Salience in EFL speakers’ perceptions of formality: (In)formal greetings and address forms combined with (in)formal nouns, verbs, and adjectives

2021 ◽  
pp. 136216882110550
Author(s):  
Ivan Lasan
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Sentence Length ◽  
Effect Sizes ◽  
Pragmatic Competence ◽  
Address Forms ◽  
Salient Features ◽  
English Dominant ◽  
Primary Basis ◽  
Email Correspondence

This study explores whether English-dominant (ED) speakers and speakers of English as a foreign language (EFL) perceive the same degrees of formality in combinations of (in)formal greetings (Hi/Dear) and address forms (informal First Name/Ms. Last Name) with (in)formal nouns, verbs, and adjectives (Latinate/Germanic). It also explores which of these variants the two groups perceive as salient in communicating formality. Twenty-five ED undergraduates in Canada and 27 EFL undergraduates in Slovakia rated the formality of 20 sentence-length examples of business email correspondence and identified features that were the primary basis for their formality rating. Distributions of 11 of the formality ratings were statistically significantly different in the two groups (with most effect sizes ranging from small to medium), and trends in the reports of salient features suggested that the EFL speakers focused on the formality of address forms more frequently than did the ED speakers. The findings are discussed in relation to infelicitous interlingual transfer and strategies for developing pragmatic competence.

scholarly journals Developing Student’s German Language Competencies through Pragmatic Approach in the Classroom for Higher Education

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 574-582
Author(s):  
Rina Evianty ◽  
Risnovita Sari ◽  
Muhammad Reza
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learner ◽  
Pragmatic Competence ◽  
German Language ◽  
Communication Tool ◽  
Pragmatic Approach ◽  
Language Courses ◽  
General Goal ◽  
Language Competencies

The general goal of teaching German as a foreign language is that learners can communicate appropriately in writing and orally in German. But in fact this goal can often not be achieved. Many learners in higher education master the German grammar and vocabulary, but they are unable to use German language that matches the social context, because they do not have much pragmatics competence. Pragmatic approach based on the function of language as a communication tool is a study of language by involving various aspects outside the language that are able to provide meaning. Pragmatic competence constitutes a significant factor in determining the success of communication.  In fact, a German language learner in higher education is not only expected to use language and produce utterances which are understandable or grammatically correct, but is also expected to produce utterances which are socioculturally appropriate. However, for students in higher education who learn German as a Foreign Language (Deutsch als Fremdsprache/DaF), the pragmatic competence, which can actually be acquired naturally through social interaction, is quite difficult to acquire due to the limited. On this basis, pragmatics needs to be integrated into German language courses in higher education, which includes pragma linguistics and socio pragmatic. In this regard, this study describes not only the relationship between pragmatics and German as a foreign language, but also this study is an attempt to define its implications in teaching German as foreign language in higher education.

scholarly journals Pragmatics in Teacher Talk: The Case of Pre-Primary Education

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 168
Author(s):  
Júlia Barón ◽  
Helena Roquet ◽  
Natalia Evnitskaya ◽  
Noelia Navarro
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Primary Education ◽  
Primary Schools ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Primary Teachers ◽  
Teacher Talk ◽  
Pragmatic Competence ◽  
Efl Classrooms ◽  
L1 English

This study aims to explore how the speech act of requesting is performed in Catalan (L1), English (L1) and EFL classrooms by pre-primary teachers. The study examines transcripts of 40-minute video-recorded lessons (six in Catalan/L1, six in English/FL, and three in English/L1) collected in several pre-primary schools in Catalonia, Spain. Recall interviews with the teachers were also conducted in order to examine their perceptions of their pragmatic performances in the classroom. Results show that teachers predominantly use imperatives in the three groups (Catalan L1, English L1 and EFL); however, a wider variety of requesting strategies is used in the L1 lessons. The study concludes with reflections on the pedagogical implications of the findings and calls for the need to raise teachers’ awareness about the effect their language use might have on the development of learners’ pragmatic competence both in the L1 and the foreign language.

Řečové akty omluvy u českých studentů v angličtině (L2): vybrané výsledky pilotáže

2019 ◽  
pp. 157-188
Author(s):  
Marie Vališová
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
University Students ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Linguistic Competence ◽  
Pragmatic Competence ◽  
Shed Light

During the second half of the 20th century, there was a shift in focus in second language acquisition research from linguistic competence to communicative and pragmatic competence (Hymes, 1972; Canale & Swain, 1980; Canale, 1983; Bachman, 1990; Bachman & Palmer, 1996; Usó-Juan & Martínez-Flor, 2006). This resulted in a growing number of studies on speech acts in general. Motivated by a lack of studies on the speech acts of apology in conversations of Czech learners of English as a foreign language, my dissertation project aims to shed light on apology strategies used by Czech university students.

scholarly journals News from the pragmatics classroom: Contrasting the inductive and the deductive approach in the teaching of pragmatic competence

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 529-561
Author(s):  
Karen Glaser
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Pragmatic Competence ◽  
Guided Discovery ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Quasi Experimental ◽  
Research Gap ◽  
Pragmatic Skills

Abstract While the role of pragmatic skills in a foreign or second language has been receiving increased attention both from a research and a language teaching perspective, there is still a lamentable scarcity of systematic empirical studies into the effectiveness of instructional methods in the teaching of pragmatics. Addressing this research gap, this article reports about a quasi-experimental study into possible differences between an explicit-inductive and an explicit-deductive instructional approach in the teaching of pragmatic skills in English as a Foreign Language (EFL), more specifically the teaching of offer refusals to 49 advanced adult EFL learners in Germany. The instruction consisted of three 90-minute lessons, which were spread out over the duration of a 15-week academic semester and designed according to the deductive principle and the inductive principle, respectively. While the deductive group was provided with metapragmatic rules directly at the beginning of the instruction, the inductive group only encountered such rules after engaging in language use and guided discovery. Production data was elicited by means of DCTs and role play in a pretest-posttest format. Effectiveness of instruction was operationalized by means of two indicators: Indicator 1 measured the increased usage of the strategies taught in class, while indicator 2 measured the approximation to a native speaker target. The results indicate that the gains in the inductive group surpassed those in the deductive group, suggesting that when situated within the explicit framework, inductive instruction is more effective in the teaching of pragmatic skills.

scholarly journals Cultural Diversity in Native and Non-Native Speakers of English Communication

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (43) ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Iman Khalaf Jasim ◽  
◽  
Sabah S. Mustafa
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Pragmatic Competence ◽  
Grammatical Competence ◽  
Cross Cultural Communication ◽  
Pragmatic Failure ◽  
On Line ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Communication Breakdowns

With the advancement of technology ,the study of cross-cultural communication via on line has become an important and researchable topic in linguistic theory and its applications.The aims of this study are two- fold (a) exploring the influence of cultural diversity on on-line interaction between American native speakers (NSs) and Iraqi non-native speakers (NNSs) of English which, together with other factors might potentially lead to what Thomas(1983) calls "pragmatic failure" (PF), a main cause of communication breakdowns and (b) specifying which type of PF occurs more frequently between the two groups along with the reasons behind such failures. To achieve these objectives , a number of online chats conducted between (10) American speakers of English and (8) Iraqi graduate students of English were collected and analyzed on the basis of Thomas' (1983) division of PF in an attempt to verify the assumption that pragmatic failure is a result of cultural diversity between the two groups of participants.Results revealed that the cultural differences between the two groups could be a major cause of misunderstanding ie. PF., a finding which can be of value to textbook designers and teachers of English as a foreign language (FL)who are required to improve students' pragmatic ability in classroom by focusing not only on their grammatical competence but also on their pragmatic competence.

scholarly journals Developing the communicative-pragmatic competence in the training of the Russian linguistics bachelor students

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (37) ◽  
pp. 135-145
Author(s):  
A.V. Lebedev ◽  
S.V. Bespalova ◽  
I.S. Pinkovetskaia
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Proficiency ◽  
Interpersonal Relations ◽  
Comparative Method ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
Pragmatic Competence ◽  
Higher Institution ◽  
Language Communication ◽  
Major Attention

The development of the oral and written skills in the practice of teaching foreign languages in the Russian linguistic higher institution pays the major attention to the construction of monologic and dialogical statements without focusing on the pragmatic factors of communication. When mastering language expressions, students do not always correlate them with the specific communicative tasks in a certain situation of foreign language communication, which is due to the ignorance of the pragmatic component. Meanwhile, the correct correlation and use of linguistic units in the process of foreign language communication (adequate to a given situation and intentions) is extremely important at the first or second (freshman and sophomore) years of higher education, when students primarily master the skills of the correct expression means. However, in teaching foreign languages (e.g., German and English), there is a disregard for such pragmatic factors as: setting and defining intentions, social roles and focusing on the interpersonal relations of communicants, targeted communication; isolation of the communicative competence from the pragmatic issues; insufficient study of the discourse content and structure as the means of teaching foreign languages in conjunction with pragmatic characteristics. The authors propose their own methodology for the development of the communicative-pragmatic competence under the conditions of training the prospective bachelors of linguistics. Research methods include systematic approach, provisions of the interdisciplinary approach, competence-based approach, comparative method, modeling method. The communicative-pragmatic model of teaching foreign languages presented in this article has confirmed its effectiveness for the development of oral and written speech practice among bachelor students of the linguistic university. The introduction of the developed methodology will increase the level of the language proficiency and the degree of formation of the students` communicative-pragmatic competence by motivating and expanding their speech capabilities.

scholarly journals Developing Pragmatic Competence in a Foreign Language

2011 ◽  
pp. 169
Author(s):  
Yined Tello Rueda
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Developmental Stages ◽  
Language Teachers ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Pragmatic Competence ◽  
Theoretical Discussion ◽  
Foreign Language Teachers ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Pragmatic Skills ◽  
Pragmatic Instruction

This article presents a theoretical discussion about the inclusion of explicit pragmatic instruction as a facilitative tool to develop pragmatic competence in a foreign language. Given the theoretically and empirically informed fact that this competence is generally neglected in the classroom, the rationale here presented may serve as a foundation for foreign language teachers, who face the necessity of helping learners develop pragmatic skills in the target language. Likewise, this article intends to be a prompter for classroom researchers, eager to explore the effect of pragmatic instruction, and the potential developmental stages learners undergo, through the conduction of longitudinal and cross-sectional research studies.

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