A: I mean, can I borrow it? It is worth considering the tacit factors, related to pragmatics, which promote or prevent effective classroom talk. The grouping of students is one such factor. Teachers need to decide when students self-select their talk partners and when talk partners are selected for the student. Talk that presents a challenge, such as an ethical discussion may be more suited to self-selected groupings, in the initial stages, to help build confidence.
Another factor to consider is the class seating arrangement. A group of students seated on the floor, facing the teacher who is seated on a chair sets up the traditional social structure of the classroom, which may be more conducive to an IRF initiation, response, feedback talk pattern, rather than a dialogic one.
Seating students in a horseshoe or square pattern with the teacher included in the seating pattern, allows all participants to see each other and sets up a different pedagogical relationship Alexander, A third factor to consider is the amount of time a teacher provides for student responses.
Some points in the lesson demand an instant response from students, but opportunities for more thoughtful extended answers might also be provided if students are given time to think before replying Mercer and Dawes, The inclusion of think time makes explicit the link between speaking and listening and thinking and learning.
Students can also consider paralinguistic components of communication, such as volume, pitch, intonation, facial expression and body language. Students might discuss and contribute to a dialogue for a scene. When different groups of children perform their own role play around a similar situation e.
Alexander, R. Culture, dialogue and learning. Finally, they talk about what they want to say in those situations, and I share possible ways of softening or hedging messages that might come across as harsh. Then we might role play the situations they describe. These sounds like great awareness-raising activities. Thank you so much for sharing your ideas! I really like the fact that you are giving your students a lot of opportunities to participate in scripted and unscripted role plays.
Just curious though, how old are your students? When these kinds of situations arise, I teach pragmatics through direct instruction, encouraging students to compare L1 and target language. Hello Claudia, this is such a perfect example — thank you for sharing!
I am sure this led to a very engaging discussion! Hello, I teach English in an Italian high school. Good morning would to the equivalent to buon giorno which is formal and Hello and Hi would be Ciao which is considered informal. Even teachers can learn and broad their horizons along with their students.
Hello Randy, thank you for your message! I am so glad to hear that you found the article relevant. I also wholeheartedly recommend this book: N. Cohen Teaching and Learning Pragmatics. Where Language and Culture Meet. Harlow, England: Pearson. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Cross-cultural and cross-linguistic differences in pragmatics Pragmatic norms vary across languages, cultures and individuals. Why teach pragmatics? Here is a typical example: Clearly, the goal of this message is to make a request for an extension on a deadline and a meeting during office hours. References Bardovi-Harlig, K. Like this: Like Loading Anna Krulatz 9 October at. For instance, Americans often find questions about age too direct. In some cultures, certain messages might commonly be communicated through hints rather than direct communication.
Even within the same culture and language group, people use language in different ways depending on the context. Likewise, complaining about working conditions to a colleague would differ from complaining to a manager.
In order to be very proficient communicators, we need to know how to communicate appropriately given the situation.
Following the experience at the bank in the story above, the young teacher encountered many more instances in the host country in which people often asked questions that were surprising. They asked about age, salary, and even shoe size. Not only was the teacher sometimes confused about the way people in the host culture communicated, she also found that sometimes the messages the teacher communicated were misunderstood. One day at the supermarket, the teacher told the cashier that a bag would not be necessary.
The cashier looked a bit shocked, but the teacher did not understand why. When the teacher learned about the concept of pragmatics, the differences in communication between the home culture and host culture started to make sense, and she started to think of ways to incorporate pragmatics into lesson plans in English language classes so that both she and her students became more skilled communicators across languages and cultures.
It is important to realize that there is no one best way to teach pragmatics. Teachers can build information on pragmatics into existing lesson plans, or they might add information or lessons on pragmatics as the need becomes evident. For example, after being asked many questions that were taboo, the young teacher created a lesson on taboo questions when meeting someone for the first time in order to talk with students about taboo questions across cultures.
Lessons on pragmatics often relate to different language functions, such as greetings, requests, complaints, invitations, and apologies and often include the home culture and the target culture, but they might also include other cultures as well. Lessons on pragmatics are sometimes but not always carried out through speech act sets. A speech act set is a set of possible strategies for use in a particular language function. When giving an apology, speakers would use a minimum of at least one strategy, but could make use of numerous strategies.
Instruction in pragmatics can start at early levels of language proficiency. For instance, in our example, there was a great deal of pragmatic meaning in the greeting, and greetings are often one of the first language functions learners are introduced to. Fortunately, there are many excellent resources on American English americanenglish. The following section will provide information on the resources for teaching pragmatics and highlight some of the activities available on American English.
Kontra describes an activity about how we speak tells a lot about our intended message. For the main part of the lesson, in pairs, students read dialogues from their course book using different moods, and other students attempt to identify the moods of the speakers.
Following the reading of each dialogue, students talk about how language was used to convey certain moods.
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