View Content #25762

By Linda Forrest, CASLS Research Director

What must learners be able to do in order to communicate effectively in the language they are studying? Of course, they need to know words and have the ability to organize them grammatically. But in addition, they need to be able to choose from among several options to meet the needs of a specific communicative encounter.

Consider the seemingly simple task of greeting someone. Learners could choose the ‘standard’ option, such as “Hello” in English. However, with a close friend, this might seem a bit cool. “Hey, how’s it going?” could seem friendlier for some learners. The ability to make such choices strategically is known as interactional pragmatic and intercultural competence.

Several projects at CASLS involve developing tools to support both teaching and measuring interactional pragmatic and intercultural competence. A first step in this work was to develop a framework to capture the various components of this competence. Our framework has four components and incorporates both analytical, i.e. objective, characteristics, and affective, i.e. subjective or emotional, characteristics.

The CASLS Interactional Pragmatic and Intercultural Competence Framework

• Knowledge (Analytical) refers to knowledge of cultural differences and how to deal with them in the specific languages that learners are studying. Can learners recognize and produce varying speech styles? For example, can they distinguish between formal and informal speech? Can they identify and produce routine formulae in multiple domains, interpret and produce implicature in multiple domains, and demonstrate knowledge of varying cultural dimensions and social distinctions?
• Analysis (Analytical) looks at the learner’s understanding of the illocutionary force of their own and their interlocutor’s statements, i.e. the communicative effect of what is said. For example, if an interlocutor says, “I’m thirsty,” do learners realize that the person may be making a request? The focus of this component is whether learners use conscious strategies to notice and repair miscommunication, identify and evaluate intended interlocutor meaning, and if they can describe dimensions impacting discourse patterns.
• Subjectivity (Affective) focuses on learners’ own feelings and perspectives. Can learners choose to act in a specific way because of their personality characteristics? Can they recognize that their interlocutors are also expressing subjectivity or personal perspective, rather than following a cultural norm?
• Awareness (Affective) focuses on learners’ ability to understand their interlocutors’ feelings and perspectives. Here, learners should demonstrate awareness of others’ perspectives. For example, do they understand that what they did or said might be offensive from another’s point of view? Do they recognize the motives and reasons for the actions of others? There is no judgment implied about whether their interlocutor should or should not feel a certain way, rather the focus is on the ability to recognize the emotional state of others.

This framework is guiding the CASLS team in the development of an assessment of learners’ interactional pragmatic and intercultural competence using online interactive simulated conversations in English, Spanish, and Chinese (for more about how online simulations can address many of the challenges involved in assissing interactional pragmatic and intercultural competence, see our Topic of the Week article from May 14). In today's Activity of the Week, you can try out one scenario of the English version several times to explore how simulations can assess all four elements.