View Content #27505

Stephanie Knight, CASLS Assistant Director

Teaching pragmatics to langauge learners is achievable, but it can seem daunting. After all, many world language teachers have never received formal training in pragmatics. Additionally, language, meaning, and expectations related to communication are delightfully complex and dynamic. Not only do teachers need to help learners understand the formulae, contexts, and expectations related to speech acts, but they also need to train learners to actively negotiate an infinite, changing list of possible communication scenarios.

In order to support teachers, we have crafted a few tips for teaching (and learning about) pragmatics. These tips are an extension to other tips that we published earlier this year.  

1.      Access Free Resources: If you teach a language that has been widely studied, free resources are available online. The Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition offers this resource for Spanish, and Kansas State offers this resource for Chinese.

2.      Engage with Information Exchange Websites: Even if you don’t teach a language for which free resources exist, there are various websites (like WordReference and Quora) in which users discuss language, meaning, and communication. To access information on those sites, identify a speech act (e.g., giving compliments, taking leave of someone, delivering an apology, or refusing an invitation), read existing threads, and post the questions that you have. Then, verify the information that you discover with a colleague, your own personal experience, or other resource that you can trust.

3.      Involve Learners in the Research Process: Expose learners to a speech act in class and have them find a few examples of said act in practice (either by recording target language use in the community or engaging in their own research). Then, as a class, analyze the langauge at hand to discern what formulae emerge. Pay attention to aspects like how candid people seem to be, how many times they repeat themselves, when they provide detailed explanations, and how contextual factors (such as the level of familiarity between the speakers) seem to impact the language used.

4.      Synthesize “Need to Knows” from Your Textbook: The cognitive load associated with gaining a profound understanding of any targeted speech act is considerable. Carefully examine the textbook that you use in your classroom and determine the content learners actually need in order to engage in the speech acts you have targeted. For example, some requests only require the use of familiar commands. For these requests, covering every single conjugation of any targeted verb is unnecessary.

Certainly, incorporating the study of pragmatics in the classroom requires considerable time resources, but the endeavor is worthwhile. This week’s Activity of the Week will provide some support in taking your first (or your 100^th) step towards this goal.