TEFLIN TEACHER DEVELOPMENT SERIES
Series Editors: Willy A Renandya & Nur Hayati
Assistant Editor: Rahmati Putri Yaniafari
TEFLIN Teacher Development Series contains short practical resource booklets for
English language teachers in Asia published by TEFLIN (The Association for the
Teaching of English as a Foreign Language in Indonesia) through its Publication
Division. Printed titles in the first batch of the series (2019) include:
Introducing Task-based Language Teaching by Rod Ellis
Evaluating, Adapting and Developing Materials for Learners of English as an International
Language by Brian Tomlinson
Cooperative Learning in Language Education by George M Jacobs & Willy A Renandya
Teaching Pragmatics in EFL Classrooms by Nguyen Thi Thuy Minh & Le Van Canh
If you have any queries, please contact:
TEFLIN Publication Division
Email: publication.division@teflin.org
Copyright © 2019 by Nguyen Thi Thuy Minh & Le Van Canh
All rights reserved
Publisher: TEFLIN Publication Division in collaboration with Bintang Sejahtera Press
c/o Jurusan Sastra Inggris, Fakultas Sastra, Universitas Negeri Malang
Jalan Semarang 5 Malang, East Java, Indonesia, 65145
http://www.journal.teflin.org
ISBN: 978-602-1150-26-9
First published 2019
Cover Designer: Himawan Prakosa
Formatting: Ibnuz Zaki
Teaching Pragmatics in English as a Foreign
Language Classrooms
Nguyen Thi Thuy Minh *
National Institute of Education, Singapore
Le Van Canh
Vietnam National University, Hanoi, Vietnam
TEFLIN Teacher Development Series
published by
TEFLIN Publication Division
*
Current affiliation: University of Otago, New Zealand
I
t is a great pleasure for TEFLIN to publish this Teacher Development
Series, a series which provides useful and affordable resources for
English language teachers and teacher educators in Asia. The
booklets in the series cover various topics pertaining to ELT and are
written by experts in the field. Teachers and teacher educators will enjoy
reading the series as the booklets are written in a friendly and accessible
style.
Throughout more than sixty years of TEFLIN, we have shown our full
commitment towards teacher training and education and teacher
professional development in the field of ELT by means of various
programs. We have organized conferences and academic forums for
English language teachers both nationally and internationally, and
collaborated with different organizations to provide support for teachers
in developing their professionalism, such as, by giving scholarships to
attend conferences and conducting teacher training.
Through the TEFLIN Publication Division, we have published volumes
of the TEFLIN Journal, a peer-reviewed journal indexed in international
databases and accredited A by the Indonesian Ministry of Research and
Higher Education. The journal contains both research and concept papers
in the field of ELT. This TEFLIN Teacher Development Series is another
project of the division and is yet another form of our commitment to
giving continued support to the development of English language
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teaching in Indonesia and in the wider region. This year we are aiming to
launch five books of the series, and are committed to publishing more
titles in the following years to support teachers’ sustainable professional
development.
We are indebted to Dr Willy A Renandya for sharing with us his
brilliant ideas and for giving his utmost effort and lending his expertise to
this project. Without his capacity and networking, this project would not
be possible. We also gratefully thank all the experts who have
contributed to the series. Their contribution is invaluable.
We hope this series will serve its purpose, to empower English
teachers and facilitate their professional development through quality
and accessible resources.
Joko Nurkamto
President of TEFLIN
Yazid Basthomi
Coordinator of TEFLIN Publication Division
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T
he TEFLIN Teacher Development Series is a series of short practical
resource booklets for English language teachers in Asia as part of a
collaborative project with the Publication Division of TEFLIN (The
Association for the Teaching of English as a Foreign Language in
Indonesia). The booklets (or modules) are intended to be used by
teachers (both pre-service and in-service) and teacher educators as a
learning resource and as a basis for organizing workshops, in-service
courses and various other purposes of teaching and learning and teacher
professional development.
The booklets in the Series are written in an accessible and teacherfriendly style and cover both principles and techniques and include
different topics relevant to ELT and teacher professional development.
Each booklet contains practical ways for teachers to apply new ideas in
their own teaching as well as reflective tasks that provide opportunities
for the users to reflect on their own classroom practices.
For the first batch of the series, we have had a great honor and
pleasure to work with experts in various areas of ELT. One of the books in
the series is written by Nguyen Thi Thuy Minh and Le Van Canh, ELT
experts from two prominent institutions in New Zealand and Vietnam
respectively. Their book eloquently lays out the significance of pragmatic
knowledge and competence, and key concepts and principles, as well as
practical activities within and beyond the EFL classrooms for teachers to
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integrate the development of pragmatic competence among their
learners. We believe that the book will inspire teachers and teacher
educators to learn more about pragmatic competence, try out the ideas
in their classrooms as well as share the results with their colleagues.
We would like to again extend our utmost gratitude to Dr Nguyen Thi
Thuy Minh and Prof Le Van Canh as well as other experts who have
contributed to the Series for their kindness and generosity in sharing
their knowledge and expertise and helping make this project happen. We
are committed to publishing more quality booklets in the coming years in
order to meet the needs of English teachers and teacher educators in
Asia. We hope to collaborate with many more experts in various areas of
ELT and bring out booklets that are affordable and beneficial for the
development of ELT and teacher professionalism particularly in the Asian
region.
Willy A Renandya
Nur Hayati
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E
ffective communication requires more than just knowledge of words and
language rules. It also requires the ability to appropriately express your
ideas, thoughts, feelings, and intentions to other people, and to
accurately interpret those expressed by them, as well. In language
teaching, that ability is called pragmatic competence.
In the past, learning a foreign/second language (L2) merely consisted of
mastering grammatical rules and words, or mastering grammatical competence,
while neglecting pragmatic competence. However, from the 1970s onward, it
became widely accepted that learning a language involves a lot more than
developing grammatical competence. Not only do learners need to learn how to
put words into meaningful sentences by using correct grammatical structures,
they also need to learn how to use language appropriately for the social
situations in which they communicate. That is, they need to know what to say
and what not to say to specific people in specific contexts, as well as be able to
understand what messages other people are conveying along with their tone
and attitude in the communication. Doing otherwise may lead to
miscommunication, and in serious cases, damage social relationships. For
example, bluntly criticizing a classmate’s ideas during a group discussion may
seriously offend them. Even worse, not recognizing their subtle expression of
annoyance may lead us to continue to offend them, hence risking the creation
of even more friction.
It is challenging even for a native speaker of a language to smoothly navigate
social interaction within his or her own cultural group. This is because what is
considered appropriate language use is immensely fluid and depends on many
factors, such as the speakers’ gender, age, occupation, social class, individual
identity, the dynamics of their relationship, and the specificity of the context of
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interaction. Imagine how much more daunting it may be for an L2 user to
determine the “rules” of appropriate communication in intercultural contexts,
where different cultural values and communicative styles may at times clash.
Because cross-cultural skills are considered essential for effective
communication in the globalized world we live in today, it is tremendously
important for learners to develop these skills in order to become global citizens.
Pragmatic competence can be effectively improved through classroom
instruction. Unfortunately, it is rarely taught in a principled and systematic
manner in L2 classrooms. Teachers may either not be fully aware of the
important role played by pragmatics in language teaching and learning, or they
may not be adequately trained to do this job effectively. Our book aims to fill
this gap by encouraging language teachers to actively reflect on their own
practices and integrate more pragmatics-focused instruction into their
pedagogy. Drawing on research in the field of L2 pragmatics, this book offers a
set of hands-on strategies for raising L2 learners’ pragmatic awareness that
English language teachers can adapt to suit their local contexts and classrooms.
Practical examples of lesson planning, materials use, and assessment are also
provided throughout the book to illustrate how pragmatics-focused instruction
can be systematically implemented in an English language syllabus.
Our book comprises seven chapters. In Chapter 1, we address three
important questions: “What is pragmatics?”, “What is pragmatic competence?”,
and “Why does pragmatic competence matter?” This chapter concludes with a
discussion of the goals of pragmatics instruction in L2 teaching. In Chapter 2, we
introduce some key aspects in pragmatics such as speech acts (i.e., how to get
things done with words), implicatures (i.e., how to read or listen between the
lines), politeness, and conversational skills. These aspects are directly related to
language teaching, and are often included as important learning content in
language teaching syllabi. Chapter 3 outlines key principles in teaching
pragmatics, including developing pragmatic awareness and fluency in pragmatic
language use, promoting tolerance and acceptance of other cultures, enhancing
skills in negotiating diverse linguistic and cultural norms, and cultivating learner
autonomy and self-directed learning. Chapter 4 presents various activities that
teachers can introduce into their English lessons to develop students’ pragmatic
competence. This chapter also provides practical examples that teachers can
adapt to suit their teaching contexts. In Chapter 5, we describe a range of outTeaching Pragmatics in EFL Classrooms vi
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of-class activities and pragmatic learning strategies to help learners enhance
their pragmatic knowledge beyond the classroom walls and take charge of their
own learning. In Chapter 6, we provide guidelines for how to develop classroom
assessment tasks and create rubrics to assess pragmatic competence. Finally, in
Chapter 7, we highlight the importance of using appropriate materials in
teaching pragmatics and discuss possible ways to evaluate, select, and adapt
instructional material for teaching pragmatics.
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FOREWORD FROM THE PUBLISHER ... ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... .
i
SERIES EDITORS’ PREFACE ... ... ... .. ... ... .. .. . ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .
iii
AUTHORS’ PREFACE ... ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ...
v
TABLE OF CONTENTS ... ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... . . ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... .. . .. ... .. viii
LIST OF TABLES ………... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... . .. . ... ..
x
LIST OF FIGURES …….... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... . . ... . ...
xi
CHAPTER ONE • The Role of Pragmatic Competence in Language Teaching
What Is Pragmatics ... ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ..
2
Pragmatic Competence ... ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ..
4
Why Teach Pragmatics ... ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... . . ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ...
5
Goals of Teaching Pragmatics ... ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... . . ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ...
7
CHAPTER TWO • Key Concepts
Speech Acts ... ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... . ... .
9
Going Beyond the Literal (Locutionary) Meaning of What Is Said ... ... ..
14
Conversational Skills ... ... ... .. ... ... .. .. . ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. . 18
CHAPTER THREE • Principles of Pragmatics Instruction
Principle #1: Developing awareness of form, function, and formfunction-context connections ... ... ... .. ... ... .. ... .. . .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... 27
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Principle #2: Developing the ability to use language not only accurately
and appropriately, but also fluently ... ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. .. . ... . 28
Principle #3:Providing exposure to language input, opportunities for
input noticing, and sustained practice of the target form ... ... ... .. ... .. 30
Principle #4: Providing systematically planned and sustained
instruction ………………………………………………………………………….. ... .. .. ... . 31
Principle #5: Developing intercultural awareness and negotiation skills
as well as cultivating tolerance of cultural differences ... ... ... .. ... ... .. . 32
Principle #6: Cultivating learner autonomy and self-directed learning ..
33
CHAPTER FOUR • Classroom Activities
Awareness-Raising ... ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... . . ... ... .. ..
35
Production Activities ... ... ... .. ... ... .. . .. ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... .. . .. ... ... ..
46
Self-Reflection Tasks ... ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... .. . .. ... ... .. . 50
Corrective Feedback Techniques ... ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... . . ... ... .. ..
51
CHAPTER FIVE • Out-of-Class Activities
Understanding Self-Regulated Learning Strategies for Acquiring
Pragmatic Knowledge ... ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... . . ... ... .. ... ... . 56
Out-of-Class Activities ... ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... . 59
CHAPTER SIX • Assessment Tasks in Teaching Pragmatics
Assessing Pragmatic Comprehension and Perception ... ... ... .. ... ... .. ..
65
Assessing Pragmatic Production ... ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ...
67
Important Considerations in Developing Assessment Tasks ... ... ... .. ... . 69
Developing Assessment Rubrics ... ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ...
71
CHAPTER SEVEN • Materials for Teaching Pragmatics
Why Evaluate, Select, and Adapt Textbooks for Teaching Pragmatics? ... 76
A Checklist for Textbook Evaluation ... ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... . . ... ... .
78
REFERENCES ... ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... . . ... ... . ... ... ... . 86
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Table 1. Three contextual factors underlying rules of speaking ...... .. ... ... ..
11
Table 2. Examples of language use to reflect dimensions of politeness..... ..
13
Table 3. The four conversational maxims …………... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ..
15
Table 4. Topic initiation strategies ………………………………………………... ... ... .. ... 21
Table 5. Strategic pragmatics learning …………………. ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. ... ... .. .
58
Table 6. Aspects and descriptors of pragmatic competence ……….. ... ... .. ... . 71
Table 7. A checklist for textbook evaluation …………………………….. ... ... .. ... ...
79
Table 8. Examples of activity types based on cognitive demand levels...... .. . 85
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Figure 1: Practice activities for pragmatics-focused materials ... ... ... .. ... ... .. ... . 84
Teaching Pragmatics in EFL Classrooms xi
The teaching and learning of English in many English as a foreign language
(EFL) contexts tends to overemphasize the mastery of grammatical rules and
vocabulary at the expense of the social aspect of language use. Communicative
language teaching is aimed at helping learners not only to produce
grammatically correct sentences using proper lexical choices, but also to use
socially appropriate language in various contexts of intercultural
communication. To interact effectively with English speakers from diverse
cultural backgrounds, learners need to develop the ability to perform various
communicative acts appropriately, such as opening and closing a conversation,
engaging in small talk, making a request, extending an invitation, making an
apology or complaint, and so on, according to relevant social norms. In addition,
they need to acquire the skills required to interpret unspoken and unwritten
messages, that is, the speaker’s or writer’s intended meaning beyond the words
they use, while engaging in oral communication or reading texts in English.
These abilities and skills comprise an essential aspect of L2 learners’ pragmatic
competence.
This book aims to help EFL teachers to teach aspects of socially appropriate
language use – or to put it differently, pragmatic language use – in a principled
way so that they can effectively prepare their students for intercultural
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communication. This chapter will discuss the “what” and “why” of teaching
pragmatics, with a focus on:
• the definition of pragmatics;
• pragmatic competence as a component of communicative competence;
• and the goals of teaching pragmatics.
What Is Pragmatics?
Communication is not simply about expressing our thoughts out loud or
writing them down for an audience to decode our message later.
Communication is more than that. On the part of the speaker or writer, it
involves the ability to convey his or her intended meaning appropriately
according to shared norms and conventions. For the recipient, communication
involves not only comprehending what is stated explicitly but also recognizing
what is conveyed beyond the literal meaning (Grundy, 2013). The way members
of a discourse community use language in social interaction is shaped by and
reflects their cultural ideologies, moral values, and beliefs. For example, in many
Asian cultures, it is a moral obligation for students to address their teachers
respectfully, as teachers are held in utmost respect in those societies.
Understanding how language is used in relation to speakers’ ideologies, values,
beliefs, and attitudes is the focus of pragmatics.
Pragmatics has been defined differently by different scholars. As a field of
study, it may be defined as the study of contextual meaning as co-constructed
by participants in social interaction. From a practical and pedagogical
perspective, it may be defined simply as the socially and culturally appropriate
use of language in interaction.
From the pragmatic perspective, all utterances (i.e., what is said) have two
types of meaning: the literal meaning or the locution, and the intended meaning
or the illocutionary force. While the literal meaning is easy to understand
because it resides in “the words on a page,” it is more difficult to make sense of
the speaker’s actual meaning. To understand the speaker’s or writer’s intended
meaning, listeners or readers must draw upon a range of contextual resources,
including what the conversation has been about, who the participants are,
where the interaction is taking place, and so on. For example, it is impossible to
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determine what the speaker really means in the following utterance without
appropriate contextual knowledge:
The power will be cut off over the weekend.
This may be a threat, a warning, or a reminder depending on the context in
which it is produced. We do not assume a one-to-one relationship between the
literal meaning (form) and the intended meaning (utterance function), but our
interpretation of an utterance depends on the specific context of interaction. In
this way, pragmatics is different from semantics. Semantics concerns the
question “What does X mean?” while pragmatics asks “What did you mean by
X?” (Leech, 1983). In other words, pragmatics is concerned more with the
speaker’s or writer’s meaning rather than the meaning of the utterance or
sentence per se.
While producing an utterance, the speaker may be performing the act of
asserting, reporting, describing, announcing, declaring, offering, warning,
threatening, promising, requesting, and so on. The act can produce a
perlocutionary effect on the listener. This is the real-world impact the act creates
on the recipient. For example, a compliment may make the hearer feel good
about him or herself, but a criticism may make the hearer feel bad. A request
may lead the requestee to do something for the requester or to decline the
request.
To summarize, pragmatics is concerned with how members of a discourse
community use language to accomplish social goals and how the conventions
and rules that they follow in interaction are governed by their assumptions,
beliefs, and attitudes regarding the situation and participants in the interaction.
The study of pragmatics is aimed at answering questions such as:
1. Why do people sometimes mean something different from what they
say/write?
2. How possible is it that hearers/readers understand what speakers/ writers do
not communicate directly?
3. Why should we speak differently in different roles and to different people in
different contexts?
4. How do we use language to indicate social relationships, exert power, get
what we want, influence people, and change ideas?
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5. Why do people from different cultures communicate differently?
The answers to these questions are related to language users’ pragmatic
competence, which is discussed below.
Pragmatic Competence
Pragmatic competence is the ability to use language appropriately in a social
context. It is composed of two distinct but interrelated components:
pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics. Pragmalinguistics refers to linguistic
resources (language forms or structures) for expressing intended meanings (e.g.,
using the “Can you?” structure to make a request). Sociopragmatics refers to the
participants’ perceptions of social power, social distance, social rules, and norms
of appropriateness that influence their choice of particular linguistic forms in
particular contexts. In L2 education, pragmalinguistic competence is related to
language users’ linguistic knowledge, while sociopragmatic competence refers
to sociocultural knowledge, or knowledge about culturally accepted linguistic
behavior regarding, for example, gender, age, social class, and occupation.
The distinction between pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics is
pedagogically important. Research on the pragmatic competence of adult L2
learners has indicated that learners may transfer not only their first language
(L1) linguistic forms, but also their cultural values and social norms when
communicating in the target language (TL), without the awareness that different
cultural communities may have their own conventions for expressing meanings
and culturally expected norms of behavior in a particular situation. When a
participant’s appropriateness norms clash with those of others in situations of
intercultural communication, misunderstandings may arise and social harmony
may be disrupted. Take requests as an example. While a direct request form
such as “Give me a coffee” may often be heard in the context of a service
encounter in Vietnam, it may not be considered courteous enough to say to a
barista in England. Hence, a Vietnamese speaker may be perceived as impolite if
he or she unknowingly makes use of the above request form when ordering a
coffee in England. Take responding to compliments as another example. In social
interaction, compliments serve the important function of building rapport
between the speaker and the hearer. However, responding to compliments can
be complicated because we want to avoid self-praise. Speakers from different
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cultures may hold vastly different beliefs about how they should or should not
respond to compliments. A Chinese speaker, for instance, may consider it more
appropriate to disagree than to agree with a compliment, because agreeing to a
compliment may indicate a lack of modesty. In contrast, a German speaker may
prefer to preserve social harmony by agreeing rather than disagreeing with the
compliment. Without some intercultural sensitivity, the Chinese speaker may be
regarded as rude by his or her German interlocutor, while the German speaker
may be seen as arrogant by his or her Chinese interlocutor. Thus, it is necessary
for teachers to cover both pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics in their
classroom pedagogy to help learners acquire knowledge of both aspects of
communication, and learn the skills needed to negotiate diverse linguistic and
cultural norms. A lack of knowledge about any of these aspects is likely to lead
to communication breakdowns.
Why Teach Pragmatics?
According to Bachman (1990), L2 learners’ language competence comprises
two important components:
a. organizational knowledge, that is, knowledge of grammar (language forms
and structures) and text organization (coherence and cohesion), and
b. pragmatic knowledge, that is, knowledge of language use in relation to
speakers, topics, and settings (e.g., knowing what to say or what not to say to
a particular person in a particular situation).
Pragmatic competence is more challenging and takes a longer time to
acquire than other aspects of L2 learning, such as grammar. A common difficulty
in learning L2 pragmatics is that students often misapply their L1 pragmatic
norms (as illustrated above). Thus, they may be using language that is socially
appropriate for the context in their L1 but not in their L2, which can lead to
miscommunications. This may happen even to grammatically advanced learners.
As the goal of any English language education program is to develop learners’
communicative competence, it is necessary to train them in specific aspects of
particular communicative acts (e.g., agreement, disagreement, greetings,
apologies, requests, refusals, compliments and compliment responses, closing a
conversation, etc.) in the TL. This training involves learning why a communicative
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act is expressed in a certain way in a particular context, and hence, when,
where, how, and with whom students can carry out a certain communicative
act.
Reflective Break
An L2 student approaches his lecturer after class to ask for the lecture notes from
the previous lesson:
“I want you to give me the notes from the last lesson because I was absent.”
The teacher seems unhappy.
What went wrong in this situation? Why do you think it happened? How can you,
as a language teacher, help your students avoid such problems?
The above scenario demonstrates that the ability to use language
appropriately is essential in communication. Misunderstandings may occur
when we fail to adopt an appropriate style of communication for the
sociocultural context in which we are interacting. It is widely acknowledged that
socially inappropriate language use is less readily forgiven than grammatical
errors, and when pragmatic rules are broken, the speaker is often viewed
negatively as being rude.
Therefore, in order to become effective users of English as a language of
intercultural communication, learners need to develop:
• the ability to make appropriate linguistic choices based on who they
communicate with, where the interaction takes place, and what the
interaction is about; and
• an understanding of the consequences of using a particular language form or
expression over another.
In general, L2 pragmatic knowledge may not be absorbed effectively without
some explicit teaching. Although some L2 pragmatic rules may be acquired
naturally, it can take several years for this to happen. Other rules may be too
subtle to notice or too complex to understand if learners are not guided
adequately. Research on learners studying abroad has demonstrated that they
do not always possess better pragmatic knowledge of the TL upon returning
home. In contrast, explicit instruction has been shown to have a positive effect
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on learners’ pragmatic development, and hence, should be integrated more into
English language teaching curricula to increase learners’ awareness of and
attention to appropriate ways of using the TL.
Goals of Teaching Pragmatics
It is challenging to develop EFL students’ pragmatic competence because of
their limited exposure to TL input. Therefore, we should be pragmatic in setting
realistic goals.
The major aim of pragmatics instruction is to increase learners’ awareness of
a range of possible communicative norms in the TL to enable them to make
informed choices about their interactions. This can help them achieve their
communicative goals without having to compromise their cultural values and
beliefs. As such, learners need to develop their ability to:
a. decide which register is appropriate to use when communicating with others
in a particular setting;
b. express their purposes, intentions, and meanings appropriately in different
situational and cultural contexts to achieve the intended effects of their
communication; and
c. recognize others’ communicative intentions and respond appropriately.
It is important to note that the goal of teaching pragmatics is not to impose
TL norms on learners at the expense of their cultural identities, but rather to
provide learners with a range of TL pragmatic options to act upon. To achieve
this goal, House (2003) offered some important suggestions for classroom
pedagogy, such as:
• using pragmatically competent L2 users as teaching models,
• assisting students to develop effective strategies for successfully negotiating
diverse norms in English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) communication, and
• allowing learners to remain true to their identities and working with them on
practical ways to avoid miscommunication.
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These pedagogical suggestions aim to help learners gain better pragmatic
knowledge to participate more fully in intercultural communication while
preserving their own cultural identities.
To summarize, the principle aim of this book is to support English language
teachers in their efforts to develop the necessary knowledge and skills to teach
aspects of socially appropriate language use in a structured way, so that they
can effectively prepare their students for intercultural communication. The
pedagogical principles, techniques, and activities in this book are informed by
empirical research in the field of L2 teaching and learning. We hope this book
will encourage teachers to devote more attention to the teaching of this often
neglected aspect of L2 competence.
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Before we consider the principles and methods of teaching pragmatics in the
classroom, it is necessary first to understand some key aspects of pragmatic
knowledge.
Speech Acts
A speech act is a linguistic action that a speaker performs when he/she
makes an utterance. In other words, it is what we try to do with language in
order to accomplish social purposes. Examples of speech acts include:
•
•
•
•
•
apologizing,
making requests,
making compliments,
responding to others’ compliments, and
making complaints.
The ways people use language to carry out speech acts may vary depending
on factors such as their cultural background, gender, age, occupation, social
class, and individual identity. Despite some individual variations, however,
members of the same speech community tend to follow predictable patterns in
handling speech acts. At the same time, members of one speech community
may prefer different ways of handling speech acts than members of another
speech community.
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Let us consider the following example:
Imagine that you are a university student. Last week, you were sick and absent
from a lecture. So, you call your classmate to borrow his notes.
In this situation, the request can be made using different forms, ranging from
a direct form such as “Lend me your notes!” to a more softened and tentative
form such as “Would it be okay if I borrowed your notes?” English speakers
generally consider the direct request offensive, as it violates the hearer’s
autonomy, and prefer the more softened request, which gives the hearer the
choice of whether to comply. However, speakers of another language may prefer
the direct request, as they do not regard the act of requesting as an imposition
on the hearer’s freedom of choice and action, according to their cultural norms.
The fact that speech acts are carried out differently across cultures can make
intercultural communication quite challenging. When differences are not
negotiated effectively, not only may we fail to achieve our communicative goals,
but we may also be perceived negatively by members of other cultures (see
Chapter 1 for examples). Thus, being able to express our communicative
intentions appropriately and in accordance to shared norms and conventions is
considered an important part of an L2 learner’s communicative competence.
This involves knowing when-to-say-what-to-whom in a specific sociocultural
setting and making linguistic choices accordingly. We will discuss what this
means in the next section.
Reflective Break
Can you list some speech acts that the people around you carry out on a daily
basis? How important do you think it is for someone who is learning your language
to be able to perform these speech acts successfully in the TL?
Context of Situation: Power, Distance, and Imposition
A great challenge for many L2 learners when communicating in an
intercultural context is to achieve the intended communicative effect. They may
lack the necessary cross-cultural awareness to accurately judge what is
appropriate to say or not to say, or how to say it appropriately to someone from
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a different culture in a specific social setting. As a result, they may say things in a
grammatically correct manner, but still convey the wrong message and offend
their interlocutors. Consider the following example from Holmes and Brown
(1987). An English language student compliments his English teacher as she
enters the classroom:
“You are wearing a lovely dress. It fits you.”
The compliment may have come out in an effort to display solidarity with the
teacher. However, in an unequal-power non-intimate relationship between
opposite genders, such a compliment may violate social norms in many cultures.
In fact, the tutor comments that the compliment may be deemed more
acceptable if it comes from a young female and not a young male student
(Holmes & Brown, 1987).
From the above example, it is clear that in every culture, there are certain
restrictions on what one can say in specific social relationships. Brown and
Levinson (1987) discuss three contextual factors underlying these “rules of
speaking,” as illustrated in Table 1.
Table 1: Three contextual factors underlying rules of speaking
Factors
Power
Distance
Imposition
Questions to consider
Who are the speaker and hearer?
What is the power relationship between them?
Are they equal or unequal partners in terms of social status?
Note that depending on culture, power difference may be related to
office hierarchy, age, gender, and/or family hierarchy.
What is the degree of familiarity between the speaker and the
hearer?
How well do they know and feel comfortable with each other?
Are they close friends, family, colleagues, new acquaintances, or
total strangers?
What are the interlocutors’ rights and obligations in performing the
speech act?
Does the speaker have the right or obligation to carry out the
speech act?
How obliged is the hearer to approve of the act?
In other words, what is the degree of imposition we may put on
others with our acts?
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On the basis of our understanding of the context of the situation concerning
power, distance, and imposition, we will then choose from a set of possible
options what we consider optimal to say in the given situation. For example, a
request for a large favor (e.g., borrowing a large sum of money) from someone
you do not know well will cause more inconvenience to them than a request for
a small favor (e.g., borrowing a pen), and therefore needs to be expressed with
more care. So, while saying “Do you have a pen?” would be deemed socially
acceptable by the recipient, saying “Do you have $1000?” would not. You will
not want to be seen as being too forward and inconsiderate, so you will want to
express your intention more indirectly. You will also want to explain why you
need to borrow such a large amount of money, acknowledge the inconvenience
of your request, say when you can return the money, and perhaps promise you
will return the favor in the future.
Therefore, given the importance of context, teachers should not teach
linguistic forms in isolation from their social meaning and context of use. On the
contrary, teachers should raise students’ awareness of the form-meaningcontext connection to help learners use appropriate language both contextually
and socially.
Politeness
An important concept in learning how to get things done with words is
politeness. In linguistics, politeness refers to choices we make in language use to
display respect toward or consideration for other people. In English, this can
involve using indirect linguistic forms to sound polite, for example, saying “Can
you pass the salt?” instead of “Pass the salt!” This can also involve using
respectful forms of address such as “Sir” and “Madam,” or polite routines such
as saying, “thank you” and “please.”
In social interaction, we need to respect others’ expectations regarding their
sense of self and avoid causing other people to lose face. For this goal, we need
to use appropriate language to show awareness of another person’s dignity or
honor (see the table below for examples).
According to Brown and Levinson (1987), there are two dimensions of
politeness: giving space and building rapport. Giving space to someone means
showing respect for their desire for independence, freedom of action, and not
being imposed on by others. Building rapport with someone, in contrast, means
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showing respect for their desire to be liked by others and treated as a member
of the group. Put simply, giving space is concerned with respecting other
people’s need to be independent while building the rapport needed to be
connected.
When communicating, speakers can make a choice between the two types of
politeness based on how they perceive their relationship with other participants
and the context of the situation, as well as based on their interpersonal
knowledge of the other participants (e.g., cultural background, gender, age
group, occupation, preferred communicative style, and so on). In English, using
language that gives options and respects personal space (e.g., hedging and
avoiding personal questions) is considered more polite than using language that
emphasizes closeness and intimacy (e.g., using in-group identity markers)
because of the great emphasis on autonomy and individualism in the AngloSaxon tradition. Speech acts that may restrict people’s freedom of action, such
as requesting and suggesting, are thus usually expressed in an indirect,
tentative, and softened manner to avoid sounding imposing.
Note, however, that politeness does not operate similarly across cultures.
Some cultures may put more emphasis on building rapport than on giving space.
For example, in some collectively-oriented Asian societies, values such as
sincerity and involvement are preferred over personal space and distance. Thus,
an invitation that displays familiarity and positive expectations about the
hearer’s compliance, such as “You must stay to have dinner with us,” may be
considered more polite than one without such displays. So, students should be
made aware of social norms of behavior in different cultures and traditions.
They need to be explicitly taught strategies for negotiating cross-cultural
differences so that they can navigate more effectively when engaging in
intercultural communication. Table 2 provides some alternative examples of
how the two dimensions of politeness, giving space and building rapport, are
reflected in the use of English (adapted from Brown & Levinson, 1987, and
Culpeper, 1996).
Table 2: Examples of language use to reflect dimensions of politeness
Dimension of
politeness
Some examples
Giving space
Using language that gives options and acknowledges one
another’s need for personal space, e.g.:
• Using indirect forms
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•
•
•
•
•
•
Building
rapport
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Asking questions
Hedging (sort of, kind of, maybe, perhaps, etc.)
Apologizing for the inconvenience
Giving deference
Lessening imposition
Acknowledging indebtedness
Avoiding language that invades the other’s space, e.g.:
• Asking very personal questions to strangers
• Ridiculing or belittling (e.g., by using diminutives)
• Threatening
Using language that helps minimize distance and form a closer
bond, e.g.:
• Using in-group identity markers such as buddy, mate, guy,
love, and so on
• Using the inclusive “we”
• Making small talk
• Making jokes
• Seeking agreement and avoiding disagreement
• Showing interest and sympathy
Avoiding language that dissociates oneself from the other, e.g.:
• Using inappropriate identity markers, such as using titles
and surnames in a close relationship
• Avoiding small talk or jokes
• Name-calling or using taboo language
• Seeking disagreement (e.g., by selecting a sensitive topic)
• Using obscure language (e.g., using a code known to others
in the group, but not the target person)
Going Beyond the Literal (Locutionary)
Meaning of What Is Said
Although the ability to convey messages with clarity is important in
communication, sometimes being clear may be at odds with being polite. In this
case, it is usually considered more important to be polite than clear. Let us
consider the following example:
Your best friend has just had a new haircut and wants to know what you
think about it. The fact is that you do not think it suits her. But in this situation,
saying clearly what is on your mind would mean hurting your friend’s feelings,
which you do not want to do. You would rather be subtle about your dislike for
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the haircut than give a truthful answer that may make your friend feel bad. So,
your conversation may go like this:
Your friend: Do you think the haircut suits me?
You: Well, I don’t know.
Indirectness is a universal phenomenon that occurs in all languages.
Indirectness occurs when what we say does not correspond with what we mean.
In the above example, it cannot be the case that you do not know whether the
haircut looks good on your friend. You say that only because you want to invite
your friend to read between the lines for the unstated meaning.
Very often in social interaction, meaning is expressed beyond the surface but
is still understood. We may wonder how this is possible. In fact, the ability to
interpret unstated meaning can be explained by Grice (1975)’s cooperative
principles. According to this theory, participants in conversations strive to
achieve smooth and efficient communication by observing four conversational
maxims, as shown in Table 3.
In other words, conversation participants expect what their interlocutors say
to be as truthful, informative, relevant, and clear as it can be. When speakers do
not follow these rules, they have good reasons not to, and hearers are invited to
look for a meaning that is different from, or in addition to, the expressed
meaning.
Table 3: The four conversational maxims
1. Be truthful
(maxim of Quality):
2. Be informative
(maxim of Quantity):
3. Be relevant
(maxim of Relation):
4. Be clear
(maxim of Manner):
Do not say what is false or lacks evidence.
Do not say less or more than is required.
Do not say what is not relevant.
Avoid ambiguity and obscurity. Be brief and orderly.
Here are a few examples of how speakers break conversation rules to convey
their messages indirectly.
o Saying what is false: Irony
A and B are colleagues in a busy office. A has lost an important document
that belongs to B.
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A: Sorry, I lost your document.
B: You’re really helping me out!
(This implies that A is not being of any help.)
o Saying more or less than is required: Jokes
A: Do you know what time it is?
B: Yes.
(B is supposed to tell A the time but purposefully takes A’s question literally to
create a humorous effect.)
o Saying what is not relevant: Indirect criticism
A: What do you think of the plenary talk?
B: The presenter is really well-groomed.
(This implies that B thinks that the talk is not good.)
o Being ambiguous: Advertising
Just two days after Angelina Jolie filed for divorce from Brad Pitt, Norwegian
Airlines created a playful advertisement for cheap flights to Los Angeles that
went viral. The advertisement read:
“Brad is single. Los Angeles. From/one way, incl. taxes. £169.”
(Here, the message is purposefully conveyed in an ambiguous manner to appeal
to the actor’s admirers and create humorous effects.)
Understanding the cooperative principles will help us understand how
people make sense of jokes, sarcasm, and speech acts that are performed
indirectly as illustrated by the examples above.
Why Does the Ability to Interpret Indirect Meaning
Matter in Language Teaching?
The ability to infer non-literal meaning requires that speakers and hearers
share a common understanding of what is considered cooperative speaker
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behavior, so that they can recognize when it is that they are prompted to search
for the unstated meaning. They must also share the same cultural knowledge to
derive the same non-literal meaning from what is said literally. However, what
constitutes cooperative speaker behavior may differ from culture to culture,
which at times may lead L2 learners to misinterpret non-literal meanings when
communicating in intercultural contexts. Let’s observe this imaginary
conversation at a shop in Singapore:
Salesperson: Do you need a bag?
Customer: It’s okay.
Here, what the customer means is, “It’s okay, I don’t need one.” Not
observing the maxim of Quantity allows her to be briefer in communication, not
having to say everything she needs to say. However, an L2 learner who is not
aware of the customer’s intended meaning may take the response literally.
Similarly, many English learners may have difficulty responding appropriately
to the greeting formula, “How are you?” because of a lack of understanding of
its functional meaning, which is a greeting rather than a question about one’s
welfare. Thus, giving a full account of one’s health status in response would
violate the maxim of Quantity. It would also violate social norms, since health is
considered a taboo topic in English, unless brought up among close friends or
family.
If not taught deliberately, the ability to interpret non-literal meaning is
acquired rather slowly. Thus, it is important for teachers to raise their students’
awareness of how conversational maxims can be flouted to convey implicit
messages in the TL. It also helps to draw students’ attention to possible crosscultural variations.
Reflective Break
Recall a conversation you have had or heard today. How do the participants
cooperate to achieve smooth and successful communication?
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Conversational Skills
In the previous sections, we have discussed what people do when they
communicate their intent and interpret indirect meaning. It is noteworthy that
people do not produce meaning in an interactional vacuum. On the contrary, as
social actors, speakers jointly construct meaning through interactions with
others. It is through ordinary interaction that people accomplish most of their
social goals, such as getting things done and building social relationships. One of
the most challenging tasks for L2 learners is to participate effectively in
conversational interactions. Unfortunately, many important aspects of
conversational interactions, such as how to open, extend, and close a
conversation, and how to use turns to get things done, are not taught in the L2
classroom. Textbooks do not benefit students either as more often than not;
they fail to represent conversations the way they really occur in real life.
Opening and Closing a Conversation
Learning how to open a telephone conversation in the TL is an important skill
that L2 learners need for daily communication in the real world. According to
Wong and Waring (2010), English speakers typically start a telephone
conversation using the following sequences:
(i) Summon – answer
(ii) Identification – recognition
(iii) Greeting
(iv) How are you
The example below illustrates these sequences:
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
((ring))
A:
B:
A:
B:
A:
B:
A:
B:
Hello?
Hello, Anne?
Yes
It’s Jim.
Hi, Jim.
Hi. How are you?
Good. How are you?
I’m doing quite fine
(i) Summon – answer (turns 01-02)
(ii) Identification – recognition (turns 0305)
(iii) Greeting (turns 06-07)
(iv) First how are you sequence (turns 0708)
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(v) Second how are you sequence (turns
08-09)
10
A:
Good
11
B:
Anne, you know …
(vi) First topic
As illustrated in the example above, a telephone conversation begins with a
summon (phone ringing) – answer (hello) sequence, in which the person who
answers the phone always speaks first. Hello is the most typical answer in this
sequence, but hi, hey, or yeah can also be used in case the answerer knows who
the caller is. When the answerer says hello, he or she provides the caller with a
voice sample that helps the caller to identify him or her based on the sound of
his or her voice (Wong & Waring, 2010). In the example above, as soon as A says
hello, B begins the identification sequence by tentatively identifying A (Hello,
Anne?), and then goes on to identify himself (Hi, it’s Jim) after having
successfully established A’s identity.
The greeting sequence consists of an exchange of hi (lines 06-07). This
sequence ordinarily displays the formality or informality of the speaker-hearer
relationship. For friends and acquaintances, a greeting of hi is considered
appropriate as it demonstrates familiarity. But for strangers, hi is not an
appropriate greeting term, and hello is preferred.
Finally, the how are you sequences begin with the caller initiating the first
how are you sequence (turn 07). This way, he or she will become the respondent
in the second how are you sequence (turn 09), and can make use of the turn to
shape the forthcoming topic or mention the reason for the call. Neutral answers
(fine, okay, good) to the question how are you will lead to the shutdown of the
how are you sequence, whereas positive (great, super) or negative answers
(terrible, awful) may lead to extended talk (Wong & Waring, 2010).
Note that there may be cross-cultural variations regarding the distribution of
the how are you sequences. How are you is generally absent in Swedish and
German telephone openings and is not used among close friends and family
members in Hong Kong Cantonese. In German, for example, how are you is not a
greeting formula but a genuine question about the hearer’s well-being. So, if a
speaker asks how are you, this sequence is not usually reciprocated in German
conversations (Wong & Waring, 2010).
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Closing a telephone conversation is more complex than we may think
because it involves more than saying goodbye. Not knowing how to end a
conversation properly may reflect badly on the learner’s personality. For
example, if the learner says goodbye too soon or does not say it at all, he or she
may be seen as impolite. A telephone conversation typically consists of preclosing signals, pre-closing sequences, and terminal exchanges (see below)
(Wong & Waring, 2010).
01
02
03
04
05
06
A:
B:
A:
B:
A:
B:
Okay
Okay
I’ll see you tomorrow
Alright
Bye
Bye
(i) Pre-closing signals
(ii) Pre-closing sequences
(iii) Terminal exchanges
In English, pre-closing signals (e.g. turns 01-02 in the above example) are
small words such as okay, okay then, alright, alright then, well, so, anyway, yes,
yeah, and so on. These words add nothing new to the current topic, nor do they
lead to a new topic; thus, they indicate the speakers’ orientation toward closure.
English learners usually have difficulty picking up on those signals or responding
to them appropriately, since pre-closing cues may differ between their L1 and
TL. In German, for example, people can signal closure using other expressions
such as so then, good, or until then, whereas in Russian, people say that’s that, I
see, or that’s how things are (see Wong & Waring, 2010).
In addition to pre-closing signals, speakers may also initiate closure by using
various pre-closing sequences (e.g. turns 03-04 in the above example), such as
making arrangements (e.g., I’ll see you tomorrow), showing appreciation (thank
you), giving well-wishes (happy holidays!), restating the reason for the call (I just
called to find out if you’re going), or announcing the closing (okay, I’ll let you go).
Finally, terminal exchanges are sequences where speakers exchange
goodbyes (e.g. turns 05-06 in the above example). In English, common closing
devices include bye, goodbye, and good night, but people can also say things
such as okay, see you, thank you, you’re welcome. Not saying goodbye or not
reciprocating it in English conversations may inadvertently present the speakers
as being rude. However, this is not necessarily the case in other languages. For
example, in Kiswahili, people do not say goodbye, they say okay to end a
conversation (Wong & Waring, 2010).
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In short, speakers of a language share conventional routines and expressions
to open and close a telephone conversation. Because these interactional rituals
may differ from one language to another, and because L2 learners cannot rely
on body language when talking on the phone as they do in face-to-face
interaction, they may find it challenging to handle a telephone conversation with
speakers of other languages and cultures. However, textbooks often represent
telephone conversations unrealistically (Wong & Waring, 2010), making it even
more difficult for learners to acquire interactional resources for successfully
engaging in phone conversations. Teachers, therefore, should be ready to spend
time explaining how conversational openings and closings are typically
structured in phone conversations in English, and should draw students’
attention to possible cross-cultural variations to help prepare learners to deal
with such interactions with awareness and confidence in intercultural
communication.
Topic Management
Learning how to participate in conversations involves not only learning how
to handle everyday in-person and telephone conversations, but also learning
how to initiate, shift, and terminate a topic within a conversation.
Topic initiation is a basic communication skill. However, without instruction,
many learners may feel like “a fish out of water” because they do not know
when and how to join a conversation properly. English speakers usually generate
a topic in relatively predictable patterns. Table 4 presents a list of patterns that
can be taught to English learners to help them take part more effectively in
conversations.
Table 4: Topic initiation strategies
Strategies for eliciting a topic
(i) Making comments on immediate
surroundings:
(ii) Asking general questions about
news events that are related to the
recipient:
Examples
• Nice day, isn’t it?
• You have a nice bag.
• This bus is always late.
• What’s new (with you)?
• What else?
• What’s going on?
• How are you doing?
• How are things going?
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Strategies for eliciting a topic
(iii) Drawing on common background,
asking specific questions:
(iv) Drawing on common background,
announcing news:
(v) Getting to know the recipient:
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Examples
• Have you heard …?
• Did you talk to Joe this week?
• When are you moving to the new
apartment?
• Joe came by the other day
• Your mother met Joe last night
• So what’s your major?
• What do you do for a living?
• Do you live here on campus?
(Adapted from Wong & Waring, 2010)
In addition to topic initiation, topic continuation and topic shift are other
important communication skills that L2 learners need to develop. In a
conversation, English speakers typically indicate active listening and invite their
interlocutor to continue with the topic by making use of such back-channeling
devices as uh-huh, yeah, or right. They may also keep the conversation going by
using short responses such as really? and oh really?, or assessment tokens such
as that’s good, amazing, and not bad, in order to mark the prior talk as
informative, surprising, and interesting news (Wong & Waring, 2010).
Listening behaviors, however, may differ across languages and cultures.
Speakers of some cultures may repeat or rephrase the prior talk to show their
understanding, while considering a constant uh-huh to be impolite. Raising
students’ awareness of this variation can help them interact more smoothly in
intercultural communication.
Next, topic shift involves shifting emphasis within a topic, or moving out of
the current topic and toward a new topic. Knowing how to change topics can
help speakers avoid those they feel uncomfortable with or not interested in, as
well as keep the conversation going with other topics. English speakers use
certain expressions to signal a change in topic, for example:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Anyway
Alright
Oh
Oh say
I’ll tell you what
One more thing
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•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
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By the way
Incidentally
Actually
You know what?
Before I forget
Speaking of X
That reminds me of
Listen, there’s something I’ve gotta tell you
(Wong & Waring, 2010)
It should, however, be noted that different topic shift markers may carry
different nuanced meanings, and using the wrong marker can cause confusion
and breakdowns in communication. For example, while by the way indicates that
what one is about to say is off-topic, anyway means that what one is about to
say does not follow from the immediately preceding turn but from the one
preceding that (Wong & Waring, 2010). Thus, when teaching topic shift markers,
it is important that teachers spend time explaining the nuances of these markers
to develop students’ understanding of and ability to use the markers
appropriately.
Finally, topic termination can (but does not always) coincide with
conversation closings (see the section on telephone closings on page 20). In
exiting a topic, people may use verbal cues such as okay and well to indicate a
movement toward closure. Topics may also be closed effectively with
assessment tokens such as great, good, amazing, and the like (Wong & Waring,
2010).
Sequence Organization
Sequence organization refers to the way people initiate and respond to talk
when participating in social actions (speech acts) such as requesting,
complimenting, disagreeing, and so on.
In interaction, some actions are preferred over others; for example, generally
speaking, agreements are preferred over disagreements, and the acceptance of
an invitation is preferred over the rejection of it. Preferred actions are those we
expect to happen, whereas dispreferred actions are unexpected and may pose
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threats to one or both speakers. To minimize potential threat of loss of face,
dispreferred actions are often delayed, mitigated, and accounted for. On the
other hand, preferred actions can be produced without such devices (Wong &
Waring, 2010).
Consider this agreement sequence in which the agreement is produced
without a delay:
01
02
Nice day, isn’t it?
Yeah, it’s wonderful weather.
A:
B:
In English, disagreements without hesitation and hedges, however, can be
seen as rude or uncooperative (Wong & Waring, 2010). Thus, disagreements are
typically delayed and downgraded, as shown in the example below.
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
A:
B:
A:
So, Tom, you think there is no easy way to make people change to
public transport?
Exactly. If people are forced into using only public transport, they'll
resent it.
Hmm (0.2). But if you look at the case of Singapore, for
example, most people use buses or trains to go to work. And that’s
because it would cost them a fortune to drive there. So if
we make it extremely expensive to drive in Brisbane, it might
work.
In this conversation, the reluctance marker “hmm” and the two-tenths
second pause in line 05 serve to signal A’s hesitation in performing the
dispreferred action. In addition, an explanation for the disagreement is
produced in lines 05-09, and words such as would and might help to qualify it.
Note, however, that what is preferred may vary from language to language.
In Chinese, for example, disagreement is a preferred response to compliments
and does not need to be delayed in compliment–response sequences. Such
cross-cultural variation needs to be brought to L2 learners’ attention to raise
their intercultural sensitivity. In short, learning to perform social actions (speech
acts) involves not only knowing what linguistic resources to use to express one’s
intended meaning, but also maintaining social harmony by attending to how to
organize conversation to get things done politely. Since being able to do social
actions is an important part of L2 learners’ communicative competence,
mastering resources for doing so should be considered a central goal of
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language teaching. In this section, we hope to raise teachers’ awareness of how
talk is structured so that they can facilitate their students’ skill acquisition for
successfully engaging in interactive speech.
Reflective Break
Explore an English textbook that you know. How are dispreferred acts such as
disagreements represented in the textbook? Are they presented in a realistic
manner?
Teaching Pragmatics in EFL Classrooms 25
Pragmatics, as discussed in the previous chapters, is the study of language
use in its sociocultural context. Since sociocultural norms governing pragmatic
language use may vary greatly across cultural and linguistic communities,
learners may encounter considerable difficulty when crossing diverse cultural
boundaries. To navigate intercultural encounters in an ELF context smoothly,
learners need to be made aware not only of a range of pragmatic norms in
native speaker (NS) varieties of English, but should also be encouraged to
embrace other English norms and equip themselves with the necessary skills to
negotiate cross-cultural differences. Systematic instruction of pragmatics can
help increase learners’ awareness of pragmatic norms that are too subtle for
learners to notice on their own, and heighten their intercultural sensitivity.
Pragmatics instruction is of particular importance in foreign-language learning
environments where English is not used in the wider society, and hence the
classroom is the only place where learners get the chance to hear and use the
language on a regular basis.
In this chapter, we offer guidance to teachers who wish to incorporate
pragmatics into their classroom teaching by drawing together a set of six general
teaching principles. These principles are based on insights from theories of
instructed L2 acquisition and discussions of L2 pragmatics in ELT literature.
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Principle #1: Developing awareness of form, function,
and form-function-context connections
Language forms are the types of sentences that we produce (e.g.,
imperatives, declaratives, or interrogatives), whereas language functions are
what we do with the sentences in communication (e.g., making a request,
lodging a complaint, or expressing an opinion). When an imperative is used to
express a directive (e.g., “Pass the salt”), we say there is a match between the
form and the function. However, there is not always a one-to-one
correspondence between language forms (syntactical structures) and
communicative functions (intended meaning). A speaker may make a request
not by using an imperative, but by using an interrogative (e.g., “Can you pass the
salt?”) or declarative structure (e.g., “There is no salt.”). In such cases, the forms
do not match the functions.
Language form
Pass the salt please.
Can you pass the salt?
There is no salt.
Imperative
Interrogative
Declarative
Possible communicative
function
Request
Request
Request
Without understanding the pragmatic function of an utterance or the
speaker’s intended meaning, we are likely to respond inappropriately. For
example, it would not be appropriate to respond to the request, “Can you pass
the salt?” by saying “Yes, I can” without following it up with the action of passing
the salt.
In real-world communication, a single sentence can carry a variety of
functions, according to when it is said, who says it, who the person is talking to,
and where the conversation takes place. The sentence “It’s going to rain,”
depending on the context in which it is stated, could function as a general
statement about the weather, a request for someone to bring in the clothes off
the line in the backyard, or a rejection of someone’s suggestion to go out for a
walk.
To be considered pragmatically competent, learners need to know not only
the language form but also understand its functional meaning, know the social
relationships and contexts of communication in which it can or cannot be used,
and apply this knowledge to real-life communication.
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For example, when learning how to make requests in English, learners need
to know that a request can be expressed by means of an imperative (e.g., “Move
your car, please”), an interrogative (e.g., “Can/could/will you move your car?”),
or a two-clause sentence (e.g., “I wonder if you could move your car a bit?”).
Learners also need to understand that while saying “Can you move your car?” to
a stranger whose car blocks the way in the carpark is appropriate while saying
“Can you lend me $1000?” to a new acquaintance is not. In other words, they
need to know how to use a particular language form to express an idea
appropriately. This ability requires two kinds of knowledge:
• knowledge of the sociocultural norms of language use, that is, knowing what
to say, not to say, and to whom in the given context and culture
(sociopragmatic knowledge); and
• knowledge of the linguistic resources required for expressing one’s social
meaning accurately and appropriately (pragmalinguistic knowledge).
Effective instruction of pragmatic norms, hence, should aim to develop both
kinds of knowledge in learners. Teaching form in isolation from its functional
meaning and context of use is counter-productive and can lead to the
production of grammatically perfect but pragmatically inappropriate sentences,
thus potentially offending the interlocutor and breaking down communication.
For example, EFL students who are not taught the functional meaning and
context of use of the construction “You must” may inadvertently offend their
international fellow students by giving peer feedback such as “You must discuss
both sides of the issue.” Similarly, using a direct expression of disagreement such
as “I disagree with you” in group discussion may cause friction. This often
happens to students who are taught the lexical meaning of the verb “disagree”
without being taught when, where, and with whom its usage is possible or
impossible.
Principle #2: Developing the ability to use language
not only accurately and appropriately, but also fluently
Before learning an L2, adult learners have already developed pragmatic
ability in their L1. This prior knowledge can be beneficial or detrimental to
learners. On the one hand, learners can readily transfer available knowledge
that is appropriate to the TL. On the other hand, they should be aware that what
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is pragmatically acceptable in their L1 may not always be acceptable in the L2 or
to people of other speech communities. For example, in some cultures, the
question, “Why haven’t you got married yet?” may be acceptable, but such
directness may be considered rude in other cultures.
Two aspects of pragmatic ability are pragmatic accuracy and pragmatic
fluency. Pragmatic accuracy refers to the ability to recognize intentions
accurately and produce meaning in a grammatically and socially acceptable
manner, whereas pragmatic fluency refers to the ability to apply this knowledge
smoothly and efficiently in real-life communication (Taguchi, 2015).
It is believed that the accuracy of pragmatic performance can be developed
effectively through input-based activities, such as teacher’s explanations and
guided self-discovery of pragmatic rules, as well as controlled input and output
practice, such as recognition of indirect meaning in given situations, filling in
gaps in dialogues, or constructing dialogues based on given scripts. On the other
hand, the fluency of pragmatic performance can be developed through
communicative activities that allow students to focus on meaning, especially
when the same or similar activities are repeated several times.
Although pragmatic accuracy can take a relatively short amount of time (i.e.,
5 hours or more of intensive instruction) to develop, pragmatic fluency requires
a much longer time (i.e., at least twice the amount of practice required for
accuracy development) (Taguchi, 2015). Research has also shown that accuracy
can be transferred across skill domains, but fluency cannot (Taguchi, 2015). That
is to say, for example, accuracy practice in pragmatic comprehension can lead to
not only accurate pragmatic comprehension, but also accurate pragmatic
production. However, fluency practice in pragmatic comprehension will lead to
fluent pragmatic comprehension but not fluent pragmatic production. While
pragmatic fluency should be the end goal of instruction, teachers should also
devote an equal amount of time to developing students’ pragmatic accuracy.
After understanding the different conditions for accuracy and fluency
development, teachers can then design learning tasks to provide their students
with optimal learning opportunities.
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Principle #3: Providing exposure to language input,
opportunities for input noticing, and sustained
practice of the target form
Much work in pragmatics instruction has drawn on the Noticing Hypothesis,
the Interaction Hypothesis, and the Output Hypothesis. The Noticing Hypothesis
states that to learn a pragmatic feature (such as strategies for making requests
or closing conversations), learners need to receive relevant input, notice the
target form in the input, and understand its function in social contexts (Schmidt,
2001). For example, when learners hear someone say “Can I have a cappuccino
to go please?” to a barista at a coffee shop, they need to be able to notice the
question “Can I?” They also need to develop an understanding that the function
of this question is to make a request, especially when the request is relatively
small, like ordering a coffee, and addressed to someone who is supposed to
comply with the request (the barista). While noticing involves awareness of the
surface linguistic structure, understanding involves recognition and
generalization of the rule of use underlying the structure, thus representing a
higher level of awareness and deeper level of learning. Therefore, to enhance
students’ pragmatic awareness, classroom instruction should aim at not only
making them notice language forms but also enabling them to understand why
particular forms are used in relation to the context or situation. To this end,
input-based approaches such as teachers’ explanations, guided self-discovery,
and structured-input activities have proved useful. These approaches will be
presented in the next chapter.
In addition to the input-based approaches outlined above, output-based
options, particularly production tasks that allow students to focus on meaning
such as discussion and role playing, can also help increase their pragmatic
awareness. These approaches will be introduced in the next chapter. The
Interaction Hypothesis states that when learners interact with one another, or
with teachers, they receive opportunities to clarify what they say and hear,
which is beneficial to their language learning (Long, 1985). In particular, when
one participant in a conversation says something that the other does not
understand, both participants will try various ways to make communication
work. They may paraphrase or correct what they say, check whether they make
sense or understand the other person correctly, ask the other person to repeat,
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recast what the other person says, and so on. In so doing, learners become
more aware of what they say that works or does not work and learn to adjust
their language use accordingly. According to the Output Hypothesis, the
opportunities to try out alternative ways of saying things help learners process
language forms at a more in-depth level and thus develop a higher level of
awareness of how and why particular forms are used (Swain, 1985).
However, recall that even if learners develop a high level of awareness of
pragmatic rules, it does not mean this will lead to fluent pragmatic performance.
Fluency development requires sustained, repeated practice of the target form in
both comprehension as well as production tasks. Therefore, to facilitate learners
to communicate appropriately and effortlessly in real life contexts, class
instruction should aim at providing learners with opportunities for not only
noticing and processing pragmatic input but also intensive output practice.
Principle #4: Providing systematically planned and
sustained instruction
Although pragmatics has increasingly become accepted as an important part
of L2 teaching, systematic pragmatics instruction rarely happens in the actual
classroom. Pragmatic content may be discussed incidentally in meaning-based
lessons. For example, when a learner says something inappropriate during a
class discussion, the teacher may decide to interfere and correct him or her on
the spot. Other than that, pragmatics is not addressed methodically as part of
the designated syllabus or curriculum.
While opportunistic teaching can help draw students’ immediate attention to
the targeted form, the impact may not last long. Students may walk out of the
classroom forgetting what they learn if the learning is not reinforced over time.
To ensure that students can use a wide range of pragmatic features in real-life
communication, a pragmatics-focused curriculum must be carefully planned and
implemented. In chapters 4, 5, and 6, we will discuss how such a curriculum can
be planned and implemented.
Regarding the amount of instruction, there is evidence to suggest that
pragmatic knowledge benefits from prolonged instruction. The optimal amount
of instruction depends on particular pragmatic features. For example, opaque
pragmatic rules may require more extensive practice to be acquired than
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concrete and systematic rules. However, generally speaking, instruction that
lasts at least five hours can lead to greater improvement in learners’
performance than instruction that lasts less than five hours (Taguchi, 2015).
Principle #5: Developing intercultural awareness and
negotiation skills as well as cultivating tolerance of
cultural differences
Traditionally, scholars and teachers tended to believe that the goal of
pragmatics instruction was for L2 learners to imitate NS interactional norms.
However, what we know from recent scholarship is that this may not be the goal
of language learning for many L2 learners. While learners may elect to emulate
certain NS norms, they may less readily embrace the norms that clash with their
system of cultural beliefs and values. Take forms of address in higher education
as an example. In the Australian academic culture, it is considered appropriate
for students to address their lecturers by their first name when this form of
address is endorsed by the lecturers. However, for international students from
an Asian cultural background, such as China, Vietnam, Korea, and Indonesia, this
may violate the social norms of their cultures, where teachers are typically
addressed formally and respectfully. Thus, as much as they may respect
Australian culture, Asian students may still hesitate to adopt an informal way of
addressing their professors.
It is important to note that the learning of pragmatics is different from that of
grammar and vocabulary. While grammatical and lexical errors are often caused
by the learners’ lack of knowledge of the TL, pragmatic variation may be related
to the language users’ culture or the expression of their cultural identity. Thus,
the current view on pragmatics instruction is that as long as learners’ pragmatic
choices do not break down communication, their choices should be respected.
In other words, pragmatics instruction should not impose NS norms on learners
at the expense of their own cultural values. Instead, it should enable learners to
develop awareness of the intercultural differences between their own pragmatic
system and that of the TL, and draw on this knowledge to negotiate the
differences.
The above goal will make a lot of sense if we consider the context of English
as an international language, where interaction typically happens between two
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or more non-native speakers (NNSs). For example, when a Chinese person and a
Korean communicate with each other using English as a lingua franca, British or
American cultural norms will become irrelevant, and interactional norms will be
negotiated by the NNS participants themselves to achieve mutual
understanding.
The global spread of the English language means fewer intercultural
interactions will involve a NS and more will take place between people who use
English as an additional language. Obviously, in this context, dependence on NS
norms will not help learners to accommodate effectively to the diversity of
cultural perspectives and discourse communities that they will encounter. To
help learners communicate successfully across cultural boundaries without
stereotyping other cultures or losing their own cultural identity, pragmatics
instruction should aim to develop learners’ intercultural sensitivity and
negotiation skills as well as cultivate their tolerance of cultural differences.
Principle #6: Cultivating learner autonomy and selfdirected learning
While the immediate goals of classroom pragmatics instruction (i.e., what
can be achieved within particular lessons and curricula) are to improve students’
intercultural awareness and enable them to develop fluency in using various
pragmatic features in the TL, the learning of pragmatics does not take place only
inside the classroom. Learning is a life-long process, and hence it is important
that pragmatics instruction aims to help learners develop a repertoire of
pragmatics learning strategies so that they can take charge of their own learning
and enhance their use of the TL beyond the classroom. By pragmatics learning
strategies, we mean goal-oriented actions taken intentionally by learners to
make their learning more effective and enjoyable (Oxford, 2011). Some
examples include making conscious efforts to interact with speakers from other
cultures, observing pragmatic norms in different varieties of English, comparing
the way particular pragmatic features are used in the native language and in
English, and reflecting on and evaluating one’s own intercultural communication
experience.
Why does strategy-based pragmatics learning matter? No matter how much
content we as teachers want to teach, our teaching content is always
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constrained by contextual factors beyond our control, such as a lack of suitable
teaching material or a limited curricular timeframe. Due to those constraints,
classroom instruction may not be able to cover all pragmatic skills that learners
need for real-life communication. Thus, strategy training is needed to provide
learners with techniques for obtaining further learning opportunities outside of
the classroom for their own benefits (Taguchi, 2018). We will discuss pragmatic
learning strategies in greater detail in Chapter 5.
Reflective Break
• This chapter has presented six general principles of pragmatics instruction.
Choose one of them to discuss further with your colleagues. To what extent do
you agree with it and why?
• What pragmatic difficulties have your students experienced? Have they felt
resistant to any TL pragmatic norms? In what situations and why?
• To what extent do you think learners’ pragmatic variations should be addressed
by teachers? What can teachers do to help their learners acquire the TL
pragmatics systems without compromising the learners’ own cultural values?
Teaching Pragmatics in EFL Classrooms 34
This chapter presents and discusses various learning activities that teachers
can introduce in their English lessons to develop students’ pragmatic
competence. These activities are supported by research in the field of L2
teaching and closely follow the principles of pragmatics instruction outlined in
Chapter 3. This chapter also provides sample materials that teachers can adapt
to suit their own classrooms and social contexts.
The learning activities presented in this chapter are centered on the
following:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Awareness-raising
Production practice
Self-reflection
Teachers’ corrective feedback
Awareness-Raising
It is widely accepted in pragmatics instruction that learners need to notice
the relationship between linguistic forms and the communicative purposes
those forms serve to learn pragmatics. In other words, noticing is the
precondition for understanding. So, teachers should draw learners’ attention to
the input as the first step in teaching pragmatics.
There are various ways in which the teacher can draw students’ attention to
pragmatic information. First, the teacher may give direct explanations of
pragmatic rules. Alternatively, the teacher can use awareness-raising activities to
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prompt students to study language samples and work out rules for themselves
with support.
Each approach has its own advantages and disadvantages, depending on the
target feature and the classroom characteristics. Direct explanations can work
effectively for concrete and systematic pragmatic rules (e.g., using correct forms
of address). Awareness-raising may work better for complex pragmatic rules that
are not easily explained and would require extensive exposure to be internalized
(e.g., features that signal engagement in small talk, such as overlap). This
approach also encourages experiential learning, and is more motivating for
students. However, it should be noted that although the awareness-raising
approach may stimulate students’ interest and promote higher-order thinking, it
is not easy for learners to “get it right” without the teacher’s feedback. So,
classroom teaching may often combine awareness-raising and direct
explanations. For example, learners discover pragmatic norms, discuss their
discoveries with their peers, and later get feedback/explanations from teachers.
Another way to prompt students to work on pragmatic information is using
structured tasks, that is, tasks that engage learners in in-depth processing of
form for functional meaning.
In this chapter, we will present various types of classroom tasks to illustrate
different approaches to pragmatics instruction.
Direct Explanation
Direct explanation of pragmatic rules involves providing information
regarding when and for what purpose it is appropriate to say something and
how to say something appropriately in a particular situation. It focuses on the
nuances and their meanings in context. This kind of teaching makes use of
metalanguage (language for talking about language) and is usually done in
teacher-centered instruction but can be accompanied by handouts for students
to take home.
Let us consider this mini-lecture where the teacher is giving an explanation
about how to write a status-appropriate email request to one’s professor in a
university setting. The teacher starts the lesson with a warm-up activity that
requires students to share their experience in writing an email to request an
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appointment with their English professor. Students are asked to discuss in
groups questions such as:
• what the appointment is for;
• how to make the request;
• whether they encounter any difficulty when writing this email request, and if
so, in what aspect of the writing;
• how the professor would respond; and
• if they could make the request again, how would they write it.
After having the groups present their answers, the teacher wraps up the
lesson by giving a mini-lecture on the pragmatics of making requests in English.
When reading the script of her lesson (see below), please pay attention to the
kind of language she uses in her explanation.
Requesting someone to do something represents a cost to them. For example,
the request may impose on their time. So, making an inappropriate request may
adversely affect your relationship with the requestee. It may also reflect badly on
you as someone who is selfish and lacks consideration for others’ well-being. An
inappropriate request is usually not complied with, so you would not be able to
achieve your goal.
Requesting a professor to do something is even more challenging because of
the unequal relationship between students and professors. Making an
appointment to see the professor is not seen as imposing as other types of
requests, for example, asking for an extension of a due date, because it is typically
the job of the professor to have consulting hours in which students may speak to
them. However, the unequal relationship still makes the request difficult.
Although students may choose a direct strategy in this situation (e.g., writing “I
would like to make an appointment to see you regarding my assignment”), they
still must make sure their request sounds polite. That is, they need to address
their professor properly, let the professor decide on the date and time (and
refrain from rushing him/her), and express gratitude for the professor’s effort to
make time to see them despite his or her busy schedule.
Note that here the teacher uses many special terms to explain why making a
request can be difficult – especially when it addresses an authority figure – and
how such a request can be made more polite, such as:
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•
•
•
•
•
•
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cost,
impose/imposing,
inappropriate,
unequal relationship,
direct strategy, and
polite.
These are examples of metalanguage typically used in a pragmatics-focused
lesson. Teachers who wish to incorporate pragmatics in their teaching need to
familiarize themselves with these pragmatics-related terms so that they can talk
about pragmatics more effectively.
In the above lesson, the teacher also provides students with a take-home
handout to help them review and consolidate what they have learned in class.
Take note of the kind of information that is provided in the handout. There is
information about the contextual factors that affect the way in which we carry
out the act of requesting, and information about language forms for softening
our requests. Further, take note of the use of metalanguage (e.g., “polite
language forms,” “direct requests,” “indirect requests,” “social status,” “close,”
“imposing,” etc.) in the handout.
Handout: Writing an email request for an appointment
When you are writing an email request for an appointment with your professor,
you may consider using the following polite language forms:
Direct
requests
Indirect
requests
I would like to meet with you/set up an appointment with
you.
Could I meet with you/make an appointment to see/meet
with you?
I was wondering if I could make an appointment with
you/come by and see you.
Your language choice will depend on the fact that the professor’s social status is
higher than yours and on:
(a) whether you feel close to the professor;
(b) how much inconvenience your request may cause the professor, as displayed in
the diagram below.
Cancelling appointment and rescheduling
Appointment on the same day
Increasing inconvenience
Appointment later in week/next week
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Reflective Break
• Have you ever taught a pragmatic feature using direct explanation? Does it
work for your students? Can you share your opinions regarding why it works or
does not work?
• Do you experience any difficulty in using metalanguage? If you do, where would
you go to for help (e.g., linguistics books, teaching methodology books,
teachers’ resources, experts, fellow teachers, etc.)?
Awareness-Raising Tasks
Awareness-raising tasks are designed to facilitate students’ noticing and
understanding of the target feature, the functional meaning that it conveys, as
well as the social context in which it may be used. An awareness-raising task
typically consists of some language data containing the target feature and a set
of guiding questions to help students discover the patterns and rules involved
(Ellis & Shintani, 2014).
Depending on the students’ needs, an awareness-raising task may focus
primarily on either language forms or social and cultural norms (Ishihara &
Cohen, 2010).
Some examples of tasks with a mainly linguistic focus include:
• identifying the various expressions speakers in conversations employ to
initiate or change topics;
• identifying and comparing conversational openings and closings by speakers
of different varieties of English;
• analyzing the intonation and functional meaning of back-channeling devices
(uh-huh, mm-hmm, yeah, right) in conversations;
• identifying words or phrases speakers use to make conversations go
smoothly;
• identifying grammatical forms used to soften the tone of a face-threatening
message such as disagreement, complaint, request, criticism, and so on;
• identifying the various expressions speakers use to perform a speech act
such as requesting, advising, criticizing, and so on, and recognizing the
directness levels of these expressions;
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• identifying the various discourse moves speakers use to support their
message (e.g., checking the hearer’s availability to hear the message,
justifying the purpose of the message, building rapport with the hearer, etc.);
• recognizing and comparing how preferred and dispreferred actions are
structured in conversations;
• recognizing the order in which an exchange of turns happens; and
• recognizing indirect meaning and identifying conversational rules that are
broken to convey indirect meaning.
Some examples of tasks with a mainly social and cultural focus include:
• analyzing contextual factors (power, distance, and imposition) and how these
factors affect speakers’ choice of language forms to express their message in
various communicative situations;
• comparing speakers’ perceptions of power, distance, and imposition in
different cultures;
• identifying the appropriateness levels of various expressions multilingual
speakers of English use to perform a verbal act such as writing an email
request, expressing disagreement, and so on;
• analyzing and comparing speakers’ preferences for politeness devices in
different cultures; and
• comparing sociocultural norms governing speech behavior in different
cultures.
See more examples in Ishihara and Cohen (2010).
Very often, an awareness-raising task may be designed in a way that directs
learners’ attention to both linguistic forms and sociocultural norms. Let us
consider some specific examples.
Below is a lesson focusing on writing email requests to authority figures in
the context of higher education. In the awareness-raising activity described
below, the learners are required to study and compare two samples of email
requests to a lecturer, one written by an American student and the other by an
international student. The international student’s email (sample 1) is more
verbose but more informal and less softened. It also contains some grammatical
errors. Also, the fact that she repeatedly mentions that she does not know
which topic she should choose for her assignment may create the impression
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that she is a dependent student, which is not a desirable characteristic in the
academic context. The two students also employ very different politeness
strategies. While the American student relies on deference politeness (giving
options), the international student relies on solidarity politeness (building
rapport).
The learners are guided to compare the two email messages in terms of their
organizational structures, language use, and the possible effects on the
professor. By answering the questions accompanying the samples, the learners
are encouraged to notice not only specific discourse moves (email opening and
closing) and language forms (address terms, request forms, and modality), but
also the extent of directness, formality, and politeness involved. The teacher can
also use the questions as a springboard for a class discussion on the
sociocultural dimensions of making requests in English and in the learners’ L1,
and raise issues such as cultural identity and the extent to which the learners
wish to aspire to NS norms of politeness. Note that while some deviations from
the NS norm (e.g., the under-use of softeners) can bear interactional
consequences, pragmatic choices that do not break down communication (e.g.,
preference of solidarity politeness over deference politeness) should be
accepted.
Worksheet: Analysis of email samples
Below are two sample emails written by students who would like to request an
appointment to see their teacher to discuss their work in progress.
Read the emails carefully and answer the questions with your peers.
Sample 1
Subject: Appointment
Dear Professor A.,
I’m a student in your Research Methods class. Because I have a class
before our class and have to catch the bus after class, I can’t talk to you after
the class. Therefore, I sent you this email message.
For our assignment, you ask us to write a research proposal. However, I am
not sure which topic to choose for my research project. I’d like to meet you
and discuss with you which topic will be suitable for me. Can I make an
appointment with you sometime next week?
Thank you for your excellent lessons and your precious time.
D.N.
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Sample 2
Subject: Appointment
Professor. D.,
I would like to make an appointment with you to discuss my questionnaire.
Also, I would like to find out more about the software to analyze questionnaire
data, which you mentioned to me recently. When would it be convenient for
you to meet with me?
Thank you,
B.C.
Questions
1. Fill in the table below with details from the sample emails.
How did the student address his/her teacher?
Did the student state their purpose immediately at
the beginning of the email? If not, what information
did they give at the beginning?
How did the student phrase their request? How direct
was the request?
How did the student close the email?
Sample
1
Sample
2
2. Which email sounded more formal? Why?
3. Which email would you prefer to receive if you were the professor? Why?
Here is another example of how students’ awareness of linguistic and
sociocultural conventions in performing communicative acts can be increased in
a sequence of awareness-raising activities. In the lesson described below,
students are taught how to express disagreement in a socially appropriate
manner. In the first activity, students are provided a dialogue containing the
target feature (i.e., disagreement). They are required to examine the way the
speakers in the dialogue use language to express their opinions (e.g., hesitation,
contrastive “but,” modality, token agreement, etc.) and how factors such as
interpersonal relationships and the sensitivity of the topic may affect the
speakers’ linguistic choices. Students are also asked to compare what makes a
tactful disagreement in their L1 and English and explore the cultural reasoning
behind these norms. The second activity requires students to judge the
directness levels of different expressions of disagreement, based on both what
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is said and the role relationship between the speakers. Note that in both
activities, the relevant language forms are bold-faced to attract students’
attention to what makes a bold and mitigated disagreement.
Lesson: Expressing disagreement
Activity 1: Read/listen to the following conversation and answer the following
questions.
Sarah and Tom are close friends. They are discussing whether public transport
should be made the main means of transportation in their home city.
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
Sarah:
Tom:
Sarah:
09
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
So Tom, you think there is no easy way to make people change
to public transport?
Exactly. If people are forced into using only public transport,
they'll resent it.
Hmm. But, if you look at the case of Singapore, for example,
most people use buses or trains to go to work. And that’s
because it would cost them a fortune to drive there. So, if we
make it extremely expensive to drive in Brisbane, it might
work.
Tom:
Sarah:
Tom:
You’re right about Singapore, but don’t you think Brisbane is
sort of a car-culture, which Singapore isn’t, so it’d be almost
impossible to brainwash the masses here into abandoning
their cars? ((laugh)).
Well, I think people in this society are just too spoiled, but
there should be a way ((laugh)).
I hope so but I can’t see a feasible way at this point ((laugh)).
Questions:
1. Do Sarah and Tom see eye-to-eye on the topic? Which specific phrases make
you think they do or they don’t?
2. What is the relationship between Sarah and Tom? How do you think their
relationship affects their expressions of disagreement?
3. Tom and Sarah make use of some modality forms when expressing their
opinions. What are these particular modality forms? Why do you think they use
these forms?
4. How sensitive is the topic they are discussing? How do you think the degree of
sensitivity affects their expressions of disagreement?
5. Do people in your country and speakers of English agree about what makes a
tactful disagreement? Why or why not?
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Activity 2: Recognizing directness level
Using a scale from 1 to 5 (with 1 being “most direct” and 5 being “least direct”),
rate the level of directness in Sarah’s disagreements below.
1 ______ _______ ______ _______ _______ 5
Most direct
Least direct
1. Sarah and Tom are two new classmates. They are discussing whether
homosexual marriage should be allowed in their home country. Tom thinks it
should not be allowed, while Sarah says: “Tom, I don’t agree with you. You’re
totally wrong. Homosexual marriage should be treated the same as
heterosexual marriage.”
Level of directness: ______________
2. Sarah is a new student and Tom is her professor. They are discussing whether
capital punishment should be abolished. Tom thinks it should be, while Sarah
says: “Tom, I completely disagree. We mustn’t abandon capital punishment.
Otherwise society will be chaotic.”
Level of directness: _____________
Structured-Input Tasks
Structured-input tasks require learners to process the language input they
receive to develop an understanding of the form-meaning connection. Although
there is no attempt to get students to discuss this relationship, by working on
form to understand the meaning of the message, learners are expected to
develop an implicit understanding of the form-meaning connection.
One way of structuring input is to use an interpretation task. This task
requires learners to depend on the target feature to understand the meaning
(Ellis & Shintani, 2014). In other words, learners must comprehend the form in
order to comprehend the whole message or text. To this end, an interpretation
task typically consists of a stimulus to which learners must make some kind of
response. For example, learners can listen to a recount of events (stimulus) and
put the pictures in the order of the events (response). Or they can read the
instructions on how to do something (stimulus) and draw a diagram describing
the steps involved (response).
Let us consider an example of how an interpretation task can be designed to
teach pragmatics.
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The lesson described below focuses on two request forms, could I and can I.
An interpretation task is designed to get students to comprehend the functional
meaning of the two request forms. Students are first asked to read a situation
description and a dialogue in which the two request forms are provided. Based
on their understanding of the context, students then select what they consider
the more appropriate request form. Then, they watch the video recording of the
dialogue to compare their answer with the actual request in the recording.
To complete the task, students need to pay attention to the target linguistic
forms and nuanced meanings that the forms convey. They need to make the
subtle distinction between the pragmatic meanings of “could” and “can,” and
decide which one is more appropriate.
So, here the dialogue serves as a stimulus that requires students to engage
with the input to get the meaning of the message.
Teaching requests
Read the dialogue below and circle the request form that you think Jane should
use: (a) or (b). Then, watch the video and indicate whether your choice is similar to
what Jane actually says.
Situation: Jane is writing her thesis. She is supposed to give her supervisor a
chapter draft at 3 p.m. However, her printer is not working. So, she calls her
supervisor to ask for permission to submit her draft half an hour later.
Supervisor:
Hello?
Jane:
Good afternoon, Dr. Smith. It’s Jane here.
Supervisor:
Hello, Jane.
Jane:
Dr. Smith, I’m supposed to give you my chapter at 3 p.m. today.
Unfortunately, when I was printing it out, something went
wrong and my printer stopped working altogether. (a) Could I
turn it in at 3:30 p.m. then? (b) Can I turn it in at 3:30 p.m.
then? I will rush to the library to print it now. I’m really sorry
about the inconvenience.
Supervisor:
No problem Jane. Take your time.
Jane:
Thank you so much Dr. Smith ….
(adapted from Takimoto, 2009)
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Reflective Break
How does structured input differ from awareness-raising? Which approach do you
think may work better for your students? Explain your answer.
Production Activities
Output practice provides learners with opportunities to put what they learn
into use, thus helping consolidate their knowledge. Output practice also enables
learners to develop pragmatic fluency, which is the automaticity in using
knowledge of form-function-context mappings in real-time communication.
Therefore, output practice is an important component of pragmatics instruction.
If input-based activities focus on getting learners to notice and understand the
form-function-context relationship, thus assisting them to integrate this
knowledge into their system, output-based activities help learners develop
control over this knowledge and retrieve it from the system for real-time use,
thus automatizing over time for speedy and effortless use.
Output practice activities vary, ranging from those that require maximal
teacher assistance and guidance in using new language items (guided practice),
to those that require little teacher assistance in using these newly learned items
for communication of new messages (communicative practice).
Guided Practice
The aim of guided practice is to assist students in mastering this new aspect
of language so that they will eventually be able to produce it effortlessly on their
own. The emphasis is on the accuracy of students’ pragmatic language use, that
is, the ability to accurately map form onto functional meaning and contextual
use. To achieve this goal, the teacher should provide a range of activities that
focus not only on form, but also on functional and contextual meaning, and
which vary in the extent of required scaffolding. Activities can be sequenced in a
way that allows gradual scaffolding withdrawal, leading to independent language
production in the next stage.
Here is an example of how the teacher can lead the guided practice stage of
a lesson on making polite requests.
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Lesson: Making polite requests
Activity 1: Multiple-choice questions
After students are introduced to request forms and the “rules” of making requests
in varied situations or contexts, they may be asked to respond to hypothetical
scenarios by choosing from a list of options which request they consider to be most
appropriate in each scenario.
Example: You were sick and missed an important class last week. Your friend
attended the class and took careful notes. You two are good friends. You say:
a.
b.
c.
d.
I was absent last week. Can you lend me your notes?
I was absent last week. Please lend me your notes.
I was absent last week. I want to borrow your notes.
I was absent last week. Would it be okay if I borrowed your notes?
This activity can lead to a discussion on how the particular context may influence
the way one makes requests, helping students to consolidate the knowledge
presented to them in the presentation stage.
Activity 2: Practicing softening requests
As a follow-up activity, students can be asked to rewrite unmitigated requests in
softened forms. The teacher will provide feedback to ensure that students master
different ways of making requests sound more polite.
Example: How might you modify the following ways of making requests to include
softeners? Read the situations, then look at the underlined request forms and
write them in a more softened form.
1. You have to submit your essay three days from now, but you are afraid you
need more time to complete it. So, you drop by your teacher’s office and ask
for an extension. You say: “I am really sorry but I hope you can give me an
extension so that I can complete my essay.”
2. You have a book to return to the library. But you live far from the school and do
not have a class today. You learn that your flat mate is going to school. So, you
ask her to drop the book off for you. You say: “I want you to return this book for
me if you go to school today.”
Activity 3: Scripted role plays
At the end of the guided practice stage, students can be given an opportunity to
write a role-play script based on a hypothetical scenario and act it out.
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For lower-level students, prompts may be provided to guide them in writing the
script.
Example: You were sick and missed an important class last week. Your friend
attended the class and took careful notes. Now you (A) want to ask your friend (B)
to help you with the homework. Work in pairs to write the dialogue and then role
play it.
A
B
A
B
A
B
A
Check if B is busy.
Tell him/her you are not doing anything.
Ask him/her to help you.
Refuse. Give a reason.
Try to persuade him or her.
Agree reluctantly.
Thank him/her.
Higher-level students may construct their script without using the prompts. In this
way, the activity requires less teacher control.
Getting students to plan and write down what they will say in conversations is a
useful building block for learning conversation skills and may subsequently lead to
unprepared speech production in the communicative practice stage.
Communicative Practice
Communicative practice provides students with opportunities to use
language freely in context, with minimal teacher assistance. Fluency
development is the focus of this type of practice. Fluency is the ability to apply
pragmatic rules for speedy and effortless use in impromptu interactions. To
facilitate fluency development, activities should be designed in such a way that
promotes meaningful communication and at the same time ensures that the
new language occurs naturally and frequently within the context of previous
experience. Communicative practice is of paramount importance because the
ability to use socially appropriate language fluently is the ultimate goal of
pragmatics instruction.
There are various possible communicative activities, such as:
• Role plays: Students act out a hypothetical situation together. Each of them
plays a specific role in the situation. To assist students in choosing language
appropriate for the audience and situation, details of the physical and nonphysical context as well as the speakers’ role-relationship need to be clearly
described.
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Role A: You are Susan. You work in a
busy office. You have a new colleague
called Allison. Allison just started
working in the office a month ago and
is the same age as you. You and
Allison are working together on the
same project, but Allison is a
disorganized person and usually does
not keep documents properly. Today,
you and Allison had to spend the
whole morning looking for an
important document but could not
find it. You felt upset about this. You
and Allison are alone in the office.
What would you say to Allison? Start
your conversation.
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Role B: You are Allison. You work in
a busy office and you just started
your job there a month ago. Susan
is your team member and is the
same age as you. You are both
working on the same project. You
do not have a good habit of keeping
documents properly. Today, you
and Susan spent the whole morning
looking for an important document,
but could not find it. She seemed
annoyed about this. Listen to what
she says and respond as you would
in real life.
• Situational writing: Students write a short response to a hypothetical
situation, for example:
You are a member of a book club. You receive an email from the club saying that
from the next month, they will not be able to host book discussion group meetings
because of a budget cut. All the scheduled meetings will be cancelled, too. Write
an email to the president of the club to express your feelings and opinions.
• Group discussion: Students can be asked to discuss a controversial topic such
as “Should capital punishment be abolished in your country?” This is a useful
activity for practicing speech acts such as expressing opinions, arguing,
challenging, persuading, and so on.
• Problem-solving activities: This type of activity requires students to work
collaboratively to solve a problem together. In reaching a solution that is
agreed upon by everyone, students need to use language effectively for a
variety of functions, such as suggesting, reasoning, evaluating, negotiating,
and so on, and successfully employ important conversation management
skills, such as display attentive listening, shifting emphasis within a topic, or
moving in or out of a topic.
Example: Imagine that your class is going to give a year-end party and is inviting
everyone in your grade-level, including all the teachers, to join the party. In groups,
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work out an appetizing menu that is likely to suit the tastes of your guests. Make a
grocery list and decide who is going to do what in preparation for the party. Then
report the arrangements you have made to the class.
Note that fluency development requires repeated practice. According to
Nation (1996), the following conditions must be met for effective fluency
development:
1. Students must already be familiar with the language items they work with.
2. The activity must focus on message conveyance in real time.
3. Students must be given support to perform beyond their normal proficiency
level.
Related to these conditions, a 4/3/2 technique may be applied (Nation,
1996). For example, in a lesson on using softeners to qualify one’s opinions,
students prepare a 4-minute speech about what they think the government
should do to encourage more people to use public transportation. They are then
put into pairs to give the speech, with each speaker talking for 4 minutes. Then
the pairs are shuffled, with each speaker now giving the same speech to their
new partner but only in 3 minutes. In the next round, the time allocation is
reduced to 2 minutes. In this way, students not only have the opportunity to
focus on meaningful communication but are also pushed to reach a higher level
of performance by being made to repeat the same message using language
items they have already gained control over, but within a decreased timeframe.
Also note that although fluency development is discussed mainly in relation
to output production in this book, fluency-focused activities can, in fact, aim at
both receptive (e.g., listening to a conversation and identifying the implied
meaning) and productive pragmatic language use (such as the above example).
Self-Reflection Tasks
Students should be given opportunities for receiving not only corrective
feedback from teachers and peers, but should also be provided with ample
opportunities for engaging in self-evaluation, through which they can develop
an awareness of their own communicative styles and the possible consequences
of what they say.
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Here is an example of how teachers may get students to reflect on their own
output production. This is a lesson about how to use softeners to tone down the
force of one’s constructive peer review. First, students are put into pairs to give
oral feedback to their partner on his or her writing assignment. The
conversation is recorded. Then, in the same pair, students listen to their own
peer-feedback conversation and write down the pragmatic strategies and
language choices they used to give feedback. Then, the teacher guides them to
evaluate the appropriateness of these choices, using the assessment checklist
below. In pairs, students talk about the experience, and how they would change
the way they provide feedback if they were to do this task again. This example
illustrates how teaching, learning, and evaluation can be integrated into a
pragmatics-focused lesson.
Assessment checklist
1. What strategies did you use when giving feedback on different aspects of your
peer’s essay?
2. Did you soften your feedback in each case?
3. How do you think your partner would feel about your feedback in each case?
Why?
4. If you could do this feedback task again, what would you change about the way
you gave feedback? Why?
Corrective Feedback Techniques
Corrective feedback is understood to play an important role in learning an L2
and has been receiving increasing attention in L2 pragmatics research.
Classroom research has found that teachers typically employ six techniques to
give oral corrective feedback on students’ work, for example:
• explicit feedback, involving the provision of suggested answers, accompanied
by metalinguistic or metapragmatic explanations (e.g., You may use
____________, because ____________);
• metalinguistic or metapragmatic feedback, involving the provision of an
explanation of the nature of the linguistic error or pragmatic infelicity
without giving suggestions about how to improve it (e.g., this situation
involves an unequal power relationship);
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• recasts, involving the reformulation of the inappropriate expression, without
explaining why reformulation is needed;
• clarification requests, including questions seeking the clarification of
meaning (e.g., What did you mean?);
• elicitations of self-correction; and
• repetitions of the inappropriate expression, with or without emphasis (e.g.,
“Professor, I want you to give me an extension.”).
When it comes to written corrective feedback, teachers typically do it in the
following three ways:
• direct feedback, involving the provision of suggested answers without
metalinguistic or metapragmatic explanation;
• indirect feedback, involving the provision of only clues to prompt selfcorrection; and
• metapragmatic feedback, involving the explanation of the nature of the
linguistic error or inappropriate language use without giving suggestions
about how to improve it.
Indirect feedback is preferred by many teachers and students because it can
afford opportunities for guided learning and problem-solving. However, scholars
suggest that direct feedback may be more advantageous when it is aimed at a
few selected forms and addressed to lower-level students. There is also some
evidence to suggest that feedback that contains metapragmatic information
leads to improvement in pragmatic awareness.
While further research is required to better understand the effects of
different types of corrective feedback on L2 pragmatic competence, it seems
plausible to advise that choices of feedback techniques should rest on the
careful consideration of the characteristics of the particular class. Who are the
students (age group, L1 background, L2 proficiency level, etc.)? What is the
targeted pragmatic feature? What seems to be the most challenging aspect for
students in learning this feature? Young learners may not respond well to
explicit explanations of rules, whereas adult learners may find it effective.
Higher-level students may recognize the corrective intention of recasts more
easily than their lower-level peers, but may appreciate more opportunities for
self-correction. Concrete and systematic pragmatic rules may respond well to
explicit correction, but opaque rules may require substantial exposure (e.g.,
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input provided through recasts). Ideally, there should be a balanced mix of
different techniques that are implemented in a structured way. For example,
where appropriate, teachers may first attempt to encourage self-repair by using
output-prompting techniques. If that fails, teachers may then move on to
provide explicit feedback (Ellis & Shintani, 2014).
Another important issue in correcting students’ language use concerns the
types of errors that should be corrected. Unlike grammatical errors, which are
often caused by incomplete L2 knowledge or L1 transfer, pragmatic variations
may not be simply due to these factors, but may also be reflective of learners’
exercise of agency and subjectivity. Thus, correcting inappropriate language use
can be a more delicate matter than correcting the inaccurate usage of words or
grammatical structures. Foreign or L2 learners are generally more receptive to
corrections that they regard as linguistic, for example, corrections of inaccurate
usage of pragmalinguistic conventions. However, they may not feel comfortable
about having their sociopragmatic decisions (e.g., whether to adopt deference
or solidarity politeness strategies) remedied. Sociopragmatic assessments (e.g.,
how big is the power gap between speakers?) are related to one’s cultural
beliefs and values, and hence should not be “fixed” if the assessments do not
lead to communication breakdowns or incur social consequences (Ishihara &
Cohen, 2010).
Finally, it is also relevant for teachers to consider when errors should be
corrected. Traditionally, teachers were advised against providing corrections
when students were engaged in fluency-focused activities. Methodology course
books recommended that teachers should take notes of the errors and only
provide corrections at the end of the activity. On the other hand, immediate
correction was encouraged during accuracy-focused activities. However, other
scholars argue that a quick, on-the-spot correction during fluency work may in
fact contribute to implicit (procedural) knowledge (Ellis & Shintani, 2014). Until
more consensus is gained regarding whether delayed or immediate correction
works better during fluency development, immediate correction may still be
strategically given, especially if that is what students require to proceed with the
task at hand.
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Reflective Break
• This chapter presents various pedagogical options in teaching pragmatic
language use. In the actual classroom, the various options are often combined
to enhance the effectiveness of the instruction. For example, guided selfdiscovery is often accompanied with metapragmatic instruction. Corrective
feedback is sometimes given during production practice to draw students’
attention to the problematic form.
• Reflect on one of your recent lessons and discuss to what extent your
experience resonates with the above observation. Do you agree that a
combination of different techniques may better enhance students’ learning?
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An important goal of pragmatics instruction is to enable students to develop
a repertoire of strategies for pragmatics learning so that they can continue to
create opportunities for observing and using the TL outside of the classroom
and make progress. The abilities to direct, monitor, and obtain resources for
one’s own learning are characteristics of good language learners, whose
learning is not restricted to the classroom, but is life-long and autonomous. It is
very important to cultivate students’ desires and abilities to develop these selfdirected learning strategies, because within the limited curricular timeframe,
classroom instruction cannot always cover all pragmatic knowledge that
students need for real-life communication. Knowing how to regulate learning
will enable students to expand their learning experiences beyond the classroom
walls.
The focus of this chapter is on out-of-class activities that teachers can design
to help students develop autonomous learning and expand the knowledge
acquired in the classroom. In this chapter, we discuss how some self-regulated
learning strategies and tactics can be used to benefit pragmatics learning
outside of the classroom.
Reflective Break
According to research on what makes a good language learner, here are some of
the key characteristics:
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•
•
•
•
•
•
•
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taking charge of their own learning,
organizing information about language,
creating opportunities to practice the TL,
learning from errors,
drawing on contextual cues to make sense of messages,
learning tips for keeping the conversation going, and
learning to adjust their language according to the situation.
How would you support your students to develop these characteristics in relation
to pragmatics learning? Think of some specific out-of-class activities that may be
useful for this purpose.
Understanding Self-Regulated Learning
Strategies for Acquiring Pragmatic Knowledge
By self-regulated learning strategies, we mean goal-oriented actions taken
intentionally by learners to make their learning more effective and enjoyable
(Oxford, 2011). Learning strategies should not be confused with skills. According
to Oxford (2011, p. 12), “skills are automatic and out of awareness, whereas
strategies are intentional and deliberate.” Strategies are manifested through
different tactics that can be used flexibly for different learning purposes in
different situations. Tactics can be taught to enable students to achieve desired
learning outcomes.
Oxford (2011) identifies three areas of self-regulated language learning:
• Cognitive: includes strategies that are useful for construction,
transformation, and application of L2 knowledge. An example is activating
knowledge to tackle a language task.
• Affective: includes strategies that are useful for developing positive attitudes
toward and maintaining motivation for learning. An example is activating
positive emotions about L2 use.
• Sociocultural-interactive (SI): includes strategies that are useful for dealing
with issues of communication, context, identity, and culture in L2 learning.
An example is interacting with people of other cultures to observe their
pragmatic norms.
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The above strategies are used by highly successful learners at all levels of
proficiency. However, not all strategies are needed by every learner at all times
(Oxford, 2011). When a learner feels he or she needs more opportunities to
develop interactional competence, the learner would need to use SI strategies
(e.g., reaching out to people of other cultures to experience language use in
different sociocultural contexts), and not much else. At other times, however,
the same learner may need affective strategies to maintain motivation when
faced with a challenging learning task.
For learners to choose the right strategy in a particular situation and for a
specific goal, they need to understand:
• their own cognitive level, learning style, goals, emotions, motivations, social
interaction patterns, and related strengths and weaknesses;
• the norms and expectations of the home and target culture;
• the characteristics and requirements of the L2 learning-task at hand;
• the characteristics and requirements of the long-term process of L2 learning;
and
• the purposes and uses of various strategies.
(Oxford, 2011, pp. 19-20)
For example, Faizan, a study-abroad student who is taking an English
Language course in an Australian university, is strongly motivated to develop a
high level of pragmatic competence in English and an understanding of
Australian culture. He knows that learning L2 community pragmatic norms
requires a lot of interaction with NSs. Faizan is an extroverted learner who likes
to learn through communication and collaboration with others. He is fully aware
of his outgoing nature and in fact has no difficulty establishing contact with local
students in the university because he knows that the locals are friendly once he
gets to know them. At the same time, Faizan is good at learning by
systematically breaking down information into smaller parts to understand each
part and the connections among them. Thus, to create more opportunities to
observe and use the TL, Faizan sets the goal of having at least one extended
conversation with his local friends each day. He consciously takes note of the
pragmatic norms used by the NSs in the conversation, generates hypotheses
about the norms, and subsequently cross-checks the hypotheses with his
friends. In this way, Faizan has chosen the strategies appropriate for his learning
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style, cognitive characteristics, motivation, goals, expectations of the L2
community, and requirements of pragmatics learning. In other words, he knows
how to make use of his knowledge about himself, the target culture, and the
learning task in order to select strategies that can best help him achieve his
specific learning objectives.
Oxford (2011)’s model is highly useful for the teaching and learning of
pragmatics in a strategic way. In table 5, we recommend how to apply this
model for strategic pragmatics learning. The list of strategies is adapted and
developed further from Taguchi (2018)'s list. We will then introduce some
tactics for manifesting these strategies in the next section.
Table 5: Strategic pragmatics learning
Types of
strategies
Broad
strategies
Cognitive
strategies
Strategic pragmatics learning
• attending to language forms, their functional meanings, and
contexts of use
• making plans regarding the learning of pragmatic features
(e.g., speech acts, conversational skills) in accordance with
one’s needs and goals
• obtaining resources for expanding pragmatic knowledge (e.g.,
online resources, media, observations, movies, teacher’s or
expert speaker feedback, etc.)
• seeking opportunities for observing pragmatic norms of other
communities and practicing communication skills in the ELF
context
• monitoring one’s own pragmatic language use during
interactions
• reflecting on and evaluating one’s pragmatic language use to
make progress
• making use of visual (e.g., facial expressions and hand
gestures) and prosodic cues (e.g., intonation) to recognize
messages and attitudes speakers wish to convey
• activating universal pragmatic knowledge (politeness,
directness, formality) and/or L1 pragmatic knowledge to deal
with unfamiliar tasks in the L2
• making deductions about pragmatic “rules” based on
language data
• analyzing pragmatic variations across languages and cultures
• analyzing language use in context
• generating hypotheses regarding the sociocultural norms of
other communities
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Affective
strategies
SI strategies
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• reflecting on positive traits of other cultures and communities
• developing intercultural sensitivity, and appreciation for and
tolerance of cross-cultural differences
• using positive self-talk to reduce anxiety and enhance selfconfidence and self-efficacy
• providing oneself with a reward or praise for good progress
and achievement in learning about another culture and its
people’s pragmatic norms
• making learning fun and enjoyable
• reflecting on the short- and long-term benefits of learning
about another culture and its members’ values, beliefs, and
norms of interaction
• interacting with people from another language and culture to
practice pragmatic language use
• reflecting on one’s cultural identity, beliefs, and values, and
deciding how to adjust one’s language use in communication
with people of other cultures in various social contexts
• developing effective negotiation skills for reconciling
differences in interactional norms in intercultural
communication
Out-of-Class Activities
We will now focus on some out-of-class activities for training strategically
self-regulated learners who wish to seek out opportunities for autonomous
learning of L2 pragmatics beyond the classroom context.
1. Activity 1: Setting goals and making plans
Students can be encouraged to analyze their own learning needs, set specific goals
to meet these needs, and make detailed plans about how they can achieve these
goals. Students may record their plans in a learning journal, using the teacher’s
prompts to guide their thoughts. For example:
Name:
Pragmatics Learning Journal
Date:
(i) I need to learn more about ______because _________________________.
(ii) To achieve this goal, I decided to focus on ___________ so that ________.
(iii) The resources I need for my learning are __________________________.
(iv) To obtain these resources, I will __________________________________.
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2. Activity 2: Implementing plans
There are several extra-curricular activities that students can carry out to obtain
pragmatic input and practice output, such as:
• interviewing people of other cultures about specific pragmatic language use
and/or cultural norms;
• observing and taking note of how expert speakers carry out a communicative
act (e.g., requesting, starting a conversation, etc.), paying attention to what
they say, how they say it (e.g., directness, formality, address terms, tone), and
their body language, as well as in what context they say it (physical setting,
speakers’ role relationships, etc.);
• reading self-access materials and taking notes of new insights;
• while watching movies, paying attention to how people open, close, and
manage a conversation or carry out a speech function, taking note of what they
say, how they say it, and in what context they say it;
• trying out what one has learned/observed with a fellow student or expert
speaker, and noting how the conversation goes;
• asking for expert speakers’ feedback on pragmatic language use;
• making an effort to speak to at least one person from another culture per
day/week, where appropriate;
• carrying out a cross-cultural analysis of norms of interaction in various social
contexts (e.g., with people of more, less, or equal power);
• developing a list of “rules” for L2 interaction (e.g., the “dos and don’ts” of
complimenting someone in English) based on the above analysis;
• writing a pamphlet to give advice to international visitors about rules of
interaction in the students’ home countries, highlighting cross-cultural
differences that may cause communication breakdowns (e.g., In English people
say __________, but in my country people say____________ when they want
to order a coffee); and
• keeping a journal about one’s cultural identity and values, and how one can
stay true to one’s identity and values while maintaining harmony with people
from other cultures.
3. Activity 3: Monitoring
Students can be encouraged to keep a reflective journal to record their learning
experiences and what they can do next to improve. Prompts can be given to guide
their reflection. For example, below is a journal template to record students’
experiences in interacting with speakers from other cultures.
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Reflection
Name:
Date:
Today I met ________________ at (physical setting)________________.
We talked about _____________________________________. (context)
My partner said ____________when he/she_______________ . (context)
His/her tone was ____________________________________________.
Other observations (e.g., body language):________+________________.
I think he/she said that because _________________. (analysis of context)
When I said _______________he/she responded _________________.
I think he/she gave such a response because_______________________.
I think he/she understood/did not understand (circle which applies) me
because_____________________________________________________.
If I could say it again, I would say ________because_________________.
I found this experience useful/useless (circle which applies) because
___________________________________________________________.
Ways I can improve my interactional skills:
(i) _______________________________
(ii) _______________________________
(iii) _______________________________
Students can also reflect on their affective states and motivation levels and how
they can develop more positive emotions, beliefs, and attitudes toward their
learning journey, and stay motivated throughout their learning.
4. Activity 4: Evaluating
Students should be encouraged to evaluate different aspects of their learning, such
as the following:
• Strategy use: Does it work for them? Does it help them achieve their set goals?
• Progress in learning pragmatics and cultural norms: What have they learned?
What have they not learned? What else do they need to learn?
• Goals and plans: Are these realistic and manageable? Is there any need for
adjustment?
• Plan implementation and monitoring: Is there anything that needs to be
changed, modified, or improved?
• Affective states: How did their attitudes toward and motivation for pragmatics
learning change? How can further improvement be made?
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In short, in this chapter we have discussed why self-regulated, strategic
learning of L2 pragmatics is essential, what this type of learning involves, and
how students can be encouraged to employ strategies and tactics for
autonomous learning of pragmatic knowledge outside of the classroom. It is
important to note, however, that learning strategies are not by any means a
magic wand that can turn students into effective users of the L2 overnight
(Oxford, 2011). To be pragmatically competent in their L2, students need more
than just knowledge of learning strategies. They also require ample
opportunities for receiving, noticing, and working on pragmatic input, practicing
what they learn in social interactions, and receiving feedback on their pragmatic
language use to make progress (see Chapter 3). However, as Oxford (2011, p.
13) puts it, learning strategies not only facilitate learning, making it easier and
more efficient, but also “make learning deeper, more productive, and more
lasting.” This purpose is significant because developing self-directed learners
who know how to take charge of their own life-long learning is central to the
goal of any language teaching program.
It is also important to note that not every learner is an expert user of
learning strategies at the outset (Oxford, 2011). Many learners need training in
how to select, mobilize, and evaluate the effectiveness of various strategies for
specific purposes and situations. It is, therefore, recommended that teachers
integrate direct strategy instruction into their program to benefit their students.
Oxford (2011) recommends a cyclic process of strategy instruction that teachers
may adapt to suit the learning needs of their class in specific situations, such as
the following:
1. The teacher assesses students’ learning strategies for familiar tasks (e.g., by
getting them to respond to a strategy inventory for a language-learning
survey).
2. The students do a “cold” task (without using any strategy), discuss how they
did it, and brainstorm strategies that they might have used to facilitate task
performance.
3. The teacher or selected students model one or more task-relevant strategies;
4. The students practice and monitor their combined use of the new strategies,
with teacher scaffolding.
5. The students evaluate the effectiveness of the strategies and apply the
strategies to new tasks.
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6. The students continue to monitor and evaluate their strategy use. Formal
assessment by the teacher is possible at this stage.
7. Finally, the process can be recycled where appropriate.
Reflective Break
Provide a description of strategically self-regulated learners in pragmatics learning.
Begin with the following prompt: “A strategically self-regulated, pragmaticsfocused learner is/has/does ________________.”
For example, a strategically self-regulated, pragmatics-focused student observes
how speakers adjust their speech in accordance with the context or situation.
Your list:
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Assessment is an integral part of teaching and learning. Assessment provides
teachers with valuable information on what students already know and do not
know at the beginning of a course and what they have and have not learned as
the course goes on, so that teachers can adjust their lessons to make them more
effective and relevant to their students’ needs. Assessments give both teachers
and students an opportunity to check on what the students have achieved at
the end of the course. In pragmatics instruction, assessing students’ pragmatic
abilities can also motivate them to put more effort into learning pragmatics.
Tests of pragmatic competence can focus on assessing different aspects of
students’ performance such as pragmatic comprehension, perception, and
production. This chapter offers teachers guidelines on how to develop classroom
assessment tasks and marking rubrics for assessing these various aspects of
pragmatic competence. This chapter focuses on:
1. tasks for assessing pragmatic comprehension and perception,
2. tasks for assessing pragmatic production, and
3. developing assessment rubrics.
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Assessing Pragmatic Comprehension and
Perception
Pragmatic comprehension refers to students’ abilities to recognize an
intended meaning that may or may not be expressed directly. Pragmatic
perception involves students’ judgments of their own or someone else’s
pragmatic language use in specific sociocultural situations, in terms of
politeness, formality, and appropriateness.
Assessment tasks for measuring pragmatic competence are traditionally
constructed around three situational factors that can influence how we use
language in interaction: power, distance, and degree of imposition (see Chapter
2). We want to know whether students are able to vary their language use
according to different social roles and contexts. The most commonly used task
for assessing pragmatic comprehension is the multiple-choice questionnaire
(MCQ), which requires students to choose the best possible interpretation for a
given situation among four possible interpretations. In Example 1 below, an
MCQ test is used to measure students’ abilities to recognize the speech act that
the speaker is carrying out. In Example 2, the students are tested for their ability
to interpret an indirect meaning that is expressed by a speaker who has broken
conversational rules (see Chapter 2).
Example 1: Recognition of speech acts
Fatima: Hi Yu Mi. I was sick and absent from the class last week. Would it be okay if
I borrowed your notes for a little while? I can lend you my notes the next time you
are absent.
This is a(n):
a. apology
b. request
c. suggestion
d. command
Example 2: Recognition of indirect meaning
Two teachers, Wang Wei and Joo Won, are talking about their student, Ardi.
Wang Wei: Ardi is an excellent student.
Joo Won: Well … He is punctual, isn’t he?
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What did Joo Won mean?
a. Ardi is an excellent student.
b. Ardi is very punctual.
c. Ardi is not an excellent student.
d. Ardi is not punctual.
There are different ways of conducting the MCQ test. In the paper-and-pencil
format, students read the questions and circle the best answers. In the auditory
format, students listen to recorded conversations and circle the best answers on
an answer sheet. The advantage of using audio-recorded conversations is that
students can draw on prosodic cues (e.g., intonation) to make sense of the
speakers’ intended meaning. However, the task may also increase students’
cognitive load because it requires good listening skills. However, this challenge
can be overcome if the MCQ is delivered via computer. In this case, students can
listen to the audio-recorded conversation and read the transcript on the screen
at the same time; then, they can select their answer by clicking on it.
The MCQ task can also be employed to measure students’ pragmatic
perception, especially where categorical judgments are called for. That is when
students are required to choose one answer from different categories. However,
where scaled judgments are required, for example, where we are required to
mark the extent to which we think an utterance is appropriate, rating scales are
preferred. Example 3 presents both types of tasks. The MCQ items (Questions 1,
2, and 3) aim to elicit students’ evaluation of the context, that is, their
understanding of the speakers’ power relationship, social distance, and
seriousness of the offence. The rating-task items (Questions 4 and 5), on the
other hand, elicit students’ evaluation of how contextually appropriately they
think the apology is.
Example 3: Assessment of apologies
Anna and Peter are good friends and classmates. They are working on a team
project and have made an appointment to meet and discuss the project at 2 p.m.
today. But Peter does not show up until 3 p.m. When he sees Anna, he says: “Sorry,
I’m late. I overslept.”
Questions:
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1. The relationship between Anna and Peter is
a. close
b. neutral
c. distant
2. In terms of social status, Anna has ___________ Peter.
a. more power than
b. less power than
c. equal power to
3. How serious is Peter’s offence?
a. very serious
b. not very serious
c. not serious at all
4. On a 1-5 scale (1 being highly inappropriate and 5 highly appropriate), how
appropriate is Peter’s apology?
1________2________3________4_______5
5. On a 1-5 scale (1 being highly unlikely and 5 being highly likely), how likely is
Anna to accept Peter’s apology?
1________2________3________4_______5
Assessing Pragmatic Production
Pragmatic production involves students’ ability to use language appropriately
in the social contexts in which they communicate. Three commonly used
assessment tasks for testing students’ pragmatic production include oral
discourse completion tasks (DCT), written DCTs, and role plays.
Discourse Completion Tasks
Oral DCTs typically consist of a situational description to prompt students to
say something in response to the situation. Then, students speak into a
microphone and have the utterance recorded for assessment.
The situation often involves activities that are familiar to students to ensure
that they feel comfortable and can perform as naturally as possible. For
example:
You are supposed to meet your supervisor at 2 p.m. to discuss your project. But
you get caught in a heavy traffic jam and are likely to be late for the appointment.
You call your supervisor to move the meeting to 3 p.m. You say:
________________________________________________________________.
As oral DCTs elicit students’ spontaneous speech, they allow teachers to
assess what students can do under communicative pressure, that is, their
implicit pragmatic knowledge. However, this task type is not useful if teachers
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want to assess students’ conversation skills, because there is no conversational
interaction and only one-turn responses are produced.
A written DCT is similar to an oral DCT except that instead of speaking into a
microphone, students write down what they would say in response to the given
situation. However, note that what one imagines one would say may not turn
out to be exactly what one would actually say in a real-life interaction. So,
written DCTs are typically not recommended when teachers want to assess
students’ ability to use language in real life. However, the task can be useful for
testing students’ knowledge of what may be acceptable to say in a specific
sociocultural context (i.e., their explicit pragmatic knowledge).
Written DCTs are also considered more suitable for testing students’
production of written genres (such as emails, or letters of apology or complaint)
than spoken discourse. Even when a DCT is designed to elicit two or more turns
to mirror a conversation (see Example 4), its artificiality is not reduced because
in real life we hardly know in advance how our listener would respond to what
we say.
Example 4: A multi-turn DCT
You are supposed to meet your supervisor at 2 p.m. to discuss your project. But
you get caught in a heavy traffic jam and are likely to be late for the appointment.
You call your supervisor to move the meeting to 3 p.m.
You: ______________________________________________________________
Supervisor: But I have another meeting at 3 p.m.
You: ______________________________________________________________
Supervisor: I need to check my schedule first. Why don’t you write me an email to
schedule another date and time?
You: _______________________________________________________________
Role Plays
Role plays involve students acting out a situation together or with the
teacher. Role play participants are often assigned specific roles, according to
which they carry out a conversational interaction. Some scholars are concerned
that as with DCTs, role plays may be difficult to perform if students are not able
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to imagine themselves in the situation. Thus, it is always important to ensure
that students are not asked to play a role that is too different from their real-life
roles, or are forced to express themselves in unfamiliar sociocultural contexts
(e.g., asking for parents’ permission to go to a sleepover party if this is not a
typical thing young people do in the student’s culture). Role plays elicit
spontaneous speech, and are thus considered useful for testing students’
implicit pragmatic knowledge. Role plays also allow teachers to assess students’
conversation skills, and for this reason they are popular in tests of oral pragmatic
production.
Important Considerations in Developing
Assessment Tasks
Scholars agree that there are certain principles that teachers need to take
into consideration when developing assessment tasks for testing students’
pragmatic knowledge.
Writing the Situational Description
As mentioned earlier, to assist students in performing as naturally as possible
in a DCT or role play, it is important to create situations that they find realistic.
For example, it would be unnatural to ask Vietnamese students to imagine
themselves in a situation where they would discuss with their parents what they
want to do in a gap year before college, because this does not typically occur
among high school graduates in Vietnam.
Another important consideration is the richness of the situational
description. According to research on DCT designs, students find detailed
descriptions less ambiguous than descriptions containing only basic information
on power, distance, and imposition. A detailed description would reveal not only
speakers’ role relationships but also other relevant data such as their gender
and ages, length of acquaintanceship, frequency of interaction, as well as the
physical setting of the interaction, including venue and time. Thus, to make it
easier for students to respond to the situation, it is important that teachers
provide adequate information about it.
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Checking Students’ Perceptions of the Situation
It is important to understand why students interpret or express meaning in a
certain way. We need such information to provide effective feedback to our
students to help them improve their pragmatic knowledge. For this purpose,
teachers should have their students explain their pragmatic choices when
completing an assessment task. This information can be gathered in different
ways. For example, at the end of the test, students can be interviewed
retrospectively about their performance. Or they can be asked to provide a brief
written explanation for their response to each situation. Teachers may also
integrate a rating scale for students to assess relevant situational factors. This
information will then help teachers to make inferences about students’
pragmatic decision-making (see Example 5 below).
Example 5: Checking students’ rationales for their pragmatic choices
You are typing up a three-page essay. It is due today. You have just finished the first
paragraph when suddenly, your computer stops working. You decide to ask your
roommate to lend you her computer so that you can finish your work. You say:
______________________________________________________________
Question 1: How easy is it for you to ask your friend to lend you her computer?
Circle the score that best fits you.
1
2
3
4
Not easy at all
5
Very easy
Please briefly explain your answer:
______________________________________________________________
Question 2: How easy do you think it is for your friend to say "Yes"?
Circle the score that best fits you.
1
2
Not easy at all
3
4
5
Very easy
Please briefly explain your answer:
______________________________________________________________
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Developing Assessment Rubrics
Having a clear evaluative rubric enables teachers to standardize the
assessment and give useful feedback to their students. According to Ishihara and
Cohen (2010), three major aspects of pragmatic competence can make good
candidates for assessment (these are also typically the main components of
pragmatics-focused instruction):
• pragmalinguistics (language forms)
• sociopragmatics (socio-cultural norms)
• metapragmatics (awareness of context and its influence on language use)
(See Chapter 1 for more detailed definitions of these terms.)
Depending on what teachers see as important for their class at a particular
stage, classroom-based assessment may focus on one or more of these three
aspects.
Table 6, adapted from Ishihara and Cohen (2010), presents the various points
to consider when assessing each of the aspects.
Table 6: Aspects and descriptors of pragmatic competence
Aspects
Pragmalinguistics
Sociopragmatics
Metapragmatics
Descriptors
Ability to interpret and convey one’s intent effectively
Ability to recognize and express politeness effectively
Knowledge of grammar and vocabulary
Ability to organize one’s message effectively
Ability to recognize and choose the appropriate register
(directness, formality, tone) for the given context
• Awareness of sociocultural norms underlying language
use
• Ability to generalize hypotheses regarding the effect of
context on the message produced
•
•
•
•
•
In scoring students’ pragmatic performance, teachers may rely on either a
holistic or an analytical assessment rubric. In holistic assessment, only one score
is yielded for the overall performance (see Example 6). In analytical assessment,
however, various aspects of the performance are scored, and an overall score is
finally yielded by totaling the (weighted or unweighted) sub-scores (see Example
7). Analytical assessment can provide more detailed feedback on students’
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performance and is useful for teachers to diagnose areas in which students need
more guidance (Ishihara & Cohen, 2010). However, it is also quite timeconsuming to create and employ. On the other hand, holistic assessment can be
more efficient and time-saving for teachers while still capable of giving students
at least an overall judgment of their performance. So, for practical reasons,
holistic assessment is often used.
A good rubric should be suited to the instructional goals and the specific
needs of the classroom. Thus, teachers should take these factors into careful
consideration to make an appropriate choice of assessment method. For
example, if diagnosis or formative evaluation of students’ progress in a specific
learning area is the aim of the assessment, teachers are strongly recommended
to use analytical rubrics. However, if the aim of the test is to evaluate students’
overall achievement after the course, holistic rubrics are a better choice.
Teachers are encouraged to design their own assessment rubrics, because preexisting ones may not completely meet their specific assessment goals. Skills in
developing assessment tools and rubrics are also an important part of teachers’
knowledgebase, and thus need to be mastered.
Example 6: A holistic assessment rubric
Scores
4
Descriptors
The student achieves the communicative goal and is able to choose
an appropriate register for the given context. The message is wellorganized and coherent. The student is generally able to use a
range of grammatical structures correctly and vocabulary
effectively to convey the message precisely.
3
The student is generally able to express his/her intent. The chosen
register is adequately appropriate. The message is generally wellstructured but may show minor lapses in coherence. Grammar and
vocabulary usage is mostly accurate and errors generally do not
cause misinterpretation.
2
Intent is not effectively expressed and the chosen register shows
inadequate awareness of the context. There may be some major
lapses in terms of coherence. Grammar and vocabulary usage is
fairly accurate but some errors may cause misunderstanding.
1
The student fails to express his/her intent. The chosen register
shows no awareness of the context. There may be some major
lapses in coherence. Grammar and vocabulary usage is mostly
inaccurate and errors affect meaning.
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Example 7: Part of an analytical assessment rubric
Scores
4
3
2
1
3
2
1
Register (4 points)
Descriptors
Appropriate register is used for the given context.
Adequately appropriate register is used for the given context.
The chosen register shows inadequate awareness of the context.
The chosen register shows no awareness of the context.
Grammar and vocabulary (3 points)
Language usage is accurate. Errors, if any, are minor and do not
hinder meaning.
Language usage is mostly accurate. But some errors are major and
hinder meaning.
Student fails to get the message across due to major errors in
expressions.
In short, in this chapter we have demonstrated how teachers can make use
of various assessment tasks for testing students’ pragmatic knowledge, as well
as things teachers need to consider when designing tasks and rubrics for
evaluating different aspects of pragmatic knowledge. We would like to conclude
the chapter by inviting teachers to think further about culturally sensitive
assessment in pragmatics instruction. Throughout this book, we have seen that
appropriateness is language-and-culture-specific, and so what works for one
speech community may not work for another. We have also seen that students,
justifiably, have their own subjectivity when it comes to pragmatic choices, and
that not all L2 learners aspire toward NS norms of interaction, especially if these
clash with their own cultural beliefs and values. A relevant question that follows
this should then be “So, how should we go about judging students’ pragmatic
knowledge? Should we or shouldn’t we measure it against an NS model?”
Read the question in the box below and discuss your thoughts with your
colleagues.
Reflective Break
Scholars increasingly believe that learners’ differing pragmatic choices, in many
cases, are born out of their subjectivity and identity, and thus, learners should not
be penalized if there is no miscommunication.
Ishihara (2009) suggest that teachers should use the following distinct evaluative
strategies for learners’ receptive and productive skills in pragmatics.
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• Pragmatic comprehension and perception should be assessed according to the
extent to which students can make sense of what NSs say, because students
need to learn to interpret NSs’ intended meaning and understand the
sociocultural reasoning behind it.
• However, pragmatic production should be assessed based on the extent to
which students’ messages are expressed as intended and recognized as such by
their interlocutors, rather than based on how much they sound like NSs. After
all, students have the choice not to express themselves in ways that are
inappropriate for their cultures.
To what extent do you agree with these suggestions? Explain your answer.
Teaching Pragmatics in EFL Classrooms 74
The textbook is the center of any language program. In an EFL context, it may
even be the only regular source of language input that learners receive and the
basis for language practice both inside and outside of the classroom. There are
several advantages of using textbooks. For example, textbooks help teachers to
standardize instruction and assessment, and provide them with a complete
program as well as ready-made lesson plans and activities. This is especially
useful for novice teachers who lack both methodological knowledge about and
experience in producing in-house instructional materials. However, researchers
often express their reservations about textbook use. One of the biggest
concerns is that textbooks are often implicitly prescriptive and thus might
control the methods, processes, and procedures of classroom practice and
“deskill” teachers. Another concern is that since textbooks are normally written
for global markets, they might not be suited to all classrooms and learning
contexts and might require adaptation to better meet students’ learning needs.
Adaptation may range from modification of content to revision or addition of
learning tasks. It thus follows that the textbook should be carefully evaluated
before being selected for use in a language-learning program. It is hence
important for teachers to realize that the textbook is not an absolute authority
on which they must completely depend. On the contrary, it should be used in a
way that empowers them and enriches their professional experience and
growth.
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Therefore, this chapter has two aims:
1. to encourage teachers to develop an informed attitude toward textbook use;
2. to equip teachers with skills in evaluation, selection, and adaptation of
instructional material for teaching pragmatics, which forms an important part
of their professional knowledge.
Reflective Break
Research on textbook use shows that they do not typically match L2 learning
theories, and thus, textbooks are generally unsuccessful in facilitating language
acquisition. Two main reasons are provided as to why this may occur:
• The latest research in the field is not easily accessible to practitioners such as
teachers and textbook writers. L2 learning theories are presented in highly
academic language, with a heavy use of specialized terminology, and appear in
academic journals that are not always accessible to classroom practitioners.
• We all know that communicative competence should be the goal of language
learning and teaching. However, high-stakes examinations primarily test
language knowledge because it is easier to achieve reliability that way. For this
reason, commercial textbooks must match their objectives with those of the
examinations to ensure that enough copies are sold.
(Tomlinson, 2016)
To what extent does your prior experience with English textbooks resonate with
the above observations? Give some specific examples to illustrate your points.
Why Evaluate, Select, and Adapt Textbooks
for Teaching Pragmatics?
Despite its important role in language teaching and learning, pragmatics is
rarely addressed systematically in typical L2 syllabi. Although recent years have
seen some initiatives led by pragmatics scholars to develop instructional
materials specifically for pragmatics instruction, commercially produced
textbooks are still the main resources that teachers work with in their day-today instruction. Unfortunately, appraisals of mass-produced textbooks have
indicated that despite being the center of the curricula and syllabi for most EFL
classrooms, textbooks do not always provide adequate information for
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pragmatics to be successfully taught and learned. Many concerns have been
raised regarding the effectiveness of both locally produced and internationally
available textbooks in presenting and teaching pragmatics for intercultural
communication, such as the following points:
•
•
•
•
•
Many important speech acts are not taught.
Textbook dialogues are inauthentic and do not reflect natural conversations.
Speech acts are generally taught out of context.
Textbooks focus more on language forms than on sociocultural norms.
Textbooks emphasize one specific type of NS English and neglect other
varieties.
• Textbooks neglect cross-cultural variations, and provide students with
inadequate opportunities to engage in cultural communicative experiences.
In short, what we know so far about the teaching of pragmatics in textbooks
paints quite a gloomy picture of its effectiveness, leaving much to be desired.
First, although textbooks do provide some pragmatic input, the treatment of
that input is, overall, only cursory. More importantly, textbooks with limited
focus on English variations and cross-cultural knowledge often fail to meet
students’ multiple communicative needs in today’s era of globalization. In this
era, intercultural encounters typically take place not only among NSs and NNSs
but more often, among multilingual users of English from diverse cultures, and
thus knowledge of NS pragmatic norms alone does not suffice for effective
communication. It follows that rather than deferring to textbook authorities
completely, teachers need to develop a more critical view of textbook utilization,
as well as acquire the necessary textbook evaluation, selection, and adaptation
skills to better assist their students. In working with textbooks for pragmatics
instruction, teachers need to be cognizant of the following points:
• Instructional materials need to draw on authentic language samples.
Teachers can collect real-life conversations for teaching pragmatics. When
such conversations are not obtainable, online resources are a possible
alternative. For example, teachers may want to explore the University of
Minnesota
Speech
Acts
website
(accessible
at
this
link:
http://carla.umn.edu/speechacts/index.html) for information on patterns of
speech acts in some languages, as well as how speech acts can be learned
and taught.
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• Speech acts need to be taught in context, and rules of when-to-say-what-towhom need to be explained clearly (see Chapter 4 for examples of direct
explanations of pragmatic rules).
• Textbooks should include both form-focused exercises, and tasks that aim to
enhance students’ awareness and understanding of sociocultural norms and
how these norms influence language use.
• There should be a deliberate attempt to teach pragmatics in a systematic and
principled way. That is, pragmatics needs to be taught at all proficiency
levels. However, higher proficiency-level students should be taught more
complex expressions and encouraged to practice communication in more
varied contexts.
• To adequately prepare students for intercultural communication where they
are likely to encounter users of English from diverse linguistic and cultural
backgrounds, instructional materials should not only focus on NS norms of
interaction. Models of proficient ELF speakers who successfully communicate
with people from other cultures should also be taught. In other words, while
teaching NS varieties is not discouraged, it is important for teachers to teach
other forms of English as well.
• Instead of insisting on an NS model, textbooks should explicitly teach
intercultural competence. This competence requires not only an understanding and acceptance of people from other cultures but equally
importantly, an awareness of themselves and their own culture. So, in
addition to raising students’ intercultural awareness and cultivating their
tolerance toward other cultures, it is essential that textbooks enrich learners’
knowledge of their native language and culture and empower them to use
English to effectively express their cultural identity.
A Checklist for Textbook Evaluation
Based on the points discussed above, and on Cunningsworth (1995)'s general
guidelines for textbook evaluation, we devised the following checklist, shown in
Table 7, to help teachers in the process of evaluation, selection, and adaptation
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of textbooks to develop their students’ pragmatic competence. Teachers can
modify the list as they see fit for their instructional situation.
Table 7: A checklist for textbook evaluation
Aims,
approaches, and
principles
• Are the aims of the book consistent with the course aims
and the students’ needs?
• Is there evidence of a pragmatic component in the book?
• Does the book make its teaching approaches and
principles clear?
• What methods are used to teach pragmatic phenomena
such as speech acts, indirect meaning, and conversational
skills?
• Do the book’s teaching approaches, principles, and
methods suit your teaching philosophy and methods?
Design and
organization
• What proportion of the textbook does the pragmatic
component comprise?
• Is there a systematic distribution of pragmatic
phenomena?
• How are pragmatic phenomena sequenced (e.g., based on
complexity, usefulness, etc.)?
• Is there sufficient recycling and revision of pragmatic
knowledge?
• Is the book useful for independent learning?
• Does the book help you save time in lesson preparation?
Skills and
language
content
• Does the book cover all pragmatic phenomena you would
like to teach?
• Are the selections of pragmatic contents representative of
the variety and range of social acts students will
encounter in real-life communication?
• Are the pragmatic contents presented in context?
• Are there enough contextualization clues to enable
students to make appropriate pragmatic choices?
• Is there explicit metapragmatic information to facilitate
students’ learning of the rules of appropriate language
use?
• Is there enough variety and range of social situations
presented?
• Are students able to personally relate to the social
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situations presented?
• How authentic is the communication? Is the description of
pragmatic language use true to life?
• Does the book emphasize interaction instead of isolated
utterances?
• How useful are the language samples for students to learn
conversational skills?
• Is there enough emphasis on cross-cultural pragmatic
variations?
• Is there enough emphasis on English variations?
• Are the contents likely to engage students affectively and
cognitively?
Tasks and
exercises
• Is there enough variety of activity types?
• Is there an emphasis on linguistic conventions?
• Is there an emphasis on sociocultural norms?
• Is there a balance in the treatment of language forms and
sociocultural norms?
• Is there enough focus on cross-cultural knowledge?
• Is there a good mixture of both recognition and
production tasks?
• Is there a focus on fluency development?
• How are the activities sequenced? Is there a smooth
progression from less to more cognitively demanding
activities (e.g., the activities progress from recognition to
production, from planned speech to unprepared speech,
etc.)?
• Are the activities likely to engage students affectively and
cognitively?
Teachers’
textbooks
• Are teachers shown how to teach a pragmatic
phenomenon in a principled way?
• Does the teachers’ book include metapragmatic
information to assist non-native teachers?
• Are suggested keys to exercises given?
• Does the teachers’ book provide extra activities to
reinforce students’ pragmatic knowledge?
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Adapting a Textbook Unit to Teach Polite Requests: A
Focus on Tasks
The following is an example of how a speaking unit in a locally produced
textbook can be modified to teach polite requests more effectively:
A Speaking Unit
Students’ level: Grade 11 (age 16, pre-intermediate level)
Description of the unit: This unit aims to teach oral requests in service encounters.
The target form is the ability question, “Could you?” The unit contains three
activities, which are sequenced in the following order:
Activity 1: A sample dialogue containing the target feature is provided for students
to role play. The dialogue scenario involves a man going to the post office to send
a fax. The dialogue happens between the man and a post office clerk. Students are
asked to role play the dialogue, and then to identify the kind of service the man is
requesting in the dialogue.
Activity 2: In pairs, students write a scripted role play using prompts. The role play
scenario involves a clerk (A) and a customer (B), who wants to have a telephone
line installed. Examples of the prompts are as follows.
A: Greet B and ask if you can help.
B: Say that you want to have a telephone line installed at home.
Activity 3: In pairs, students act out two scenarios involving service encounter
requests. The first scenario involves a request for a newspaper subscription, and
the second involves a request for the post office’s flower telegram service.
Evaluation of the unit: The unit focuses on one special type of request, that is,
requests in service encounters. The unit represents a typical Presentation-PracticeProduction lesson. Activity 1 is designed to present the target form in context.
Teachers can also use the sample dialogue as a springboard for instruction of the
target form and context of use. Activity 2 serves to engage students in controlled
practice of the target form. As a follow-up, Activity 3 provides opportunities for
students to use the target form in meaning-focused communication.
Using the checklist above to evaluate the selection of activities, we recommend
that some changes be made to enhance the effectiveness of the lesson.
• Contextualization cues: Although important situational factors such as the
speaker-hearer role relationship are clearly described to enable learners to
infer information about the interlocutors’ rights and obligations, no explicit
attempt is made to engage students in contextual analysis. To heighten
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students’ awareness of the influence of situational factors on pragmatic
choices, we recommend that an awareness-raising activity be added after
students complete Activity 1. The awareness-raising activity can focus on an
analysis of the context and its impact on language use, as well as focus on
cross-cultural variations. Then, based on students’ responses, teachers can give
a mini-lecture or lead a group discussion on polite requests in intercultural
communication.
An awareness-raising activity
1. The customer’s status is __________ the clerk’s status.
a. higher than
b. lower than
c. equal to
2. The customer’s relationship with the clerk is ___________.
a. close
b. neutral
c. not close at all
3. Does the customer have the right to make the request in this situation?
a. absolutely
b. not sure
c. not at all
4. Is the clerk obliged to comply with the customer’s request?
a. absolutely
b. not sure
c. not at all
5. How direct is the customer’s request?
a. direct
b. not sure
c. indirect
6. How formal is the customer’s request?
a. formal
b. not sure
c. informal
7. How polite is the customer’s request?
a. polite
b. not sure
c. impolite
8. Overall, how effective is the customer’s request? Note that effectiveness
means achieving your communicative goal while also maintaining social
harmony.
a. effective
b. not sure
c. ineffective
9. How would speakers of your native language make a request in a similar
situation? Write down what they would say.
_______________________________________________________
• Self-reflection: The two practice activities are well-designed and sequenced,
with the less cognitively demanding (planned speech) activity preceding the
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more cognitively demanding (unplanned speech) activity. However, what we
consider to be lacking is a self-assessment activity that offers students an
opportunity to reflect on and evaluate their own pragmatic performance. This
activity can help students notice their own communicative styles and assess the
possible interactional consequences. Teachers may prompt students’ selfassessment by using such guiding questions as:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
What request form(s) did you use?
How direct or indirect was (were) your request(s)?
How formal or informal was (were) your request(s)?
What did you say to make the request(s) more polite?
Why did you decide to use this (these) request form(s)?
How do you think the person on the receiving end might feel about your
request(s)?
7. If you could make the request(s) again, would you do anything differently?
In short, in this chapter we discussed why and how textbooks should be
scrutinized before using them for pragmatics-focused instruction. We also
presented some examples of how textbook activities can be modified to better
present and facilitate students’ noticing of pragmatic input.
At times, teachers may also find themselves needing to bring in
supplementary materials. While they can certainly rely on readily available
materials from online resources such as the University of Minnesota Speech
Acts website (see above) or the United States Department of States’ Teaching
Pragmatics website (https://americanenglish.state.gov/resources/teachingpragmatics), the materials may not always fit their particular lesson objectives or
students’ needs. Thus, it is also important for teachers to know how to design
pragmatics-focused instructional materials. In designing such materials, we
recommend that teachers capitalize on research-based information such as
findings from empirical investigations on speech act use. When such information
is unavailable, teachers may collect field notes or encourage students to
contribute observational notes of real-life interactions and bring these materials
to class for discussion. Other easily obtainable sources of authentic pragmatic
input include movies, play scripts, novels, children’s books, cartoons, and social
media, which teachers may modify to suit their class’s proficiency levels.
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When designing practice activities, we recommend that teachers closely
follow the principles of pragmatics-focused instruction. That is, the activities
should focus not only on form, but also on meaning and context of use. There
should also be a good mixture of both accuracy- and fluency-centered activities,
and activities that allow for input noticing and processing as well as output
practice (see Chapter 4 for examples). Adapting Baleghizadeh’s framework
(2012) for developing grammar materials, pragmatics-focused materials can be
designed to encompass different combinations of activity types, such as
receptive accuracy-focused activities, receptive fluency-focused activities,
productive accuracy-focused activities, and productive fluency-focused activities
(see Figure 1 below). Depending on the students’ needs, teachers can then
determine the right proportions of activity types to be included in the materials.
In sequencing activities, teachers may make use of Bloom’s taxonomy (1956)
to identify the level of the cognitive challenge of the tasks (see Table 8). Ideally,
less cognitively demanding tasks must precede more cognitively demanding
tasks to facilitate learning. Finally, the materials should also expose students to
different varieties of English to enable them to develop cross-cultural
awareness, which is essential for effective intercultural communication.
Figure 1: Practice activities for pragmatics-focused materials
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Table 8: Examples of activity types based on cognitive demand levels
High
Cognitive
demand levels
Creating
Evaluating
Low
Processes
Producing new
work
Making
judgments
Analyzing
Drawing links
between
concepts
Applying
Using
information in
new contexts
Interpreting
facts
Understanding
Remembering
Recalling facts
Examples of activity types
Role plays, situational writing
Recognizing levels of
appropriateness of input, selfreflection
Contextual analysis, comparing
patterns of pragmatic choices
across cultures
Supplying discourse markers,
rewriting of sentences into
softened forms
Explaining how power
relationships may affect choice of
address forms, categorizing
request forms into different
strategy types
Listing markers of topic shift,
searching for instances of use of
politeness devices in text
Reflective Break
Explore an English textbook that you know. How are telephone dialogues
represented in the textbook? Are they structured in a similar way to real-life
telephone conversations? If not, how would you modify the material to teach
telephone conversations?
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