Developing Pragmatic Competence in the EFL Classroom Presented by Zhu Deguang （朱德光）

Developing Pragmatic Competence in the EFL Classroom Presented byZhu Deguang（朱德光） FromNorth China Institute of Science and Technology（华北科技学院）

Outline • What is pragmatic competence? • Why should pragmatic competence be developed? • Can pragmatic competence be taught in the EFL classroom? • How to develop pragmatic competence in the EFL classroom? • Factors hindering the development of pragmatic competence in the EFL classroom

1. What is pragmatic competence? It is the knowledge of social, cultural, and discourse conventions that have to be followed in various situations. It is a type of knowledge that learners possess, develop, acquire, use or lose, not a piece of knowledge additional to the learners’ existing grammatical knowledge, but is an organic part of the learners’ communicative competence (Kasper 1997).

My understanding of PC PC is a socio-culture-related skill of language, i.e. the skill of using the appropriate linguistic form conforming to the target language culture in the social contexts. It covers two levels: the first basic level of the knowledge of the right linguistic forms and the target language culture; the second level of the ability of using correct linguistic forms to fulfill the communicative purposes appropriately.

2. Why should pragmatic competence be developed? • Learning language involves many aspects: not merely its sounds, words, grammar, meanings, functions, but the social, cultural and discourse conventions. grammatically correct sentences ≠ appropriate utterances in contexts grammatical competence ≠ pragmatic competence

2. Why should pragmatic competence be developed? • Some pragmatic knowledge can be acquired implicitly, while other must be learned explicitly through formal instruction. Some pragmatic knowledge is universal, which can be developed for free. Some pragmatic knowledge is new or unknown to a FLL, which can be learned through formal instruction.

2. Why should pragmatic competence be developed? • EFL learners have little access to exposure of English out of classroom. If they can not receive instructions about pragmatic competence in the classroom, they can hardly get it anywhere else. Therefore, pragmatic information of the target language should be presented and explained.

2. Why should pragmatic competence be developed? • The current situation: In Chinese traditional EFL classroom teaching, much attention has been paid to words and grammar; thereby learners’ grammatical competence is developed. Whereas, relatively less attention has been paid to classroom-based instruction in developing learners’ pragmatic competence. Pragmatic failure often occurs.

Examples of pragmatic failure 1. A: Thanks a lot. That’s a great help. B: Never mind. (You’re welcome .) 2.(in a shop) A: What would you want? (Can I help you? ) B: I want a sweater for my daughter, please. 3. A: Is it a good restaurant? B: Of course. (Yes, it is. or No, it isn’t.) 4. A: Can you answer my question, Carl? B: Yes. (A is a teacher. Apparently, he wants B to give the answer of the question, but B takes it as a query mistakenly. )

Examples of pragmatic failure 5. A: You speak beautiful English. B: No, no. My English is very poor. (Thank you.) 6. (Greeting a teacher) Hello, teacher Smith. (Peter Smith, Mr. Smith, Professor Smith or even Sir, My lord) 7. (to a taxi driver ) Excuse me, would you mind taking me to the museum? (Museum, please.)

3. Can pragmatic competence be taught in the EFL classroom? • Olshtain and Cohen’s (1990), Wildner-Bassett’s (1994) and Morrow’s (1996) studies found that the selected pragmatic features such as apology, complaint & refusal, pragmatic routines & strategies were teachable. • Billmyer (1990) and Bouton (1994) discovered that students who received instruction in complimenting and implicature did better than controls who did not.

3. Can pragmatic competence be taught in the EFL classroom? • House and Kasper (1981), House (1996) found that the explicitly taught students did better than the implicit groups. • Wildner-Bassett (1984, 1986) found that both the eclectively taught students and the suggestopedic group improved their use of conversational routines considerably, however the eclectic group outperformed the suggestopedic group. • Kubota (1995) reported an advantage for students receiving either deductive or inductive instruction over the uninstructed group, with a superior effect for the inductive approach.

3. Can pragmatic competence be taught in the EFL classroom? Conclusion: Some aspects of pragmatic competence can be taught, learnt and developed through well-organized classroom activities.

4. How to develop pragmatic competence in the EFL classroom? The chief goal of pragmatic instruction: to raise learners’ pragmatic awareness, and give them pragmatic choices about their interaction in the target language and opportunities to practice in the target language. How to achieve the goal?

4. How to develop pragmatic competence in the EFL classroom? • Make full use of the EFL classroom. • The EFL classroom may be the only available environment where the learners can try out new forms and patterns of communication in an accepting environment, and where the instructor and other students can provide feedback. • The EFL classroom can also afford the learners opportunities to reflect on their communicative encounters and to experiment with different pragmatic options, thus it will prepare and support the learners to communicate effectively in the target language.

4. How to develop pragmatic competence in the EFL classroom? • Pay enough attention to the input provided in the EFL classroom. • Teacher talk • Textbooks

4. How to develop pragmatic competence in the EFL classroom? • Teacher talk • Conform to the pragmatic norms of the target language. • Offer different pragmatic options for the learners to choose in different contexts. • Make pragmatic analysis rather than sentence analysis.

Example 1 of pragmatic options • If you want to borrow a pen from somebody, you can say: • Would it be possible for you to lend me your pen? • Could you lend me your pen? • Will you lend me your pen? • How about letting me use your pen? • Lend me a pen, please. • Lend me your pen! • I forgot my pen. • Give me a pen. • You must lend me your pen.

Pragmatic analysis • It is quite polite to use Sentence 1 and Sentence 9 seems quite rude. They can perform the same function, but are used in different contexts. If not appropriately used, the expected perlocutionary effect can not be achieved.

Example 2 of pragmatic options • When someone says, “It’s raining”, which may mean: • Stating the fact (show the weather of that day objectively) • Showing one’s wish (we’d better not go out) • Warning (close the doors and windows please) • Showing one’s complaint (the weather here is boring) • A certain language form can achieve different communicating purposesin different contexts.

4. How to develop pragmatic competence in the EFL classroom? Implifications: • English teachers should be of adequate pragmatic competence. • Teachers training and development is of great importance.

4. How to develop pragmatic competence in the EFL classroom? • Textbooks • Enriching classroom input of textbooks with real-world materials, such as recordings of native speaker conversations, radio programs, and even television soap operas. • Compiling textbooks with authentic and real life speech. • Selecting textbooks of high quality in pragmatic knowledge. • Supplementing textbooks with additional books that focus on pragmatics.

4. How to develop pragmatic competence in the EFL classroom? • Organize felicitous classroom activities. • activities aiming at raising students’ pragmatic awareness • activities offering opportunities for communicative practice

Activities aiming at raising students’ pragmatic awareness • Observation tasks: • Observe native speaker’s talk, videos of authentic interaction, feature films, and other fictional and non-fictional written and audiovisual sources to spot particular pragmatic features: • What is the relationship between the speaker and listener? • What does the speaker want to do: to express gratitude, compliment, apology, congratulation or request, etc.? How does he/she achieve the purpose? • What is the listener’s response? • What is the context? etc.

Activities aiming at raising students’ pragmatic awareness • Observation tasks: • Observe other learners’ talk to spot the pragmatic problems. • Observe the pragmatic differences between cultures. For example: A: You look so beautiful today! B: Thank you. A: 你今天真漂亮！ B: 你在开玩笑吧？

Activities offering opportunities for communicative practice • The EFL classroom activities should be student-centered, interactive, various in task types, and in small group. • role-play • simulation • Drama, etc.

4. How to develop pragmatic competence in the EFL classroom? • We should realize that there is not a single best way to develop the students’ pragmatic competence in EFL classroom. Instructions, implicit or explicit, deductive or inductive, all function. Teaching approaches, eclectic or suggestopedic, both improve the learners’ pragmatic abilities. • The learners should be encouraged to read widely about the culture of the target language and participate in as many social activities as possible so as to broaden their views and enrich their social experiences.

5. Factors hindering the development of pragmatic competence in the EFL classroom • Teaching materials are sometimes too difficult to comprehend and it takes most of the classroom time to explain the difficult language points, which leaves little time for the students to internalize the language input and communicate with it. • Lack of practical application and the difficulty of organizing communicative activities have made it hard to meet the demand of teaching pragmatic competence.

5. Factors hindering the development of pragmatic competence in the EFL classroom • Improper approach and test-oriented teaching are misleading in the process of developing skills to use language. • Unfavorable learning environment is also an obstacle to achieve this goal in the classroom.

5. Factors hindering the development of pragmatic competence in the EFL classroom • Suggestions for classroom teaching: • Lay more emphasis on functions, not merely on grammar and vocabulary. • Organize more activities of listening and speaking than those of reading. • Give more attention to dialogues and conversations than to texts. • Test the learners’ pragmatic competence rather than merely their linguistic competence.

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Developing Pragmatic Competence in the EFL Classroom Presented by Zhu Deguang （朱德光）