 20 in The Handbook of Pragmatics. Ed. Laurence R. Horn and
Gregory Ward. DOI: 10.1002/9780470756959.ch20
Schneider, Sickinger, and Hampel. (2013). Pragmatic Competence, Pragmatic Profiling and Cultural Cognition. University of Bonn,
English Profile Seminar No. 14.
Taguchi, Naoko. (2005). Comprehending Implied Meaning in EFL. The Modern Language Journal, 8(4 ), 43-562.
Taguchi, Naoko. (2007). Development of Speed and Accuracy in Pragmatic Comprehension in English as a Foreign Language. TESOL
Quarterly, 41(2), 313-338.
Takimoto, Masahiro. (2009). The Effects of Input-Based Tasks on the Development of Learners' Pragmatic Proficiency. Applied
Linguistics 30 (1), 1-25. doi: 10.1093/applin/amm049