How to promote the pragmatic awareness and avoid the fossilization phenomenon through a role play activity in English as a foreign language classes

Many people, even after spending a lifetime studying a foreign language are prone to get stuck in a certain grammatical domain no matter the efforts made and the amount of the target language input offered in the classroom. Unfortunately, the great majority who pursuits their dreams to be the closest possible to a native like speaker, the lack of ability to analyze and synthesize linguistic elements makes them persist in the same errors, establishing a phenomenon known as Fossilization in their learning process. In fact, Fossilization can occur in all learning process levels: phonological, grammatical, lexical and pragmatic and the errors made seem to be similar from individual to individual. In an attempt to avoid this Fossilization process concerning the pragmatically ability to communicate, this article aims to present a suggestion of a role-play activity involving strategies to enhance pragmatic awareness related to politeness theory.

Investigating the Interaction Between Prosody and Pragmatics Quantitatively: A Case Study of the Chinese Discourse Marker ni zhidao (“You Know”)

This study briefly describes the prosodic and pragmatic characteristics of the discourse marker ni zhidao (“you know”) in spoken Chinese. It mainly explores the interaction between its prosody and pragmatics using instrumental methods. It is the first attempt to use acoustic and statistical analysis to examine the prosodic parameters and prosody-pragmatics interaction of a Chinese discourse marker. The corpus includes 71 interview conversations totaling more than 30 h, in which 490 discourse marker tokens of ni zhidao were found. Ni zhidao mainly fulfilled four broad pragmatic functions of initiating a topic when occurring sentence-initially, of holding the floor when appearing within clauses, of marking coherence when making its presence between clauses, and of projecting attitudes and feelings when showing up sentence-finally. Drawing on the algorithm of random forest in R, the acoustic and statistical analysis of the performance of ni zhidao in these four functions showed that its prosodic features, including duration, tempo, pre-pause, post-pause, F0, and intensity, significantly relate to and thus imply its pragmatic functions, that the interaction between its prosody and pragmatics can be modeled statistically, and that the established pragmatics classification model based on prosody can be utilized to predict the pragmatics of ni zhidao. These findings seem to strengthen the hypothesis that prosodic variables play a role in deciphering the different pragmatic functions of ni zhidao. This study uses prosodic evidence to more objectively reveal not only the part of ni zhidao in dynamically constructing and embodying specific contexts but also its communicative functions and the underlying meta-pragmatic awareness behind it. This study breaks through the limitations of traditional discourse marker research, which mainly relies on context and discourse characteristics for subjective reasoning.

Pragmatic Competence and Willingness to Communicate Among L2 Learners of Chinese

Research in second language (L2) pragmatics has paid increasing attention to learners’ individual differences, but few studies have examined the relationship between learners’ willingness to communicate (WTC) in L2 and their pragmatic competence. To this end, this study investigates the association between WTC and pragmatic awareness and comprehension of Chinese as a second language (CSL) learners. A total of 80 CSL learners studying abroad in three universities in China participated in this study. Data were collected through a WTC questionnaire, a self-perceived communication competence (SPCC) questionnaire, a pragmatic awareness judgment task, and a multiple-choice test for pragmatic comprehension. Statistical analyses were conducted to explore the relationship between the learners’ pragmatic awareness and pragmatic comprehension on the one hand and their WTC and SPCC in L2 on the other. The findings indicated that SPCC correlated positively with the learners’ L2 pragmatic comprehension, but not with their L2 pragmatic awareness. No correlation was found between WTC and pragmatic awareness and comprehension. The results suggest that SPCC may contribute to learners’ L2 pragmatic comprehension; some implications for teaching and future research directions are also discussed.

Fostering learners’ (meta)pragmatic awareness through film analysis

Film-based dialogues have been praised in the current work on pragmatics as a potentially useful source that can enhance learners’ (meta)pragmatic awareness of the pragmatic phenomena in actual communicative events. Following this view, this paper first outlines the concept of (meta)pragmatic awareness and explains, drawing on McConachy and Spencer-Oatey (2020), the different theoretical perspectives examining the role that awareness plays in developing learners’ pragmatic ability. Then, it surveys studies that have reported benefits of bringing audiovisual input through films into the classroom. Finally, the analysis of two film-dialogues is presented to illustrate how it may foster learners’ awareness of communication as a context-dependent act. Along the way, it also highlights selected research-based techniques that can engage learners in critical film analysis.

Development of pragmatic competence among L2 learners

Although compliments and compliment responses seem to play an important role in discourse of second language (L2) classrooms (Khaneshan & Bonyadi, 2016), the influence of virtual exchanges on enhancing the use of compliment responses remains unexplored. Twelve L2 learners of English from Poland met in groups for six weeks, via video conferencing, with Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) teacher candidates from a university in the USA. During online sessions, the L2 learners’ primary focus was on discussion in English regarding assigned TED Talks. Data analysis consisted of statistical analyses using SPSS on Likert-scale questions while open-ended responses were coded using NVivo 12 into researcher-created categories. In addition, transcripts were analyzed. It is evident from this study that L2 learners have opportunities to utilize virtual exchange to develop L2 pragmatic awareness related to compliment responses.

The Relation Between Flor’s Taxonomy and Trosborg’s Modification in Giving Suggestions in Students’ Spoken Presentation

Considering the intense presentation activity in the graduate classroom, the use of suggestion turns to be primary in delivering points. This triggered the researchers to study the issue. The primary objective of this study is to explain the relation between Flor’s (2005) suggestion taxonomy and Trosborg’s (1995) suggestion modification through the realization of speech acts of suggestion. The study applied a descriptive qualitative research method in which the data were gathered by using Oral Discourse Completion Task (ODCT). The participants of the study were 15 EFL students of a graduate program of a university in Semarang. The responses then were analyzed based on Flor’s (2005) suggestion taxonomy and Trosborg’s (1995) suggestion modification coding scheme. The results revealed that there were 146 suggestions produced. Conventionalized forms were realized more frequently than other Flor’s taxonomies. Furthermore, negative imperative was the most used indirect strategy. The subjects realized more specific formulae of the most in conventionalized forms. The indirect strategy was realized equally. Politeness marker was used more frequently while grounder claimed the highest findings in external modification. The relation between the taxonomy and modification showed that direct taxonomy and external modification was the highest relation found in the suggestion realization. It is expected that this research can give profound contributions to university students, English teachers, and other fellow researchers to develop further research related to suggestion speech acts. At last, it is suggested that English teachers particularly are to raise EFL learners’ pragmatic awareness by implementing appropriate teaching approach and method.

ENGLISH-MAJORED STUDENTS’ ATTITUDES TOWARDS PRAGMATIC AWARENESS

Good command of language, e.g. vocabulary, grammar, does not always guarantee success in communication. Learners of language need to be equipped with both language and the knowledge of how to use it, i.e. pragmatics. This paper investigates the attitudes of English-majored students at a university in Vietnam towards the knowledge of pragmatics of language learners. Data was collected via a questionnaire and the software SPSS version 20 was used for the analysis. The results showed that the majority of investigated students were aware of the role of pragmatics in their language classes. First year students and fourth year students differed in 3 issues: 1) whether good knowledge of language being enough for communication; 2) willingness to take a course on pragmatics; 3) teachers presenting the knowledge of how to use language officially in classes of language. This indicates that instruction about pragmatic knowledge should be taken into consideration in material design and in language classes.