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

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

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

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,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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,

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

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

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,

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

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

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

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