What is it about?

How to teach socially and culturally appropriate oral communication in context is explored studying live interactions between second language students. Interventions by the instructor focused on observations of real student conversations and mapped out functional categories of discourse. These categories formed the starting point for a course framework that supported reflection and discussion on building pragmatic competence in various communicative situations.

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Why is it important?

Teaching appropriate oral communication to second language learners in real-time is difficult. It is usually done off-the-cuff with whatever an instructor notices in the moment. However, this can put language learners on the spot and usually does not provide instructors with enough traction to develop a systematic approach. By providing a metacognitive framework learners acquire the tools they need to improve their competence.

Perspectives

Writing this article has opened the door for a more data-driven paper on the same topic. Naturalistic studies in oral communication are not numerous, with most studies following a pre-test and post-test design that is highly controlled. Given that pragmatic competence includes a vast array and interplay of linguistic and interpersonal skills, we hope to impact teaching and research in oral second language learning, so that both teachers and learners have the tools they need to become confident and competent in authentic face-to-face interactions in various contexts and modes.

Angelina Van Dyke
Simon Fraser University

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This page is a summary of: Spontaneous classroom engagement facilitating development of L2 pragmatic competence, Pedagogical Linguistics, April 2021, John Benjamins,
DOI: 10.1075/pl.20011.van.
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