Learning Pragmatics from Native and Nonnative Language Teacher

315 Pages·2018·2.972 MB·

by  Andrew D. Cohen

Learning Pragmatics
from Native and
Nonnative Language
Teachers
SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
Series Editors: Professor David Singleton, University of Pannonia,
Hungary and Fellow Emeritus, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland and
Associate Professor Simone E. Pfenninger, University of Salzburg, Austria
This series brings together titles dealing with a variety of aspects of lan-
guage acquisition and processing in situations where a language or lan-
guages other than the native language is involved. Second language is thus
interpreted in its broadest possible sense. The volumes included in the
series all off er in their diff erent ways, on the one hand, exposition and
discussion of empirical fi ndings and, on the other, some degree of theo-
retical refl ection. In this latter connection, no particular theoretical stance
is privileged in the series; nor is any relevant perspective – sociolinguistic,
psycholinguistic, neurolinguistic, etc. – deemed out of place. The intended
readership of the series includes fi nal-year undergraduates working on
second language acquisition projects, postgraduate students involved in
second language acquisition research, and researchers, teachers and
policy-makers in general whose interests include a second language acqui-
sition component.
All books in this series are externally peer-reviewed.
Full details of all the books in this series and of all our other publications
can be found on http://www.multilingual-matters.com, or by writing to
Multilingual Matters, St Nicholas House, 31-34 High Street, Bristol BS1
2AW, UK.
SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION: 123
Learning Prag matics
from Native and
Nonnative Language
Teachers
Andrew D. Cohen
MULTILINGUAL MATTERS
Bristol • Blue Ridge Summit
DOI https://doi.org/10.21832/COHEN9924
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Control Number: 2017061008
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-1-78309-992-4 (hbk)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78309-991-7 (pbk)
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Copyright © 2018 Andrew D. Cohen.
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Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Acronyms ix
Foreword xi
Rachel L. Shively
1 An Introduction to Pragmatics for Learners and Teachers 1
2 The Development of Pragmatic Ability 26
with Lauren Wyner
3 The Handling of Pragmatics by Native and Nonnative Teachers 57
4 What Native and Nonnative Teachers Know About
Pragmatics and What They Report Doing 81
5 Basic Issues in the Teaching of Pragmatics 101
with Lauren Wyner
6 Ideas for Teaching Pragmatics and for Motivating Learners 125
7 The Role of Technology in Teaching and Learning Pragmatics 154
8 The Learning of Pragmatics 181
9 The Assessment of Pragmatics 211
10 Researching Pragmatics 241
11 Conclusions 264
References 270
Author Index 287
Subject Index 292
v
Acknowledgments
I would fi rst like to acknowledge the many native- and nonnative-s peaking
teachers who responded to the international survey presented in Chapter
4, which generated numerous constructive suggestions that were inte-
grated into Chapters 5 and 6. Their insights were invaluable in producing
this book. I would also like to thank Meryl Siegel for her input in the early
stages of the survey design. Her feedback was valuable both in shaping the
design and in the way that the results were interpreted.
In addition, I would also like to acknowledge the extensive contribu-
tions made by Lauren Wyner to both Chapters 2 and 5. It was her presen-
tation on the second language (L2) and foreign language (FL) relationship
in pragmatics at the 2nd American Pragmatics Association Conference at
University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in October 2014 that
prompted my interest in this particular area, and led to our collaboration
on an article which appeared in Studies in Second Language Learning and
Teaching (2015), which contributed to Chapters 2 and 5.
Another colleague who I would like to acknowledge is Erhan Aslan,
whose most insightful research on language instructor teaching, on both
French as a native language and German as a foreign language, prompted a
very productive interaction between the two of us, which helped to motivate
me to continue with this project. The results of his study, which were pub-
lished in the Canadian Modern Language Review in 2015, helped to cor-
roborate my thinking about why writing a book of this nature made sense.
Let me also say that I feel most fortunate to have the solid support of
outstanding colleagues in my eff orts to promote the fi eld of pragmatics
and in taking on this particular book-writing project. The following indi-
viduals have all contributed both directly and indirectly to making this
volume a reality, whether through productive interactions with them over
the years, reading their insightful writings in the fi eld, attending their
stimulating conference presentations and their steadfast support of my
work: Kathleen Bardov-Harlig, César Félix-Brasdefer, Naoko Taguchi,
Noriko Ishihara, Julie Sykes, Zohreh Eslami, Rachel Shively, Carsten
Roever and Elite Olshtain. I am greatly indebted to all of them. Needless
to say, there are many others not mentioned in this list who have also
contributed to shaping my thinking and my writing. Many of their names
appear in the references for this volume.
vii
viii Learning Pragmatics from Native and Nonnative Language Teachers
I give special acknowledgment to Julie Berlin for the illustrations in
the book. She listened carefully to me as I described each pragmatics situ-
ation and did a wonderful job of converting my imagined scenes into real-
ity. I think they help to convey nicely the way pragmatics shows up out in
the world.
Finally, let me acknowledge my wife, Sabina, to whom I have been
happily married for 50 years, for her wonderful support of my post-t eaching
professional endeavors and her willingness to put up with the intensity
with which I tackled this book-writing project, involving for the fi rst time
voice recognition software. Sometimes this meant that our daily interac-
tions inadvertently became part of the text of the book until I discovered
that I had left the Dragon software functioning!
Publisher Acknowledgments
Thanks go to Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching for
permission to draw on portions of Lauren Wyner and my paper, ‘Second
language pragmatic ability: Individual diff erences according to environ-
ment’, which appeared in 2015 in Studies in Second Language Learning
and Teaching 5 (4), 519–556.
Thanks also go to the MinneTESOL Journal (www.minnetesoljour-
nal.org) for permission to use portions of my paper, ‘Learner strategies for
performing intercultural pragmatics’, which appeared in 2011 in
the MinneTESOL Journal 28, 13–24.
Finally, thanks go to the Iranian Journal of Language Testing for
granting permission to use portions of my paper, ‘Towards increased
classroom assessment of pragmatic ability’, which appeared in 2014 in
the Iranian Journal of Language Testing 4 (1), 5–25.
Acronyms
ACTFL American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages
CARLA The Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition
(University of Minnesota)
C1, C2 fi rst culture, second culture
CC Creative Commons
CMC computer-mediated communication
DCT discourse completion task
EFL English as a foreign language
ELF English as a lingua franca
ENL English as a new language
ESL English as a second language
FL foreign language
HS high school
L1 fi rst language
L2 second language
MAXSA maximizing study abroad
M-C multiple-choice
MICASE The Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English
NNS nonnative speaker (NNSs, pl.)
NNT nonnative-speaking teacher (NNTs, pl.)
NS native speaker (NSs, pl.)
NT native-speaking teacher (NTs, pl.)
RA research assistant
SA study abroad
SCMC synchronous computer-mediated communication
SIE synthetic immersive environment
SNS social networking sites
TL target language
WBT web-based tutorial
WEs World Englishes
ix
Foreword
Pragmatic competence in a second language has been defi ned as ‘the abil-
ity to communicate your intended message with all its nuances in any
sociocultural context and to interpret the message of your interlocutor as
it was intended’ (Fraser, 2010: 15). By refl ecting on the L2 knowledge and
skills that this defi nition entails, we can appreciate the challenges that
learners face as they develop their L2 pragmatic abilities. Among other
things, learners need to gain receptive and productive abilities to:
• perform speech acts such as requesting, apologizing, and thanking;
• grasp the non-literal meaning of words and phrases in the L2;
• link grammar structures with their communicative functions;
• express politeness and impoliteness;
• engage in humorous exchanges;
• manage their participation in conversations;
• match language forms to diff erent situations and interlocutors;
• and employ language to present themselves in desired ways, for exam-
ple, as funny, serious, respectful, or thoughtful people.
Given that the ways that speakers express their intended meanings
through language varies from one culture to another, L2 learners cannot
always successfully transfer their L1 pragmatic norms to the L2. For exam-
ple, while using an imperative verb form to order a coff ee in Peninsular
Spanish is commonplace and appropriate, in American English the same
form may sound rude or demanding. Learning the social meanings and func-
tions that specifi c words and structures convey in the L2 can help learners to
avoid miscommunication and to express the meanings that they intend.
L2 learners can certainly develop L2 pragmatic competence through
immersion in an L2 speech community. However, research in the past three
decades indicates that naturalistic learning may proceed fairly slowly and
that providing learners with instruction in L2 pragmatics can be eff ective in
accelerating learning and enhancing metapragmatic awareness. It is this last
point that forms the point of departure for this volume: Cohen advocates
for incorporating pragmatics instruction into the foreign language curricu-
lum from the early to the more advanced stages of L2 profi ciency. However,
as he points out, teachers are typically left to their own devices to plan and
deliver pragmatics instruction, since textbooks and teacher education pro-
grams are often lacking in information and training to teach pragmatics. In
xi
xii Learning Pragmatics from Native and Nonnative Language Teachers
providing practical information for teaching pragmatics, as well as consid-
ering the perspectives of both native- and nonnative-speaking FL teachers,
this volume makes an important contribution to fi lling the gap in available
resources for teachers and teacher educators.
Cohen’s credentials are unmatched in the area of teaching and learning
L2 pragmatics. He was among the earliest scholars to focus on the critical
role of pragmatics in L2 learning and teaching and his research has consis-
tently produced important insights to advance our understanding of this
topic. Not only has Cohen been a leader in L2 pragmatics research, he has
long been at the forefront of developing and disseminating resources and
materials for FL teachers and learners. For instance, for many years, Cohen
taught a summer workshop for teachers focused on L2 pragmatics through
the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition. He and his
colleagues also created the Maximizing Study Abroad guidebook (Paige
et al., 2006), which provides practical and accessible materials to help
study abroad students learn language and culture – including pragmatics –
during their stay abroad. Cohen was further instrumental in supporting
the creation of instructional materials in Japanese and Spanish that are
freely available online through the websites Strategies for Learning Speech
Acts in Japanese (http://carla.umn.edu/speechacts/japanese/introto-
speechacts/index.htm) and Dancing with Words: Spanish Pragmatics
(http://carla.umn.edu/speechacts/sp_pragmatics/home.html). Both web-
pages off er interactive exercises for students and instructional materials for
teachers. More recently, Cohen launched the Second and Foreign Language
Pragmatics Wiki (http://wlpragmatics.pbworks.com/w/page/99620139/
Second_and_Foreign_Language-Pragmatic _Wiki) with the idea to pro-
vide a user-friendly platform for FL teachers to share their lesson plans and
pragmatics resources. Finally, Cohen himself is an avid language learner
who has studied the pragmatics of 12 diff erent languages as diverse as
French, Hebrew, and Japanese. His personal successes and challenges with
L2 pragmatics contribute a learner perspective to this volume.
It is in the same spirit of Cohen’s previous eff orts to make teaching and
learning pragmatics a reality that this volume off ers FL teachers and
teacher educators an insightful and practical resource to thoughtfully,
critically, and eff ectively incorporate pragmatics into the FL curriculum.
Rachel L. Shively
Illinois State University
References
Fraser, B. (2010) Pragmatic competence: The case of hedging. In G. Kaltenböck, W. Mihatsch
and S. Schneider (eds) New Approaches to Hedging (pp. 15–34). Bingley: Emerald.
Paige, R.M., Cohen, A.D., Kappler, B., Chi, J.C. and Lassegard, J.P. (2006) Maximizing
Study Abroad: A Students’ Guide to Strategies for Language and Culture Learning
and Use. Minneapolis: CARLA.