A Report on PRAGMATIC DEVELOPMENT IN A SECOND OR

FOREIGN LANGUAGE : SOME CLASSROOM TECHNIQUES

Dr. TajeddinBy: Sh. Tamizrad

Fall 2014

Content• Introduction• Classroom techniques to develop pragmatics in

a ESL or EFL– First Technique: Learners’ understanding of the importance of

pragmatics– Second Technique: Learners’ awareness of the appropriate use of

L1 requests and suggestions– Third Technique: Learners’ knowledge of the pragmalinguistic

forms of L2 requests and suggestions– Fourth Technique: Learners’ awareness of the appropriate use of

L2 requests and suggestions– Fifth Technique: Learners’ production of L2 requests and

suggestions– Fifth Technique: Learners’ production of L2requests and

suggestions– Sixth technique: Learners’ provision of feedback on their production

of L2 requests and suggestions

• Conclusion

Introduction• Pragmatics appeared as a reaction to Chomsky’s (1965)

use of language as an abstract construct based on a

competence theory in which grammar was paramount and

should be mastered independently from the actual functions

of language use.

• Leech (1983) encouraged a shift of direction within

linguistics by creating this new area of research that paid

attention to meaning in use rather than meaning in the

abstract.

• In order to make learners communicatively competent in a

second or foreign language (L2), not only their grammatical

knowledge needs to be fostered, but also their pragmatic

competence.

Introduction• Competence has been defined as the speaker’s ability to

employ different linguistic resources in an appropriate way

for a given context.

• Both pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics, that is, the

two areas of pragmatics that refer to specific local

conditions of

language use need to be mastered by learners in their

process of achieving full communicative competence in a

target language.

• Aim of the study: to contribute to this area of research by

presenting a variety of classroom techniques designed to

foster learners’ pragmatic competence in English as an L2

in instructed language settings at the university level.

Classroom techniques to develop pragmatics in a ESL or EFL

• Kasper (2001), second language contexts offer more

advantages than foreign language settings.

• Two main lacks of leaners in EFL:

1. Lack of exposure to TL

2. Scare chance of observing native speakers’ interactions

• In this paper, there are some techniques which elaborated

to raise learners’ awareness of two directive speech acts

(i.e. requests andsuggestions), and of how to produce

these

speech acts depending on contextual variables.

First Technique: Learners’ understanding of the importance of pragmatics

• Teachers should provide them with an explanation about

what pragmatic competence is by presenting the key

elements of pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics.

• Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness theory: three social

parameters that identify a linguistic form as being

appropriate: a) social distance b) power c) degree of

imposition.

• A request is an impositive speech act which constitutes an

attempt to get someone to perform an action for the benefit

of the speaker.

• A suggestion is a non impositive speech act, in which the

action to be done is for the benefit of the hearer.

Second Technique: Learners’ awareness of theappropriate use of L1 requests and suggestions

• Learners are asked to work on the data they have collected

in the previous activity.

• Learners can be asked to answer a variety of awareness-raising

questions that focus on both pragmalinguistic issues (questions

regarding the form or head act they found for each speech act)

and sociopragmatic ones (iquestions regarding the social context

in which the speech acts appeared).

• They are encouraged to compare their data with their partners in

order to gain access to a wider sample of pragmalinguistic

formulations for both speech acts.

• Think and talk about how the sociopragmatic factors that

surround the forms they have collected affect the appropriate

selection of strategies for the two speech acts being analyzed.

Third Technique: Learners’ knowledge of thepragmalinguistic forms of L2 requests and suggestions

• The teacher should provide learners with explicit instruction

on the pragmalinguistic forms employed for making

requests and suggestions in English as an L2 (Trosborg’s

(1995) proposed taxonomy for requests and Martínez-Flor’s (2005)

taxonomy for suggestions).

• Learners receive instruction in all possible forms.

• They are encouraged to compare them with the ones they

found in their L1.

• They are asked to discuss whether they had already

organized these forms for both requests and suggestions in

a similar way.

Fourth Technique: Learners’ awareness of theappropriate use of L2 requests and suggestions

• They are also made aware of the importance of considering

the speaker’s intention and the setting for the selection of

the most appropriate pragmalinguistic form in a given

situation.

• 1. Learners are first asked to read a language situation,

together with several pragmalinguistic forms for each

speech act and then they are asked to rank the suggested

answers from most to least appropriate in each situation.

• 2. Learners are provided with a language situation in which

a possible request or a suggestion have already been

given, and are asked to rate which they believe is the level

of suitability of the request/suggestion.

Fourth Technique: Learners’ awareness of theappropriate use of L2 requests and suggestions

• They have to write the reason why they provided that

particular rating.

• 3. the teacher provides learners with a list of mixed

requests and suggestions collected from naturally-occurring

interactions among English native speakers.

• They are then asked to elicit the most appropriate context

for a particular utterance, as well as to state the function of

the utterance by taking that context into account.

• The teacher should explain the actual context in which all

utterances were found and discuss whether learners’

answers are likely to be appropriate or not and why.

Fifth Technique: Learners’ production of L2requests and suggestions

• Learners are ready to put all that knowledge into practice.

• Two types of production activities: Controlled and free

• Two modes of production activities: Oral and written

Oral mode: Students question:

a) pragmalinguistic features (the linguistic form employed by the

learners),

b) sociopragmatic features (whether the forms employed by the

learners are appropriate for the situations),

c) the goals of both speech acts (possible differences between

making each speech act in terms of who receives the benefits of the

action).

Fifth Technique: Learners’ production of L2requests and suggestions

Written mode:

• Writing an email, two contrasting settings in terms of the

sociopragmatic (a friend and a person in higher position)

• Learners are presented with two different situations that

elicit either a request or a suggestion, although they are not

given this information.

• Two different context for EFL Vs. ESL

Sixth technique: Learners’ provision of feedbackon their production of L2 requests and suggestions

• Learners receive the teacher’s feedback regarding their

performance when using requests and suggestions in

the free activities assigned in the previous technique.

• face-to-face learners’ conversations with native speakers

(in ESL environment) or the learners’ participations in CMC

with native learners of the target language (in EFL

environment).

Conclusion

• The main premise the paper : To emphasize the need to

develop pragmatics in both a ESL and EFL setting.

• Techniques should be applied to teaching in a sequential

order.

• They involve both awareness-raising and production tasks.

• To provide learners with the three necessary conditions for

the acquisition of their pragmatic ability in TL, a) exposure

to input – both in their L1 and L2; b) opportunities for

communicative practice –in an oral and a written mode; and

c) teachers’ feedback.

Thank You