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.

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
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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