Implicit vs. Explicit Teaching in Pragmatics
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The document discusses teaching pragmatics, which aims to help language learners understand socially appropriate language use. Pragmatics is often overlooked in language education. Explicit teaching of pragmatics through analyzing language examples and contexts is generally more effective than implicit teaching. Various frameworks can inform pragmatics instruction, including noticing hypothesis, output hypothesis, interaction hypothesis, and sociocultural theory. Teachers can use tasks focusing on linguistic or sociocultural aspects to raise pragmatic awareness. Both inductive and deductive approaches show promise, though inductive instruction may lead to longer-lasting pragmatic knowledge.
Implicit vs. Explicit Teaching in Pragmatics
- 1. Teaching Pragmatics Explicit & Implicit
- 2. Introduction to Teaching Pragmatics • Bardovi‐Harlig, K. (2018). Teaching of Pragmatics. The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching, 1-7.
- 3. The teaching of pragmatics aims to facilitate the learners’ ability to find socially appropriate language for the situations they encounter.
- 4. The Neglected Area of Language Teaching • Pragmatic rules for language use are often subconscious, and even native speakers are often unaware of pragmatic rules until they are broken (and feelings are hurt or offense is taken). Pragmatics does not receive the attention in language teacher education programs that other areas of language do.
- 5. Why teach pragmatics in language classes? • Second and foreign language learners show significant differences. • A learner of high grammatical proficiency will not necessarily show equivalent pragmatic development. • Learners at the higher levels of gram- matical proficiency often show a wide range of pragmatic competence. • Even advanced nonnative speakers are neither uniformly successful, nor uniformly unsuc- cessful, but the range is quite wide.
- 6. Making a pragmatic mistake may have various consequences. • The consequences of pragmatic differences, unlike the case of grammatical errors, are often interpreted on a social or personal level rather than as a result of the language learning process.
- 7. Pragmatic Hazards Hindering good communication Making the speaker appear abrupt Appering abrupt or brusque in social interactions Making the speaker rude or uncaring Unintentionally insulting to interlocutors and denial of requests
- 8. • The classroom is the ideal place in which to help learners interpret language use. Instruction can help learners understand when and why certain linguistic practices take place. It can help learners to better comprehend what they hear (“What does this formula mean?”) and to better interpret it (“How is this used?” “What does a speaker who says this hope to accomplish?”). What makes pragmatics “secret” seems to be in some cases insufficient specific input and in other cases insufficient interpretation of language use.
- 9. The Goals of Teaching Pragmatics • to raise learners’ pragmatic awareness and give them choices about their interactions in the target language • to help learners become familiar with the range of pragmatic devices and practices in the target language • Learners can maintain their own cultural identities, participate more fully in target language communication, and gain control of the force and outcome of their contributions. • It helps the learners to expand their perception of the target language and those who speak it.
- 10. How can pragmatics be taught? •There is not a single best way to teach pragmatics.
- 11. Regardless of method, however, activities should share two important pedagogical practices: 1) authentic language samples are used as examples or models 2) input precedes interpretation or production by learners
- 12. Teaching and learning Pragmatics • Ishihara, N., & Cohen, A. D. (2014). Teaching and learning pragmatics: Where language and culture meet. Routledge.
- 13. Cognitive frameworks relating to L2 pragmatic development • Noticing hypothesis • The output hypothesis • The interaction hypothesis • Sociocultural theory
- 14. Noticing, Awareness and Attention • Attention and awareness can be viewed as inseparable. • Pragmatic information must be consciously attended to for the learning of pragmatics to take place. When pragmatic information is noticed, whether attended to deliberately or inadvertently, the input has the potential to become intake and may be stored in long-term memory.
- 15. • This framework posits that merely exposing learners to contextualized input is unlikely to lead to students’ learning of pragmatics that classroom tasks will have more of a payoff to learning if the language forms and relevant contextual features are highlighted and if the relationship between them is explored. Apparently, this point has much relevance to how prag- matics is treated in everyday instruction. Contextualized input is not enough
- 17. • Current research in L2 pragmatics generally appears to support the noticing–understanding framework. Experimental studies have found that explicit teaching of pragmatics – that is, instruction which includes metapragmatic information – seems to be more effective by and large than an implicit approach. • Metapragmatic information can include contextual information analyzed in terms of social status, social and psychological distance, and degree of imposition. Mere exposure to pragmatic input (as in implicit teaching) may not lead to learners’ pragmatic development, or the learning may emerge very slowly. Current Research in L2 Pragmatics
- 18. Other Cognitive Frameworks Related to Pragmatics • Even if learners understand how contextual factors are typically evaluated and how speakers’ intent is expressed in L2 forms, we cannot simply assume that learners are able to produce these forms themselves in interaction. • Output Hypothesis • Interaction Hypothesis • Sociocultural Theory
- 19. The learning of pragmatics should not be seen merely in terms of cognitive processing since it most definitely involves the socio- affective domain as well • Learners’ motivation, acculturation, social identity, investment, and attitudes are likely to affect the ways in which learners notice pragmatic input, understand the role of contextual factors, negotiate meaning in interaction, and modify their language production across contexts and over time.
- 20. Interdisciplinary frameworks relating to L2 pragmatic development • Subjectivity and language learning: That is, we wear different “hats” depending on the relationship and context. • national, racial, ethnic, generational, and gender identities (e.g., American, female, middle-aged, Caucasian, Latino) • relational identities (e.g., wife, brother, mother) • socioeconomic, occupational identities (e.g., middle-class, teacher, employee, student) • ideological identities (e.g., peace activist, environmentalist)
- 21. Speech accommodation theory • Learners’ attitude, motivations, feelings, values, and perceptions (i.e., their subjectivity) influence their social and psychological distance from the target community. • As a result, learners’ language converges with or diverges from the target.
- 22. Linguistic strategies for a range of linguistic behavior • Convergence and divergence can be understood as linguistic strategies for a range of linguistic behavior from, for example, phonological or lexical features (e.g., pronunciation, speech rates, and word choice) to pragmatics and discourse features (e.g., pause, utterance lengths, and turn-taking).
- 23. For example… • A speaker from the rural US South may choose to put on an Eastern accent while working professionally in an Eastern city in order to claim membership in what is typically seen as a more sophisticated speech community. • The same Southerner may be proud of his culture and decide to speak with his own accent in a bar to assert his identity among the Easterners.
- 24. Second language socialization theory It is notable that language socialization can work bi-directionally, involving negotiation between novice participants and more competent core members of the community. • Language socialization theory views language learning as socially situated in communities of practice. Novice community members (such as language learners or children) become competent members of the speech community as they acquire the knowledge, orientations, and social practices of the community through activities mediated by language.
- 25. EXPLICIT VS. IMPLICIT INSTRUCTION An explicit approach with a provision of analysis of language and context has been found to be generally more effective than implicit teaching in experimental studies
- 26. Tasks with a mainly linguistic (pragmalinguistic) focus analyzing and practicing the use of vocabulary in the particular context Analyzing and practicing identifying and practicing the use of relevant grammatical structures Identifying and practicing identifying and practicing the use of strategies for a speech act Identifying and practicing analyzing and practicing the use of discourse organization (e.g., discourse structure of an academic oral, and presentation) Analyzing and practicing analyzing and practicing the use of discourse markers and fillers (e.g., well, um, actually) Analyzing and practicing
- 27. Tasks with a mainly linguistic (pragmalinguistic) focus analyzing and practicing the use of epistemic stance markers (i.e., words and phrases to show the speaker’s stance, such as: I think, maybe, seem, suppose, tend to, of course) Analyzing and practicing noticing and practicing the use of tone (e.g., verbal and non-verbal cues and nuances) Noticing and practicing
- 28. Tasks with a mainly social and cultural (sociopragmatic) focus analyzing language and context to identify the goal and intention of the speaker, and assessing the speaker’s attainment of the goal and the listener’s interpretation Analyzing analyzing and practicing the use of directness/politeness/formality in an interaction Analyzing and practicing identifying and using multiple functions of a speech act Identifying and using identifying and using a range of cultural norms in the L2 culture Identifying and using identifying and using possible cultural reasoning or ideologies behind L2 pragmatic norms. Identifying and using
- 29. Classroom Exercises • collecting L2 data in the L2 community or the media, e.g., films, sit-coms • comparing learners’ L1 and L2 pragmatic norms • comparing felicitous and infelicitous L2 pragmatic uses, e.g., comparing successful and awkward interactions • sharing personal stories about pragmatic failure or similar or different pragmatic norms in another culture • reconstructing sample dialogues, e.g., recreating dialogues and sequencing of lines from a dialogue • role-playing (variation: role-plays with specific intentions, such as where one person attempts to persuade the other to accept an invitation and the other intends to refuse the invitation. The role-play can be recorded for subsequent reflection • keeping a reflective journal or interaction log • interviewing L2-speaking informants about norms for pragmatic behavior • experimenting with certain pragmatic behavior in the L2 community This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-ND
- 30. Inductive vs. Deductive Instruction
- 31. • A recent study conducted in a foreign-language setting has shown promising results for both inductive and deductive instruction. In fact, that study found that pragmatic knowledge gained through induc- tion may even be longer-lasting and more easily accessible in real time than pragmatic knowledge acquired through deduction