On the Cultivation
of Pragmatic Competence
in ELT
Hong Gang
(E-mail: zsdhong@sina.com)
Zhejiang Normal University
This talk aims to answer the
following three questions
• What is pragmatic competence?
• Why should we help students to acquire
pragmatic competence?
• How can we help students to acquire
pragmatic competence？
1. What is pragmatic competence?
• Communicative competence (Hymes, 1974)
– Knowledge of the grammar and vocabulary
– Knowledge of rules of speaking
• knowing how to begin and end conversations
• knowing what topics may be talked about in different types of
speech event
• Knowing which address forms should be used with different
persons one speaks to and in different situations
– Knowing how to use and respond to differnet types of
speech acts, such as requests, apologies, thanks and
invitations
– Knowing how to use language appropriately
Thomas (1983: 92)
• Linguistic competence is made up of
– Grammatical competence: ‘abstract’ or
decontextualized knowledge of intonation,
phonology, syntax, semantics, etc.)
– Pragmatic competence: the ability to use
language effectively in order to achieve a
specific purpose and to understand language
in context.
Two types of pragmatic competence
• Pragmalinguistic competence
– involves the assessment of pragmatic force of
a particular linguistic forms
• Sociopragmatic competence
– involves the judgements concerning the size
of imposition, cost/benefit, social distance and
relative rights and obligations.
Bachman’s model (1990:87)
• Language competence is divided into
– Organization competence
• Knowledge of linguistic units and the rules of
joining them together at the levels sentence
(grammatical competence) and discourse (textual
competence).
– Pragmatic competence
• Illocutionary competence: knowledge of
communicative action and how to carry it out
• Sociolinguistic competence: the ability to use
language appropriately according to context.
2. Why should we help students to
acquire pragmatic competence?
• Grammatical competence and pragmatic
competence are independent;
• Consequence of pragmatic failure
• Teacher-fronted teaching does not help
much in students’ acquisition of pragmatic
competence.
Grammatical vs pragmatic competence
• Bachman makes it clear that pragmatic
competence is not extra or ornamental, like
the icing on the cake. It is not subordinated to
knowledge of grammar and text organization
but coordinated to formal linguistic and
textual knowledge and interacts with
organizational competence in complex ways.
• In order to communicate successfully in a
target language, pragmatic competence in L2
must be reasonably well developed.
Consequences of pragmatic failure
• “Grammatical errors may be irritating and
impede communication, but at least, as a
rule, they are apparent in the surface
structure, so that H is aware that an error
has occurred. Once alerted to the fact that
S is not fully grammatically competent,
native speakers seem to have little
difficulty in making allowances for it.
• Pragmatic failure, on the other hand, is
rarely recognized as such by non-linguists.
If a non-native speaker appears to speak
fluently, a native speaker is likely to
attribute his/her apparent impoliteness or
unfriendliness, not to any linguistic
deficiency, but to boorishness or ill-will.
While grammatical error may reveal a
speaker to be a less than proficient
language-user, pragmatic failure reflects
badly on his/her as a person.”
• (Thomas, 1983: 91-112)
A questionnaire investigation
• 1) Purposes
a) Is it true that the more competent a learner is in
linguistic forms, the fewer pragmatic failures will
occur in his/her cross-cultural communication?
b) Is it true that once the system is taught, use will
take care of itself?
c) What are the pragmatic failures which Chinese
students of English are most probably to produce in
cross-cultural communication?
(洪岗,1991）
Results
• a) A learner who is proficient in grammatical
competence is not necessarily proficient in
pragmatic competence;
• b) If language system is taught, use will not
take care of itself;
• c) Areas in which pragmatic failures are
likely to be committed by Chinese students
of English:
• the particular conventionalized forms in English
•
•
•
•
and the specific contexts in which they are
uttered;
the differences between English and Chinese in
realizing and interpreting speech acts;
the taboos topics and speech acts which are
particular threatening in English;
the differences in judging relative power or
social distance between Chinese and English
culture;
the different value judgement and relative
importance of pragmatic principles between
English and Chinese.
Inadequacies of teacher-fronted
teaching:
• Studies show that teacher-fronted classroom
discourse displays
– A more narrow range of speech acts (long, Adams,
Mclean, & Castanos, 1976)
– A lack of politeness marking (Lorscher & Schulz,1998)
– A shorter and less complex openings and closings
(Lorscher, 1986; Kasper, 1989)
– Monopolization of discourse orgnization and
management by the teacher (Lorscher, 1986;
Ellis,1990) and consequently,
– A limited range of discourse markers (Kasper, 1989).
3. How to help students to acquire
pragmatic competence
• Activities aiming at raising students’
pragmatic awareness;
• Activities offering opportunities for
communicative practice.
Activities aiming at raising students’
pragmatic awareness
• Based on Judd’s model:
• 1) Cognitive awareness tasks:
• Observation
• analysis tasks
• 2) Receptive/integrative tasks,
Observation tasks
• Sociopragmatic tasks
– Under what conditions native speakers of
American English express gratitude: when, for
what kinds of goods or services, and to whom.
• Pragmalinguistic tasks
– The strategies and linguistic means by which
thanking is accomplished: what formulae are
used, and what additional means of
expressing appreciation are employed, such
as expressing pleasure about the giver’s
thoughtfulness or the received gift, asking
questions about it, and so forth.
Observation tasks can be open or
structured
• Open observations leave it to the students to
•
detect what the important context factors may
be.
For structured observations, students are
provided with an observation sheet which
specifies the categories to look out for
– Speakers and hearers’ status and familiarity
– The cost of the good or service to the giver,
– The degree to which the giver is obliged to provide
the good or service.
Structured observation sheet
• Request analysis worksheet
• Participants
–
–
–
–
Speaker
Hear
Dominance
Distance
M/F
M/F
S>H
+
AGE:
AGE:
S=H
--
S<H
• Situation
• Request
• Level of Directness
– Direct
Conventionally indirect
Hint
(Rose, 1994:57)
Analysis of speech acts
Questions should be asked on aspects like:
•
•
•
•
•
•
In what situations, if any, will students employ or
encounter the pattern (at work, at home, at play, etc.)?
With whom will the pattern be used (native or non-native
speakers of English, friends, associates, acquaintances,
teachers, bosses, etc.)?
What is the social status of each speaker (equal, superior,
inferior)?
Are there other factors involved when the speech act will
be used (age, gender, etc.)?
What topics will be discussed when the speech act is used
(clothing, work habits, personal behaviour, etc.)?
How the speech patterns would be used under the same
situation in learner’s native language?
Approaches to achieve this
• The actual approach can be inductive
(from data to rules) or deductive (rules to
data); the explanation offered can be in
English or Chinese.
• Natural media (films, videotapes, radio
broadcasts, or printed sources can be
presented for examples of the pragmatics
feature being taught.
2) Receptive/integrative skills
• Integrate students’ cognitive knowledge
with actual language use to ascertain if
they can recognize the speech acts
presented with natural discourse
• Present natural discourse and contrastive
discourse
• Identify the speech acts and to comment
on the sociolinguistic environment that
causes the speech act to occur
For example:
• Studying how to disagree
– Prof. A: I think we should continue our study
to see if additional factors can be identified.
– You may be right, but I think we’d better
recheck the statistics first.
• Who disagrees with whom, what features
indicate that there is a disagreement,
where the conversation is occurring, and
what the participants’ social relationship is?
• Students can also be exposed to
contrasting pieces of discourse and asked
to identify the factors that account for the
differences in language behaviour.
– Susan: I really think the concert was
awesome.
– Barbara: Well, I don’t. I think we got ripped
off.
• to compare in terms of linguistic
differences, the factors that may account
for the differences in style, directness, and
other features.
3) Productive Tasks: controlled
• Provide some guided practice to aid students to
produce the speech acts. Such practice could
include:
– Questions & requests for information (Yes/no questions
should generally be avoided),
– Pictures (eliciting description or narration)
– Role plays
• A friend invites you to a party on an evening when you want to
stay at home and watch the last episode of a television serial.
Thank the friend and refuse politely.
– Contrastive role plays
For example:
• Provide a language situation and natural
linguistic data and students are asked to fill in
the appropriate speech act.
Situation: your friend invites you to her house for the
first time.
– Friend: Why don’t you come in?
– You: Thanks/(After looking around) _____ house you
have.
(Possible answer: What a great/wonderful/beautiful)
• Situation: A colleague at business meeting
makes a point and you disagree.
– Colleague: I think we should immediate
contact all the parties involved and proceed to
market the product directly.
– You: Well, ______, but I think we should wait
until more tests are before going on.
(Possible answer: I see your point/That’s a
good point/Maybe we could)
Role play
• Specify the situation including the
sociolinguistic information.
• Students are asked to apologize
– to a stranger whom they have accidentally
bumped into on the street,
– to a friend after coming 20 minutes late for an
appointment,
– to a professor with whom the students had an
appointment to discuss a term paper.
5) Productive tasks: Free
• Have students integrate pragmatic usage into natural
language patterns, without teacher’s guidance
• Design interactive tasks
– Your school has a substantial budget to spend on improving
facilities. The following have been suggested as possible
purchases for the school.
• Video equipment
• A swimming pool (indoor or outdoor? But how much would this
•
•
•
•
cost?)
A mini-bus
Computer equipment
A sauna
Any other suggestion
– Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each suggestion
with your partner and try to reach agreement on the most
suitable. Make other suggestions if you wish.
Bibliography
• Bachman, L. 1990. Fundamental Considerations
in Language Testing. Oxford: OUP.
• Ellis, R. `990. Instructed Second Language
•
•
Acquisition. Oxford: Blackwell.
Judd, E. L. 1999, Some issues in the teaching of
pragmatic competence. Culture in Second
Language Teaching and Learning, pp:152-166.
Cambridge: CUP.
Kasper, G. 1989 Interactive procedures in
interlanguage discourse. In W. Oleksy (Ed.),
Contrastive Pragmatics. (pp. 189-229).
Amsterdam: Benjamins.
• Kasper, G. 1997. Can pragmatic competence be
•
taught? Second Language Teaching &
Curriculum Center. University of Hawai’i.
Lorscher, W. 1986. Conversational structures in
the foreign language classroom. In Kasper (Ed.),
Learning, Teaching and Communication in the
Foreign Language Classroom (pp.11-22). Aarhus:
•
Aarhus University Press.
Lorscher, W., & Schulze, R. 1988. On polite
speaking and foreign language classroom
discourse. International Review of Applied
Linguistics in Language Teaching, 26: 183-199.
• Long, M. H., Adams, L. Mclean, M, & Castanos, F.
1976. Doing things with words – Verbal
interaction in lockstep and small group
classroom situations. In Brown, H. D., Yorio, C.
A., & Crymes, R. H. (Eds.), Teaching and
Learning English as a Second Language : Trend
in research and practice (pp.137-153).
•
Washington, D. C.: TESOL.
Rose, K. R. 1994. Pragmatic conciousnessraising in an EFL context. In L.F. Bouton & Y.
Kachru (Eds.), Pragmatics and Language
Learning Monograph Series, Vol. 5 (pp. 52-63).
Urbana, IL: University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign.
• Thomas, J. 1983. Cross-cultural pragmatic
failure. Applied Linguistics, 4: 91-112.
• 洪岗，语用能力调查及其对外语教学的启
示《外语教学与研究》1991年第期。
Comments and Criticism
Are Welcome!
Thank you!