View Content #19484

Patricia Roldán Marcos is a graduate student in the Language Teaching Specialization program in the University of Oregon. She is also a graduate fellow in curriculum development at CASLS.

This month's Topic of the Week articles have focused on explicit pragmatics instruction as a way to develop students' interpersonal skills. To incentivize learners to work on their pragmatic competence, teachers should aim to highlight its value by integrating different forms of assessment of pragmatics in the classroom.

Conducting pragmatics assessment can prove a challenge for various reasons related to the principles of practicality and reliability:

1. Some relevant elements may not lend themselves to easy evaluation, or may vary among communities and even from person to person.
2. It's necessary to balance the authenticity of the task and the ability to measure.
3. In order to come up with standards of appropriateness, teachers would ideally have to turn to research studies to inform their choices, rather than relying on their intuition as proficient speakers of the L2.

Nonetheless, the assessment of pragmatics should be kept at the forefront if we want to instill the need for students to become successful intercultural participants with strong pragmatic abilities. When carrying out pragmatics assessment, it is key to consider that there are two skills to be measured (i.e. comprehension and production), as well as three areas of focus (Ishihara & Cohen, 2010):

1. Linguistic aspects (pragmalinguistic ability): Does the language used convey the speaker's intention, and how will it be interpreted by the L2 listener? These include grammatical structures, vocabulary, speech act strategies, etc.
2. Cultural aspects (sociopragmatic ability): Given a cultural and situational context, how do learners understand and apply the L2 norms and what are the consequences? Some examples are the level of directness, formality and politeness, the handling of cultural norms in the L2, etc.
3. Analytic aspects (metapragmatic ability): These are the learners' ability to analyze the pragmatics of the L2, which will allow them to become independent learners outside the classroom by utilizing the necessary tools and skills.

Given the above, it is up to the instructor to focus on one or more of these key aspects with regard to performance and comprehension. Depending on the context of the class and the contrasts between the L1 and L2, the teacher should decide what features of pragmatics are more crucial for the learners because of the likelihood that a serious pragmatic failure may occur.

To look at some concrete examples of good assessment practice in context, here is a table with recent Activities of the Week showcasing various means to measure pragmatic abilities: role plays, checklists, rubrics, discussions in the L1, etc. In many cases they assess more than one pragmatic dimension, but some stages have a stronger focus on a specific ability. Additionally, some are carried out by the teacher, while others are good examples of self and peer assessment, but they are all integrated in different stages of the lessons, allowing for effective formative assessment.

Reference

Ishihara, N., & Cohen, A. D. (2010). Teaching and learning pragmatics: Where language and culture meet. Harlow: Pearson Education.