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The purpose of this activity is to guide educators through the development of their own conversation simulation with which they could assess learners’ intercultural and pragmatic competence for a given language function.

Outcomes:

Teachers will be able to:

• Identify various strategies for interacting within a certain language function.
• Craft a simulation in which learners explore the outcomes of using various strategies for realizing the targeted langauge function.

Procedure:

1. Identify a language function and various strategies for realizing said function. For example, for the language function of rejecting an invitation from a friend, one might 1) simply say no; 2) provide a grounder (explanation) of why he or she cannot attend; or 3) agree without intending to go. If you are unsure of what strategies to select, check out sources like Dancing with Words in Spanish or Communicating in Everyday Chinese.

2. Craft a context for your simulation. Make sure to identify the social distance (closeness) between interlocutors, the relative power of each interlocutor, and other important factors (setting and the like).

3. Create a simulation (a "choose your own adventure" conversation, a role play, or a simple game on platfom like ARIS) in which learners select strategies to respond to utterances. Each strategy selected should yield varying results. For example, if learners select to simply refuse an invitation without providing a grounder (explanation) and that selection does not correspond with the pragmatic norms of the target langauge, you might indicate that their friend is upset through nonverbal communication (a change in body language) or a curt response. 

4. At the end of the simulation, ask learners to reflect on 1) why the selected the utterances they did and 2) how their fellow interlocutors seemed to be impacted by their choices. In this reflection, learners should earn points selecting strategies that don’t correspond to the pragmatic norms of the target language if they are able to provide an in-depth understanding of their choices and the implication of those choices.