Instruction and pragmatic competence how adult learners improve pragmatic ability in the classroom, with special reference to the efl setting

INSTRUCTION AND PRAGMATIC COMPETENCE:
HOW ADULT LEARNERS IMPROVE PRAGMATIC ABILITY IN THE
CLASSROOM, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE EFL SETTING

-------------------------------by
Thu Nguyen
---------------------------------

Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for
the degree of Master of Arts in the Department
of English Language and Literature
University of Northern Iowa
May, 2003


This Research Paper by:
Thu Nguyen
Entitled:
INSTRUCTION AND PRAGMATIC COMPETENCE:
HOW ADULT LEARNERS IMPROVE PRAGMATIC ABILITY IN THE
CLASSROOM, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE EFL SETTING

has been approved as meeting the research paper requirement for the Degree of Master of
Arts in the Department of English Language and Literature.

_____________
Date

__________________________________________________
First reader

_____________
Date

__________________________________________________
Second reader


1
In learning a foreign language, classrooms are usually learners’ major source of
information about language and its use. When people learn a language, most of them
want to use it to communicate effectively; in other words, learners need to develop
pragmatic competence, which is the ability to use language in acceptable ways. This
pragmatic ability will help learners produce appropriate utterances in the right contexts.
For example, in America, if one spilled coffee on someone else by accident what should
he or she say: “I’m sorry.” or “I’m terribly sorry.” or “I’m a careless person, I hate
myself, please forgive me”? The first two apologies are suitable behaviors in the U.S.
However, the last one, which may be appropriate in some countries such as Vietnam, is
far too apologetic and odd to Americans. Thanks to knowing vocabulary and grammar,
learners in the example above can produce utterances correctly but depending on their
knowledge of pragmatics, they may choose the appropriate or inappropriate apology.
Therefore, knowledge of vocabulary and grammar of a target language is necessary, but
pragmatic competence is also needed for learners to communicate successfully. Teachers
need to know what pragmatic competence is and how to teach it in order to lead their
students to learn and use the target language effectively.
Despite the importance of pragmatic competence in second language teaching, we
can only find a limited amount of studies related to instructions in different aspects of
pragmatic competence. Target-based teaching proposals for L2 English include those of
Holmes and Brown (1987) on complimenting and Myers-Scotton and Bernstein (1988)
on conversational structure and management. In addition, Bardovi-Harlig, Hartford,

Mahan-Taylor, Morgan, and Reynolds (1991) have contributed ideas regarding
conversational closings. For proposals based on native speaker and interlanguage data,


2
Rose (1994) studied requesting and Bouton (1994) considered the comprehension of
indirect questions. However, these studies, except the one by Bouton, did not focus on the
relationship between instruction and learners’ development of pragmatic competence.
Kasper and Rose (2001) state that so far only Wildner-Bassett (1986) has addressed this
area in her book.
In this paper I will explore how instruction can facilitate learners’ pragmatic
competence. To discuss why and how this may be done, I will provide a critical literature
overview addressing the following questions:
1. What is pragmatic competence? Why it is important to help learners develop it?
2. What is the goal of students and teachers in the development of pragmatic
competence?
3. How do L2 learners acquire pragmatic competence?
4. What issues are debated regarding teaching pragmatics in the EFL classroom?
5. What should teachers do to raise students’ awareness and develop pragmatic
competence?
Understanding these points will help English teachers to learn more about the
importance of development students’ pragmatic competence and why they need to enhance
their own pragmatic ability in order to impart this knowledge to students.
What is Pragmatic Competence? Why it is Important to Help Learners Develop it?
In 1980 Canale and Swain considered pragmatic ability as “rules of use” and
classified it as a part of “sociolinguistic competence” which was combined with
“grammatical competence” and “strategic competence” to establish “communicative
competence”. In 1983, Canale added “discourse competence” as the fourth component.

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However, realizing the importance of pragmatics in communication, Leech (1983) and
Thomas (1983) argue that pragmatic competence goes beyond the standard definition of
communicative competence. People not only need language to express their ideas, but
they also need to know how to choose the right linguistic expression that applies to the
specific context and culture in which they are interacting. Leech and Thomas
acknowledge the complexity of pragmatics when they divide it into two parts:
“pragmalinguistics” and sociopragmatics”. Pragmalinguistics refers to the resources for
conveying communicative acts and relational or interpersonal meanings. These resources
consist of pragmatic strategies such as directness and indirectness, routines, and an
enormous range of linguistic forms which can intensify or soften communicative acts.
Sociopragmatics refers to the social perceptions underlying participants’ interpretation
and performance of communicative action. For example, learners can find in
pragmalinguistic resources many expressions that can be used to ask for permission, such
as “Can I borrow your book?”, “Could I borrow your book?”, or “Is it possible that I
could borrow your book?”. However, when speakers should use these different
expressions depends on whether the social distance between the speakers and the hearers
is close or far away. They need to consider the different attitudes and social relationships
conveyed in these utterances. Sometimes if learners do not choose the right source for a
particular context, they may fail to communicate or make a bad impression on fluent
speakers. For instance, an American university teacher claims that some of his students
behave inappropriately when they come to his office to talk about grades that were lower
than they expected. They appear to be argumentative, irritated, defensive or rude.


4
However, those students are sometimes requesting clarification of why something was
not perfect, rather than challenging his authority (Judd, 1999).
Similarly, Verschueren (1995) believes that pragmatics or using language to
express speakers’ ideas and/or to communicate is a matter of linguistic choice. These

choices can be among phonology, syntax, lexicon or semantics and they are influenced
by contexts involving regional, social or cultural aspects. Verschueren suggests that
pragmatics relates to all aspects of language and is part of them. For example, regarding
lexicon, speakers have to decide which of the following utterances is suitable for them to
greet their teachers or their classmates: “Good Morning” or “What’s up?” Referring to
syntax, speakers choose “He ain’t here” or “He isn’t here,” depending on how informal or
formal the situation is. Concerning social and cultural features, giving compliments is
extremely common among Americans. L2 learners may not be used to saying these things
so often or may be uncomfortable at being the recipient of a compliment, but socially
they need to be aware of this common practice and engage in it themselves at least in
moderation (Bardovi-Harlig, 2001).
Thus, it is important for learners to develop pragmatic competence in the target
language. If learners develop pragmatic competence they are then capable of
comprehending their interlocutor’s utterances, participating in a conversation, and using
turn-taking to make the talk continue. They also know which words they should use for
the same function but in different contexts. For instance, expressing thanks for borrowing
a pencil must be different than thanking someone for receiving a lovely, expensive gift.
Therefore, to achieve successful communication, learners not only need to acquire
sources or linguistic forms but also need to acquire how to use them in suitable contexts.


5
Thomas (1983) points out that pragmalinguistics can be taught relatively easily because it
consists of linguistic forms, but that it is very difficult to teach sociopragmatics as it deals
with proper social behavior. It is hard to instruct people how to behave appropriately. In
my opinion, the more difficult it is to use a correct word in the right context, the more
students in EFL settings need instruction because they may have no place to practice and
observe the language, and rarely do teachers address the nuances between L1 and L2
pragmatic behavior. Judd (1999), for example, believes that teaching pragmatic skills and
speech acts should be included in language curricula and carried out formally. Next, I

will discuss the possible goals of students and teachers in the development of pragmatic
competence.
What is the Goal of Students and Teachers in the Development
of Pragmatic Competence?
As we know, English is used as the mother tongue in countries such as America,
England or Australia. Each country has their own culture, so the speakers of these
varieties of English have their own different ways of expressing their ideas and, for
example, speech acts such as, thanking, requesting or apologizing, among others. People
in those countries have various degrees of directness when making requests. Even within
a country, conversational styles vary from one place to another such as from the east
coast to west coast of America (Michaelis, 1992; Tannen, 1981). Therefore, which
standard dialect of English should teachers choose to teach students? There is no one
standard norm of pragmatics. We do not have a list of what a person should do in a
circumstance. If we teach students the rules of a situation, we limit students to a specific
context. Therefore, we can only teach students general tendencies of pragmatics.


6
However, students may be temped to overgeneralize, so teachers need to take this into
account when they are teaching about these tendencies.
In addition, in EFL settings, how can teachers know whom their students will
encounter? Learners may go abroad to study or work for a foreign company, so they may
have contact with native speakers of English in “inner circles” such as America, Britain,
Australia, or “outer circles” such as Singapore, India or even in “expanding circles” such
as Germany, Poland (Kachru & Nelson, 1996). Therefore, instructors cannot teach
students what they should do in every possible context. Teachers can only raise students’
awareness of proper behavior and provide them with knowledge of pragmalinguistics
and sociopragmatics with which to react in different situations.
Referring to learners, do adult students want to talk like native speakers? The
answer is “yes” and “no.” This relates to students’ desire for convergence with native

speaker pragmatics or divergence from native speakers’ practice (Kasper, 1997a). Some
learners want to be indistinguishable from native speakers, whereas others want to keep
their “special” identity. However, it is hard for adults in an EFL environment to achieve
the goal of completely talking like a native speaker. Research on critical periods for
language acquisition has shown that the acquisition of phonology and syntax is
constrained by maturational factors (Long, 1992), although those learners were in ESL
settings and had many more chances to expose themselves to native speaker speech
behavior than do EFL students. Therefore, speaking English totally like native speakers
may not be a realistic teaching goal. Teachers should encourage adult learners to do the
best they can and not expect them to master the L2 completely (Larsen-Freeman, 1991).
In addition, adults may have some strong beliefs and values which conflict with the target


7
language, so they do not want to or cannot give them up for new values. For example,
when hearing someone sneeze, Turkish or Greek speakers always say “Gesundheit”,
meaning “Bless you” in English (Tannen & Öztek, 1981, p. 38) even during an exam or
another situation where there should be no talking. They would rather behave
inappropriately than resist their custom.
Another factor to consider is that target language speakers may prefer learners to
diverge from native speaker norms because that marks non-native speakers from their
own community (Kasper, 1997a). Diverging behavior may also be perceived as
unproblematic or even particularly nice, and “foreignness” can function as a means to
establish friendly relationships between strangers (Kasper, 1997b; Aston, 1993).
In short, the goal of learning and teaching pragmatics is very complicated as it
depends on many features such as which norm or model teachers and students should
follow, whom students may encounter, and to what extent L2 students want to diverge or
converge to L1 speaker norms. Therefore, suitable instruction in teaching pragmatic
ability to learners can raise learners’ awareness of proper behavior.
How do L2 Learners Acquire Pragmatic Competence?

It is critical at this point to know how learners acquire pragmatic competence.
Adult learners have a certain amount of pragmatic knowledge as some pragmatic
knowledge is universal and is transferred successfully from L1 (Blum-Kulka, 1991; Ellis,
1994; Kasper, 1992; Kasper, 1997a; Kasper & Rose, 2001; Kasper & Schmidt, 1996).
When speakers use their mother tongue to communicate, they know how a conversation
takes place, how to start, take turns and close a conversation, and they know how to
perform other speech acts, such as what they should say when somebody gives them


8
something or how to express direct or indirect requests. Thus, learners already know the
basic forms corresponding to different speech acts (Bialystok, 1993). Learners know that
re-occurring conversations are not new utterances but directed by routines, and that the
strategies of the conversations vary depending on contexts (Coulmas, 1981a; Nattinger &
DeCarrico, 1992; Blum-Kulka, 1991). For example, learners can distinguish among
direct, indirect and more indirect request forms in “feed the cat”, “can/could/would you
feed the cat?” and “the cat’s complaining”, respectively; or identify soft or hard requests
such as “I was wondering if you would terribly mind feeding the cat?” (Kasper, 1997a, p.
2). Brown & Levinson (1987) also point out that even though there are various
expressions of politeness in different countries, there are basic regulations for
communicative action and interaction based on such factors as social power, social and
psychological distance, and the degree of imposition. Speakers in each country have
politeness strategies to compensate for face-threatening speech acts. For instance, in a
study in which subjects were asked to response to a situation of refusing a boss’s
invitations to a Sunday party at his home, both American and Japanese’s refusals
contained excuses (Beebe, Takahashi & Uliss-Weltz, 1990).
Regarding L1 transfer of pragmatics, there are positive and negative forms. For
the former, learners can benefit from pragmalinguistic knowledge if forms and functions
in their L1 are parallel with target language and the forms are used in L2, resulting in the
same effect as in L1. For example, in her study, Blum-Kulka (1982) pointed out that

learners correctly transfer some routines for requesting “why don’t you” and “do you
mind” from English to Hebrew. On the other hand, when adult learners transfer
pragmatic forms or routines from L1 to L2, they may overuse their pragmatic knowledge,


9
or the transfer may not be suitable in L2 contexts and that leads to negative transfer.
English speakers learning Chinese may respond “xie-xie” (thank you) when receiving a
compliment. However, it is not a suitable reply because in Chinese, the proper response is
“nali” (where). On the contrary, Chinese speakers may response “Where? Where?” to a
compliment in English. Or a Turkish speaker may ask an American “How much money
do you make?” when they only have known each other for a short time at a cocktail party
(Saville-Troike, 1996, p. 366). It is clear that according to American customs, asking a
new friend a personal question related to major financial affairs is impolite. That may
lead to a breakdown in conversation or the Turkish person may make a bad impression on
the American. Therefore, negative transfer, not positive, is a potential obstacle for
students. The teachers’ job is to help students negotiate the pragmatic nuances between
the students’ native language and target language.
Bialystok (1993) implies that adult learners need to pay attention to forms and
appropriate contexts of the target language as the L2 culture may have different social
distinctions from their L1 such as social status, age, or sex of the listener. For instance,
while in English, “you” can be used to address everyone (except perhaps the Queen),
Polish has “ty” (thou) form for intimate and “pna” or “pani” (sir or madam) for courtesy
(Wierzbicka, 1985, p.170). Another example is that Japanese students transfer their
perception about the relationship between students and teachers to English. In Takahashi
& Beebe’s (1993) study, it was demonstrated that when Japanese students make mistakes,
instructors can correct students more directly and in a more authoritarian manner than do
their American counterparts. However, when teachers make mistakes, students must not
say anything or use indirect questions “Isn’t it X who said Y?” or “Would you please tell

10
me who made this statement again?” as a very polite way to correct their teacher’s
mistake. This strategy made Americans surprised and a little amused as “it sounds as if
you’re trying to trap him [teacher]” (pp. 147-148). Americans prefer verbal expressions
that are sincere and polite.
If learners can transfer this L1 knowledge to L2 successfully without instruction,
there is no need to teach it. Unfortunately, learners do not always employ what they
know. They do not always transfer common knowledge and strategies to new learning
tasks (Kasper and Rose, 2001). Learners usually pay attention to literal meaning,
understand an utterance on the surface and do not infer what speakers mean when they
say something. For example, in a situation in which the elevator gets stuck, the following
conversation took place:
NS : I’m not trusting this elevator any more. What about you? Are you? Are you
going to walk up or are you going to ride the rest of the way?
NNS : I, I, the next time I will take the stairs.
(House, 1993, p. 174)
Thus, the NNS was not able to understand the implication that the NS wanted to stop the
elevator. The learner may interpret “Are you going to walk up?” as the NS asking what
the leaner was going to do in the future, use the elevator or the stairs.
In addition to universal pragmatic knowledge and L1 transfer, learners are faced
with the variation of ethnolinguistic requirements in learning tasks. There are some
particular contextual factors that may exist often in some communities but not in others.
Expressing their concern about causing the giver trouble when receiving gifts and favors
was found to influence the thanking strategies of speakers of Japanese but not of


11
European languages. When leaving after a dinner, European guests may say “Thank you
so much for the wonderful evening,” but Japanese counterparts frequently say or express

similar ideas like “o-jama itashinmashita” (I have intruded on you) which means
“disturbance have [sic] done to you”, literally speaking (Coulmas, 1981b, p. 83).
In their theory of politeness, Brown and Levinson (1987) claim that although the
factors of power relationships, social distance and rating of imposition are universal, the
different assessments of these three factors contribute to what they call “ethos”, meaning
variation in interactional style (p. 36) from context to context and across speech
communities. For example, both native speakers of English and German tend to be direct
in complaint and request acts. However, the former are less direct than the latter. Thus,
native speakers of English may think that German speakers are less impolite than they are
(House & Kasper, 1981). It is clear that this may happen because of the differences of
social norms in English and German. These strategies are totally acceptable in the
German’s assessment, but are not suitable in English as the speakers interpret them
according to their own social norms. Moreover, pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic
conventions are fixed to the grammatical and lexical structures of particular languages
(Kasper & Rose, 2001). In English the request form “Would you like to” shows the
politeness, but it has no equivalent in Polish. In fact it sounds odd and amusing from the
Polish point of view if people use this expression by translating it literally (Wierzbicka,
1985, p. 153).
Even in one language, some communicative acts are only found in a specific
setting. For example, it is normal to hear a priest say, “I pronounce Matt and Julie
husband and wife” in a wedding mass, but it would sound strange if the priest said, “I


12
declare Matt and Julie husband and wife.” Similarly, when lawyers of one side want to
object to statements by their counterparts in courts, they say, “Objection”. In our daily
conversations, we seldom say that because it sounds rude, but this word is totally
appropriate word in courts.
Additionally, the variation of communicative acts is affected by the degree to
which a strategy is conventionalized in a speech community. These differences can be

seen very clearly in how people using pragmatic strategies in speech acts such as
thanking, complaining, refusing, apologizing, or requesting. In some cultures, modesty is
associated with the expression of thanking. In Eisenstein and Bodman’ s study (1993), a
Chinese subject indicated that someone should express his or her modesty when being
offered a raise by responding, “Thank you very much. But I think I have not done so well
to get a raise. Anyway, I’d try to do better” (p. 74). It is hard for Americans to interpret
this and they may feel uncomfortable and confused. Therefore, learners have to learn how
to handle cross-cultural differences in conventionalization. They often need teachers to
point out these aspects and to instruct and explain the differences between how some
pragmatic strategies are used in L1 and L2.
Another issue involves the conditions under which students can acquire and
develop pragmatic competence. Kasper (1996) suggests that learners need to be given
pertinent input, notice the input and be provided with as much opportunity as possible to
develop a high level of processing control. Schmidt (1993) argues that attention to
“linguistic form, functional meanings, and the relevant contextual features” are necessary
for pragmatic learning to occur (p.35). He claims that it is “noticing,” “registering the
simple occurrence of some event” (p. 26), that causes linguistic forms to become intake.


13
Noticing is the prerequisite of awareness and a separate part of “understanding”. Learners
need to notice first, then understand or achieve “recognition of a general principle, rule or
pattern” (p. 26). Noticing refers to the surface forms, while understanding relates to
deeper levels related to meaning. For example, while practicing Portuguese in Brazil,
Schmidt did not know when and how to end a conversation when using the telephone. He
only knew that the closing word was “ciao”, but he did not know the right point at which
he should say it. Then he observed his Brazilian native-speaker friends talking on the
phone and noticed that they use “então tá” (so, then) shortly before saying “ciao”. He
guessed that that was a preclosing formula. Then, he applied it to his phone call and
realized that he ended the conversation efficiently. To make sure of the meaning of

“então tá,” he asked some of his friends and they agreed that was right (Schmidt, 1993,
p.29). Thus, Schmidt first only noticed the form, then he understood it and matched the
surface form with its meaning.
Kasper (2000) proposes that there are four perspectives on L2 pragmatic
development: pragmatics and grammar, information processing, sociocognitive theory,
and language socialization. She incorporates Schmidt’ s noticing hypothesis (1993) and
Bialystok’s two-dimensional model of L2 proficiency development (1993, 1994) to
create frameworks for exploring pragmatic development. Bialystok proposes that the
pragmatic development of adults in a second language is different than that of children
since adults already have basic socialization and pragmatic strategy knowledge in L1 and
do not need to develop social uses of language as children do. A child’s primary learning
task is to develop analyzed representations of symbolic knowledge. Adults need to
develop the same representations as children do but in the case of adults they will


14
restructure existing representations and acquire new ones. Their main learning task is to
develop higher representation depiction and direct attention to mapping form and social
conditions. For example, it is often not very difficult for adult learners to distinguish
between literal and intended meaning in indirect requests, sarcasm, and irony, or the
markers of politeness (Kasper & Schmidt, 1996).
Therefore, because teachers are helping adult learners to cultivate an awareness of
pragmatics, teachers need to help students notice negative transfers and the relationships
between linguistic and cultural behavior in order to map target language forms with the
meanings they want to express. In the next section, I will discuss if it is possible to teach
pragmatics, particularly in EFL settings, and how different types of instructions may
affect students’ pragmatic development.
What Issues are Debated Regarding Teaching Pragmatics in the EFL Classroom?
A basic question addressed in the literature is whether pragmatic competence can
be taught. Kasper (1997a) says that it cannot, explaining that competence is a type of

knowledge so it cannot be taught, only developed. However, it has been argued that
appropriate instruction makes the process of building competence happen faster
(Bialystok, 1994). Additionally, other researchers show that some pragmatic aspects can
be taught. For example, House (1996) investigated the improvement of the pragmatic
fluency of advanced German EFL students. The findings showed that explicit instruction
facilitated learners’ awareness of the functions and contextual distributions of routines
and helped the students to become more pragmatically fluent. Students believed that
explicit teaching of routines of communicative behavior helps them understand how and
when they transferred or not transferred routines from L1, and use L2 expressions


15
instead. The results also showed the importance of awareness. The subjects stated in
interviews that they felt that so-called “phatic talk” in English was unnecessary because it
was “talk for talk’s sake” (p.239). They also thought that it was “exaggerated,”
“superficial,” and “typically American.” However, during the course of the research these
learners were made more aware of the purposes for using phatic talk. Those students
being interviewed were in an explicit group, meaning they were specifically taught the
usage of language in terms of sociocultural and sociolinguistic constraints.
Wildner-Bassett (1994) and Tateyama (2001) studied American learners of
German and Japanese, respectively, as a foreign language. The researchers found that
certain pragmatic routines could be taught to beginning foreign language learners. This is
a very important finding because so far it was thought that pragmatics can only be taught
after students have developed a background of L2 grammar and vocabulary.
Liddicoat and Crozet (2001) investigated the effects of instruction on Australian
university students of French as a foreign language. The results showed that interactional
norms can be taught and acquired in an FL context even though they are difficult to
maintain. The difficulty occurs because students do not regularly have a chance for
conversation practice in the target language. Rose and Kwai-fun (2001) studied the
effects of inductive and deductive approaches to instruction in compliments and

compliment responses to EFL University learners of English in Hong Kong. Results from
the discourse completion task showed that groups who had received instruction increased
their skills significantly in the use of compliment formulas.
In a study of teaching of apologies to 18 EFL adult learners whose first language
was Hebrew, Olshtain and Cohen (1990) found that students improved significantly after


16
receiving instruction in terms of selecting apology strategies, producing shorter
utterances and using intensifiers. For example, before teaching, only 20% of the subjects
used intensifiers in situations like “forgetting to buy medicine for a neighbor’s sick
child.” After training, 90% of the subjects used intensifiers in almost all cases; for
example, “I’m really sorry I forgot …” (p. 262). The findings suggested that certain types
of intensification and downgrading, as well as subtle differences between speech act
strategy realizations and consideration of situational features could be taught in the EFL
settings.
Given that at least some aspects of pragmatic competence can be taught, and that
learners who have not been provided with instruction in L2 pragmatics have been shown
to have significant comprehension and production differences compared with native
speakers, it is time to examine the extent to which different types of instruction makes
any difference in learners’ developmental pragmatics. Kasper and Schmidt (1996) claim
that it is difficult for learners who are not instructed to acquire appropriate language use
patterns, especially in EFL settings where learners have limited interaction with native
speakers. Porter (1986), who is in favor of small group and pair work, investigated if
learners could benefit from each other in terms of pragmatic competence. She concluded
that communicative activities in the classroom helped learners to practice, but did not
provide them with the type of authentic sociolinguistic input that they need. However,
pair work and group work or student-centered activities give students more time to speak
in class and provide them with opportunities to practice conversational management,
perform many types of communicative acts and interact with other participants to

complete a task (Long, Adams, McLean, & Castaños, 1976, Porter, 1986). In EFL


17
settings, the classroom may be the only place where learners can observe, try out what
they learn, practice reacting to different people in different contexts (Peirce, 1995), and
compare different pragmatic behaviors. Thus, I believe that in EFL settings,
communicative activities through pair work or group works are valuable in contributing
to develop students’ pragmatic ability.
Takahashi (2001) examines how the four kinds of input enhancement; namely:
explicit teaching, form-comparison, form-search, and meaning-focused conditions have
an effect on the development of English request strategies. The form-search condition
means that students were asked to find “native (like) usage” (p.174) in provided input. In
the meaning-focused condition, students were required to listen and read the input and
answer comprehensive questions. The difference between the four conditions is the
degrees of input enhancement. Subjects were Japanese learners of English at a Japanese
university. The author wanted to examine whether the degree of input enhancement
affects the learning of request strategies, and whether learner confidence in learning these
strategies relates to the types of input conditions.
The results provide positive answers to these issues. In fact, the degree of input
enhancement influenced the acquisition of request strategies in which explicit instruction
has the most effect, followed by form-comparison, form-search, and meaning-focus. The
explicit instruction helped learners develop their pragmatic competence and enhance their
confidence in the performance. Particularly, Takahashi also found in self-report data that
students who failed to provide target forms revealed that they only focused on the best
sequence of the utterances in request discourse such as apologetic expression, request
expression, reason or excuse. Besides, it seemed what they learned in their high school


18

was still foremost in their minds, and they believed that monoclausal forms “Would you
VP?” was more polite than biclausal forms “I was wondering if you could VP?” (p. 193).
This was especially true when they made a request to a higher-status hearer who was not
so familiar with the requester, such as the situation between a professor and a student.
These findings lend support to Schmidt’s noticing of the hypothesis discussed above
which claims that linguistic forms only become intake when learners notice them.
House (1996) and Tateyama (2001) studied the effect of explicit and implicit
instruction on learners developing pragmatic competence. As discussed above, House
pointed out that learners with explicit instruction are aware and understand the
differences between L1 and L2 pragmatics more than do learners who have received
implicit instruction. Tateyama investigated how these kinds of instruction operated on the
use of three functions of the routine formula: getting attention, apologizing, and
expressing gratitude. The students were beginning level and learned Japanese as a foreign
language. Tateyama divided students into two groups: the explicit group received explicit
metapragmatic information and the implicit group had no benefit from it. The activities
included role-play and multiple-choice tasks and two different forms of self-reporting.
The results showed no statistically significant difference between the two groups in the
two tasks. However, explicit students had more correct answers in multiple-choice
questions and used the routine expressions more often in authentic situations than did the
implicit group. This illustrated that explicit teaching contributed to raising students’
consciousness on the appropriate usage of routine expressions. This result is in line with
Wildner-Bassett’ s finding (1994). It also suggested that some aspects of pragmatics can
be taught to beginners as chunks without being analyzed.


19
Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei (1998) studied how learning environment and
proficiency affect learners’ awareness of pragmatics and grammar. The results showed
that whereas ESL learners paid attention more to pragmatic errors than grammatical
errors, EFL learners did the opposite; namely, they focused on grammatical errors more

than on pragmatic errors. However, Niezgoda and Röverin (2001) replicated BardoviHarlig and Dörnyei’ s study. They used the same video-prompted task and asked students
to distinguish grammatical from pragmatic errors and rate both errors according to
seriousness. The results from the ESL group were almost the same as in the previous
study, but those of the EFL group differed. In fact, the responses of their EFL group were
more similar to Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei’ s ESL group. This suggests that
environment may not be the most important condition in raising learners’ pragmatic
awareness. Thus Niezgoda and Röverin argue that pragmatic awareness can be acquired
in the FL environment, meaning the FL classroom.
What Should Teachers Do to Raise Students’ Awareness and
Develop Pragmatic Competence?
It is generally agreed that teacher-fronted teaching is the method used in many, if
not most, classrooms. Does this method help students to be aware of pragmatics and
develop pragmatic competence? Bardovi-Harlig and Hartford (1996) suggest that there is
no equal status in academic talk (teacher-student talk) in this type of teaching. Teachers
are always in higher status positions than the students and this may limit learners’
development of pragmatic competence. The fact that the teacher talks to introduce new
information to students, directs them to practice and develop that information, and
supervises whether the input has become intake will limit the kinds of communicative


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acts students are exposed to (Kasper, 1997a; Kasper 1997b; Kasper, 2001). It appears that
in such an environment, students have less chance to negotiate content or the meaning of
a task (Rulon & McCreary, 1986). Thus, the teacher-fronted method does not provide
students with what they need to communicate outside of the classroom.
However, Kasper (1997a) states that there are some opportunities for pragmatic
learning in teacher-fronted classroom discourse because classroom management is one of
the important learning resources in which language serves as a means for communication.
In EFL settings, it is the classroom where students have a regular opportunity to use the
target language for communication. Thus, in these environments teachers talking and

using L2 for routine activities such as warming up the class, discussing what they had
done the previous day or weekend, or what they are going to do in a current class would
be beneficial for students.
In related research, Ohta’s (2001) longitudinal study suggests a new look at
teacher-fronted Initiation-Response-Follow-up (IRF) routines in terms of learning
opportunities. To investigate how participation in communicative classrooms relates to
the development of learner’s interactional competence, Ohta explored how two adult
learners of Japanese as a foreign language developed their ability to use listener
responses in Japanese, in particular, in expressions of acknowledgment and alignment
such as “Un, mm” (uh, huh) or “Soo desu ne” (it is, isn’t it?) (p. 109), respectively. The
results showed that although learners had limited contact with the Japanese speakers, they
move from expression of acknowledgment to expressions of alignment and develop them
at different rates, meaning they were sensitive to the pragmatic information available in
interactions occurring regularly in the language classroom and benefited from that. Ohta


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claimed that the outcomes were not only beneficial in peer activities but also in teacherfronted IRF interaction. In classroom discourse that follows the IRF sequence, the followup turn serves as listener response. In Ohta’s corpus, 97% of the follow-up turns are
taken by the teachers. Although students do not have many opportunities to express
listener responses productively during IRF, they are exposed to the listener responses of
the teacher as “peripheral participants.” Ohta concludes that peer interaction provides
students more occasions to use listener responses, but peripheral participation also
enhances students’ ability to gradually develop their productive use of assessments and
alignments. The teacher supports students with explicit guidance on how to use
responses.
Based on the above, many aspects of pragmatic competence can be developed in
the classroom and instruction plays an important role in helping learners to be aware of
the difference between L1 and L2 pragmatics. Teachers should combine input with
consciousness raising and communicative practice (Kasper, 1996) to help learners
develop their pragmatic competence. How, specifically, can this be done?

Regarding classroom activities, Cohen (1996) suggests five steps to take when
teaching pragmatic topics. These steps are: diagnostic assessment, model dialogues,
evaluation of a situation, role-play activities, and feedback and discussion for teaching
speech acts. The first two steps help learners recognize the patterns of speech acts, the
next step helps students understand the factors involved in choices of semantic formulas,
and the last two give students chances to practice.
Techniques of teaching pragmatics can be divided into two parts: learners’
perception and production. For the perception component, discussing the use of language


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and pragmatics in L1, helps to raise learners’ pragmatic consciousness. This can be
helpful because it directs students to understand pragmatic principles which could then be
applied to English (Rose 1997). In the author’s study in Hong Kong, while students
discussed the various aspects of Cantonese requests in terms of directness, they focused
on the appropriateness of language behavior from one language to another. Students were
also asked to collect Cantonese requests they heard or made, which helped them to
become familiar with a number of the important categories of speech acts, and to realize
the difference in those categories between their native language and the target language.
Rose used this activity for English-language teachers, but I think instructors may employ
it with high-level adult learners. Meier (1997) suggests using learners’ observations to
discuss and compare appropriate and inappropriate dialogues to help them understand
linguistic behaviors.
Television, films and videos are also potential sources for FL environments
(Rose, 1994; Rose, 1997) to explore functions of pragmatics. These types of sources
usually provide rich contexts in which language is used, contributing to raising learners’
awareness. In a very short excerpt from Woody Allen’s film Annie Hall, Rose found
several occurrences of speech acts worth discussing. Meier’ s article (in press)
encourages the use of films for nonthreatening ways to explore stereotypes, raising
awareness of others’ points of view, and observing communication styles. In Tateyama’s

(2001) study, a student suggested that a video lab, like a language lab, gives students
chances to select what situations they want to explore. This would help them learn more
about cultural differences and how interaction occurs in the target language.


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Regarding learners’ production, Kasper (1997a) claims that role-play, simulation,
and drama will help students practice different social roles and speech events, especially
in EFL settings. Tateyama (2001) suggests that while role-play does not actually reveal
the ability of students’ pragmatic knowledge in real-life situations, the tasks involved in
role-play require conversational interaction in real time. In her study, subjects revealed
that they wanted to practice in role-plays in different situations in class. One participant
indicated that simulation would help him to improve pragmatic ability because he learned
best when involved in communicative activities. Meier (in press) provides suggestions for
concrete examples of role-play and simulations.
Audiotaped students’ production would be helpful if a school has equipment such
as a camcorder for teaching. In House’s study (1996), students were exposed to their own
pragmatic usage by listening to their own production. The teacher or native speaker
provided feedback by pointing out what pragmatic features students should focus on in
their output. In this way, they may “notice” those features and their output could become
helpful input. Additionally, this seems a very useful method of teaching pragmatics as
students not only listen to themselves, but also to their interlocutors’ pragmatic behavior.
This may help them to understand the consequence of their pragmatic choices.
Finally, it is necessary to be concerned with teachers’ pragmatic ability in their L2
for non-native speaker teachers and L1 for native-speaker teachers. Both types of
teachers must enhance their knowledge of pragmatics in order to teach students. It is
often quite difficult for the former to teach target language pragmatics, and the latter’s
intuitions in terms of language use often is not very reliable (Rose, 1997). Their
knowledge of pragmatic aspects of language seems equal because native speaker