scholarly journals Classroom learning of English L2 requests: Input and interactional opportunities in French secondary schools

2021 ◽  
pp. 136216882110649
Author(s):  
Aisha Siddiqa ◽  
Shona Whyte

With today’s strong focus on communicative competence in second language (L2) classrooms, speech acts like suggestions, requests, refusals, and apologies are often investigated in interlanguage pragmatic (ILP) as well as instructional pragmatics. Even though there is strong evidence in ILP research that purports that L2 learners respond well to pragmatic instruction (Taguchi, 2015), the teaching of L2 pragmatics is not always prioritized in textbooks, teaching programmes or teacher education (Barron, 2016; Savvidou & Economidou-Kogetsidis, 2019) with the consequence that pragmatic learning can only occur incidentally. The present study examines opportunities to acquire L2 requests for 308 English as a foreign language (EFL) learners across 7 years of instruction in French secondary schools, investigating textbooks preferred by teachers, classroom interaction (39 hours), and teacher perspectives (semi-structured interviews with 10 teachers). After a pragmatic analysis of 15 EFL textbooks with a focus on requests, the study examines the incidence of metapragmatic input in 39 hours of teaching in 13 classes at 3 levels, and relates interactional patterns with interview data from the 10 teachers concerned. Findings suggest limited pragmatic input in both textbooks and classroom interaction. By comparing the profiles of teachers who encouraged L2 requests with those who did not, the study offers new explanations for L2 learners’ limited pragmatic development which also broadly corroborate previous findings of somewhat limited potential for L2 pragmatic development in obligatory school contexts.

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Júlia Barón ◽  
M. Luz Celaya ◽  
Mayya Levkina

Abstract This study aims at examining the benefits of teaching L2 pragmatics with the use of tasks. The participants were 50 Catalan/Spanish bilingual students (aged 12–14) from three intact classes who were learners of English as a Foreign Language and with an upper-intermediate level of proficiency. The three groups followed different approaches to teaching pragmatics: G1 was instructed in pragmatics following a task-supported approach; G2 was also instructed in pragmatics but no tasks were used; and G3 was a control group with no instruction on pragmatics and no use of tasks, either. To assess pragmatic learning, role-plays were used both before and after the pedagogical intervention. The pragmatic analysis focused on the speech acts of giving opinion, agreeing/disagreeing, interrupting, and acknowledging the interlocutor. Results showed that the two instructed groups, regardless of the type, were more pragmatically competent in the posttest in one of the pragmatic moves (i.e., interrupting). Additionally, G1 presented statistically significant differences in the posttest when acknowledging the interlocutor. Regarding the control group, no differences were found in any of the moves. These findings suggest that instruction in general, and task-supported instruction in particular, has a positive impact on the development of interlanguage pragmatics in a classroom context.


2012 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 28
Author(s):  
Edgar Lucero Batavia

This research project focuses on identifying and describing the interactional patterns and the speech acts that emerge and are maintainedthrough teacher-student interactions in a university-level EFL Pre-intermediate class. This work also analyzes how these patterns potentiallyinfluence the participants’ interactional behavior. This study then answers two questions: what interactional patterns emerge and how they arestructured in interactions between the teacher and the students in the EFL class? And, how can the utterances that compose the interactionalpatterns potentially influence both interactants’ interactional behavior in the EFL class? The description and analysis of the problem followethnomethodological conversation analysis. The findings show that there are two main interactional patterns in the EFL class observed for thisstudy: asking about content, and adding content. Both patterns present characteristic developments and speech acts that potentially influencethe teacher and students’ interactional behavior in this class. These findings serve as a reference and evidence for the interactional patterns thatemerge in EFL classroom interaction and the influence they have on the way both interactants use the target language in classroom interaction.


2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 166
Author(s):  
Paramasivam Muthusamy ◽  
Atieh Farashaiyan

<p>This study examined the teaching approaches and techniques that Iranian instructors utilize for teaching L2 pragmatics in their classroom practices. 238 Iranian instructors participated in this study. The data for this study were accumulated through questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. In terms of the instructional approaches, both the quantitative and qualitative results showed that instructors make use of inductive and implicit approaches more than other two approaches, deductive and explicit, to teach L2 pragmatics .With regard to the pragmatic consciousness-raising techniques, the results revealed that instructors mostly make use of conversation topics and also situations to raise learners’ awareness of the speech act under study. In addition to this technique, instructors make use of field experience to give input to learners. Regarding the pragmatic communicative practice techniques, the quantitative and qualitative results showed that instructors mostly make use of role-play and pair- work techniques to engage learners to practice speech acts. Moreover, the results of the questionnaire and interview with regard to pragmatic corrective feedback techniques showed that instructors almost give feedback implicitly by reformulating learners’ mistakes and repeating their errors On the contrary, instructors give less metalinguistic information and explain the inappropriate expressions to learners. In terms of culture teaching techniques, the results illustrated that instructors share their knowledge of what they hear or read about other cultures with their learners. The results of this study have some implications for language instructors.</p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick Zhiwei Bi

The purpose of the study was to investigate the cognitive processes of English as second language (L2) learners that are involved in their task-based pragmatic performances in academic settings. This study, therefore, examined the cognitive processes of 30 English L2 learners when engaging in various role-play-based pragmatic performances, such as requesting a recommendation letter from a professor and negotiating an agreeable meeting time with classmates. The qualitative analyses of the retrospective verbal reports (RVRs) data of the participants indicated that the learners employed a series of cognitive, metacognitive, and pragmatic strategies when accomplishing various speech acts (e.g., requests and refusals). This study hoped to make two new contributions to the field. First, the study provided empirical evidence to validate the theoretical taxonomy of the strategy use of learners in L2 pragmatics. Additionally, the theoretical foundations of current research on cognitive processes are primarily informed by pragmatic theories. Thus, the study aims to explicate a more comprehensive view of the cognitive processes of L2 learners in pragmatic performances by employing the theories from both pragmatic and learner strategy perspectives.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 77-81
Author(s):  
Sayyora Azimova ◽  

This article is devoted to the pragmatic interpretation of the illocutionary action of the speech act “expression of refusals”. The article discusses different ways of reflecting cases of denial. This article was written not only for English language professionals, but also for use in aggressive conflicts and their pragmatic resolution, which naturally occur in the process of communication in all other languages


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-231
Author(s):  
Sayyora Azimova ◽  

This article is devoted to the pragmatic interpretation of the illocutionary action of the speech act“expression of refusals”. The article discusses different ways of reflecting cases of denial. This article was written not only for English language professionals, but also for use in aggressive conflicts and their pragmatic resolution, which naturally occur in the process of communication in all other languages


2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhuo Jing-Schmidt

Contrastive analysis of Chinese and American maternal affective speech acts revealed significant differences in the quantity of child-directed positive and negative speech acts. There were also important qualitative differences in specific types of maternal affective input. Results are consistent with available knowledge of cross-cultural differences in parenting approaches, and have implications for cross-cultural emotion and pragmatic development. Differential cultural values were addressed to account for the observed linguistic behaviors.


Author(s):  
Б.Г. Вульфович

Задачей данной статьи является рассмотрение лингвопрагматических особенностей комментариев пользователей социальной сети «Твиттер» на выход Великобритании из ЕС. Анализ данных комментариев с лингвопрагматической точки зрения представляет интерес, так как показывает наиболее актуальную картину отношения пользователей социальных сетей к произошедшему событию. Приоритетными методами анализа лингвопрагматического потенциала Интернет-комментариев для нас являются: описательный метод, метод прагматического анализа, т.е. рассмотрение языкового материала в его непосредственном контексте в функциональном аспекте, метод частичной выборки, метод контекстологического описания. Контекстуальный метод был использован с целью установления особенностей комментариев в среде социальной сети «Твиттер»; описательный метод - для выявления непосредственного отношения пользователей социальных сетей к выходу Великобритании из ЕС; частичной выборки - для отбора наиболее эффективных и целостных комментариев с позиции прагматики и их реализации в данном контексте. Проведённое исследование позволило установить, что большинство людей удовлетворено результатами выхода Великобритании из ЕС и положительно отзывается об этом событии. Об этом свидетельствует как большое количество экспрессивов, использованных в интернет-комментариях в отношении данного события, так и активное употребление в них оценочной лексики. Результаты проведённого исследования могут быть применены в теоретических работах по описанию характеристик речевых актов, в курсе теоретической грамматики, стилистики, прагмалингвистики. The purpose of this article is to review the linguo-pragmatic features of Brexit represented in the comments in Twitter. Their analysis from a linguistic-pragmatic point of view may be of interest, since it shows the most relevant picture of the relationship of social network users for the event. The priority methods for analyzing the linguo-pragmatic potential of Internet comments for us are: a descriptive method, a pragmatic analysis method, i.e. consideration of linguistic material in its immediate context in the functional aspect, partial sampling method, contextual description method. The contextual method was used to establish the characteristics of comments on the Twitter social network; descriptive method was used to identify the direct relationship of social network users to the UK exit from the EU; partial sampling was used to select the most effective and holistic comments from the position of pragmatics and their implementation in this context. The study found that most people are satisfied with the results of the UK exit from the EU and respond positively to this event. The results of the study can be applied in theoretical works on the description of the characteristics of speech acts, in the course of theoretical grammar, stylistics, pragmalinguistics.


Author(s):  
Emar Maier

Lying and fiction both involve the deliberate production of statements that fail to obey Grice’s first Maxim of Quality (“do not say what you believe to be false”). The question thus arises if we can provide a uniform analysis for fiction and lies. This chapter discusses the similarities, but also some fundamental differences between lying and fiction. It argues that there is little hope for a satisfying account within a traditional truth-conditional semantic framework. Rather than immediately moving to a fully pragmatic analysis involving distinct speech acts of fiction-making and lying, the chapter first explores how far we get with the assumption that both are simply assertions, analyzed in a Stalnakerian framework, i.e., as proposals to update the common ground.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 362-371
Author(s):  
Abul Ala Mukhtar ◽  
Zafarullah Sahito ◽  
Abida Siddiqui

This case study inquires the perceptions and experiences of teachers about the English as a medium of instructions at government higher secondary schools of Warah city of Sindh, Pakistan. It witnesses that a large chunk of the population is diversified to use their provincial or regional languages as destined by socio-political heritage. Because English was remained a paramount part of educational context in Pakistan during British rule. In Sindh, students learn English from their teachers at their schools, who by no means really acquire the required proficiency in the English language. The research design undertaken was qualitative in nature and revolved around the semi structured interviews. English as a medium of instruction has a daunting and remarkable role to set to be set up across the globe. The mother tongue has the supreme role to play in the organized system of social institutions, which has massive resources of linguistics pouring down to the common people in the forms of superb streams of dialects with definite code of syntax, semantics and pragmatism. The extra reading materials with the support of technology, the English lessons can play a pivotal role to give internalization and adaptation of English language as a medium of instruction.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document