A Literature Review on Interventional Pragmatics Instruction in Language Teaching

Tingting Sun

School of Foreign Languages,Dalian Maritime University,Dalian,China

Email:suntt@dlmu.edu.cn

Yilian Qi

English Language Center,The College of Liberal Art,Shantou University,Shantou,China

Email:qiyilian@stu.edu.cn

Peng Xuefei

International Students'Education Center,Dalian Maritime University,Dalian,China

Email:anniefao@dlmu.edu.cn

Yao Bing

International Students'Education Center,Dalian Maritime University,Dalian,China

Email:yaobing@dlmu.edu.cn

[Abstract] Whether and how instruction contributes to the L2 pragmatics competence development has drawn attention among language teachers and other professional educators in the area of EFL,which highlights the importance of cultivating learners' pragmatic competence in language classroom room.That is the reason that the number of studies,theoretically and empirically,examined the effects and variety of teaching approaches and demonstrated the teachability of pragmatic features.This paper reviews 20 studies conducted abroad and in China during the last four decades,from three aspects:the necessity of the pragmatics of teaching,the content of pragmatics of teaching,and the pragmatic approach and provides some suggestions for future studies on pragmatics in language teaching.

[Keywords] pragmatic competence;interventional pragmatics studies;pragmatic instructions

Introduction

Since the late 20th century,"interlanguage pragmatics or L2 pragmatic acquisition"was established as an independent discipline(Rose&Kasper,2006;Li,2013),where it has become a branch of research in pragmatics and second language acquisition.An increasing number of researchers advocated the importance of cultivating L2 pragmatic competence for everyday communication,especially for intercultural communication competence (Rose &Kasper,2006;Li,2013;Ren,2018).Chomsky (1980,p.224) defines pragmatic competence as "knowledge of the conditions and manner of appropriate use".Bachman explains pragmatic competence by including"illocutionary competence,or the knowledge of the pragmatic conventions for performing acceptable language functions,and sociolinguistic competence,or knowledge of the sociolinguistic conventions for performing language functions appropriately in a given context."Barron(2003,p.10)defines pragmatic competence as"knowledge of the linguistic resources available in a given language for realizing particular illocutions,knowledge of the sequential aspects of speech acts and finally,knowledge of the appropriate contextual uses of the particular languages' linguistics resources." Chinese researchers described pragmatic competence as the ability to use language to achieve a specific purpose and understand speech in certain context.It may also be described as the ability to understand particular communication contexts and use language both appropriately and effectively (Ren,2018).These definitions show different aspects of pragmatic ability;the former three types define pragmatism as a form of linguistic knowledge,while the latter two focus on the practice of language use(Li,2013).

Primary studies were done on L2 pragmatics in the last four decades,which include L2 pragmatic acquisition,pragmatics in language teaching,and pragmatic assessment(Ren,2018).In traditional language teaching,pragmatics has been long neglected(Rose&Kasper,2006).Language teachers tend to focus on grammar and vocabulary learning less than how learners use and produce the learned knowledge appropriately in daily communication(Ren,2018).In many foreign language teachings,the curricula and teaching materials over the years included pragmatic competence or adopted a pragmatic approach as an organizing principle(Rose&Kasper,2006).The most critical purpose of EFL is to cultivate the learners' pragmatic competence,using language knowledge to better understand and express language more appropriately.

In this review,focus is given to the interventional pragmatic studies in language teaching within classrooms encompassing the last four decades.The reviewed studies are all classical and continued studies from experts in teaching and pragmatic development.Accordingly,this paper reviews and summarizes research studies pertaining to pragmatic teaching goal,pragmatic approaches,research design,and assessment instruction.At the end,suggestions are given and a reflection is provided for future research in interventional pragmatics in language teaching.The questions I will draw attention are:What do we know about interventional studies in pragmatics in language teaching?What issues has research on L2 pragmatics instruction examined? What research design and process have been used in the studies?Moreover,what kind of suggestions should study in the future on L2 pragmatics instruction?

Studies of pragmatics in language teaching have increased gradually in the past few decades.Most research focused on qualitative and descriptive studies regarding the necessity of pragmatic theory to be used in classroom teaching.Experimental researches on L2 pragmatics were of higher quality,which is including experimental designs,quasi-experimental and pre-experimental research arrangement.Rose&Kasper(2006)distinguish between observational and interventional studies.They give a further explanation that "studies focus primarily on classroom process,either without a view to learning outcomes or with learning outcomes being analyzed as emerging in and through classroom interaction"(Rose&Kasper,2006,p.34).The observed classrooms are authentic in the sense of not being specially arranged for research purposes.Observational studies touched on language teaching as well as the opportunities to develop learners' pragmatic competence (Li,2013) However,and observational studies found limitations in cultivating learners' pragmatic competence,For example,the lack of the possibilities of target language input in the classroom.

On the other hand,"interventional studies examine the effect of a particular instructional treatment on students'acquisition of the targeted pragmatic feature" (Rose &Kasper,2006,p.34).While interventional instruction has attributed positively in learners'pragmatic development,various teaching approaches may improve their different pragmatic abilities.There is a great number of journals that can relate to pragmatic education from the 1980s until now(Li,2013;Lu,2013).All the studies and researches are from books,Elsevier,Eric,CNKI,and symposia in western and China.While in this paper,I select twenty of classroom experimental researches to illustrate the basic research pragmatic in language teaching.

Classroom-based Pragmatic Teaching Content

Rose &Kasper (2006) mentioned the effectiveness of pragmatic instructions in language teaching and learners'pragmatic development.In theSecond Language Pragmatic Developmentbook,using different teaching approaches illustrated the teachability and necessity of language teaching.In the book,Pragmatics in Language Teachingin 2006,Rose&Kasper emphasized the teachability of pragmatics and showed that a fundamental issue lies within the teaching content or teaching goals.Moreover,they questioned the kind of pragmatic language features that may be taught.Therefore,a thorough review of the interventional studies was done,which encompass the aspects of communication:speech acts,pragmatic routine and strategies,pragmatic awareness,and discourse organization.

About half of the studies used speech acts as the primary teaching goal,such as requests,compliments,responses,and apologies.These studies focused on the function of the speech act in language use and sociolinguistic factors like power,distance,impolite,and so forth.They discussed the influence of pragmatic instructions on pragmatic development by observing learners'speech acquisition and sense of language content(Li,2013).The speech acts of request as seen in the interventional studies have vast differences in Japanese,Spanish,and Chinese based on grammatical,linguistic and sociolinguistic facets,which conferred learning difficulties and caused confusion.Pragmatic instruction and interventions have helped toward better language acquisition(Takahshi,2010;Li,2012).

Pragmatic routines and strategies were another topic in research in the review papers (Tateyama,2006).All the studies have examined the efficacy of instructional approaches and try to emphasize the possibilities of pragmatic teachability (Olshtain &Cohen,1990).Some studies had demonstrated that the pragmatic target features were most effectively learned when they were taught explicitly with some form of input enhancement techniques (Takahashi,2006).For example,in Tateyama's(2006)'s teachable pragmatic study,the author usedsuminmasenas the pragmatic routine in communication like apologies and giving thanks for Japanese EFL learners.They verified the effectiveness of metapragmatic instruction in language teaching classroom.The explicit instructed group participants,who involved in various explicit metapragmatic activities,showed superior performance in the pragmatic routine in communication to that of the implicit group.It can be considered one of how learners can most efficiently develop their pragmatic competence in L2.However,they have failed to examine and answer how differential degrees of interventional instruction affect L2 pragmatic competence development.

Classroom-based Pragmatic Teaching Approach

Other core issues in these studies are how to teach in a pragmatic language classroom and whether different teaching approaches have different outcomes.Past studies mostly used the explicit,implicit,inductive,and deductive approaches.

Kasper &Rose (2006) demonstrated an explicit teaching approach by touching on a clear teaching goal of metapragmatic.They told learners to learn pragmatic conventions step-by-step and requested the learner to discuss metapragmatic conventions for their understanding.While implicit instruction focuses on input and enhances pragmatic convention without any metapragmatic explanations,it only asks the learner to find language convention and learn it through teaching activities.

Many empirical studies,especially the interventional review studies mentioned in this paper,have proved that pragmatic instruction in the classroom has a positive role in learner pragmatic awareness and second language acquisition.Major studies indicated that explicit instruction facilitates target learning speed and language accuracy.For example,Alcon-Soler(2007)analyzed how Spanish ESL learners use request communications and compared the effectiveness of explicit and implicit instruction in the classroom.The explicit group learned the explanations of the metapragmatic,where learners were asked to discuss the sample in the conversation and comment on it.The implicit group was given the input and enhanced the pragmatic awareness task without having any explanation of metapragmatic.The results showed better performance in using the request in the interventional instruction groups than in the control group;however,no apparent difference between the two teaching approaches were apparent.Nonetheless,after three weeks of the detaining test,the explicit instruction group was found to have done better in learning pragmatic requests.

Deductive pragmatic approach is a method of providing second-language pragmatic information in class.Here,the learner analyzes a sample of language conventions(Rose&Kasper,2006;Lu,2013).In contrast,inductive pragmatic teaching implies that the learner analyzes pragmatic content by himself to understand the pragmatic rules of the target language.There are four studies involved induction and deduction instruction.Three studies show that the deductive method is better than the inductive approach.Although the learner's inductive self-discovery method has a role in pragmatic learning,because of the differences in their learning styles,the degree of learner benefit is also different.Consequently,learners attain different outcomes of effectiveness.(Kubota,1995;Lu,2013)

Rose &Ng's (2006) study focused on how Hong Kong college students use English in complimentary and response communications.In the study,the effectiveness of the inductive approach and the deductive approach in classroom teaching were compared.The authors chose the inductive approach,deductive approach,and control group.The latter two groups undertook interventional pragmatic lessons,while the inductive group joined a discourse analysis to find the complimentary and response pragmatic conventions by themselves.Moreover,the deductive group gained metapragmatic information through explicit instruction.This study used the pre-test and post-test method through self-assessment tasks,discourse completions,and metapragmatic assessment tasks.The study demonstrated that only the complimentary responses of learners in the deduction group achieved positive teaching outcomes,and the deduction method was effective in improving the social pragmatic level.

Pragmatics in language Teaching design,Assessment procedure and instrument

A glance at the columns"Teaching Design"and"Assessment Procedure and Instrument"in Table 1 reveals that the interventional studies feature varieties of a pretest-posttest design,very few studies include a delayed posttest,although this may not be the result of a mistake on the part of the researcher a consequence of institutional constraints in the research environment (Rose &Ng,2006;Tateyama,2006).Half of the interventional studies include a control group (Li,2012).The reason for a control group is to allow the researchers to "assess whether posttreatment effects observed in the experimental groups are,in fact,the result of the treatment" (Rose &Kasper,2006,p.57).In the studies that compare different experimental teaching approaches-implicit versus explicit,inductive versus deductive.Comparing is often made between those approaches,a control group is often logistically mandated.

The technique of measurement is essential in the study of pragmatic competence.The approach used to measure pragmatic competence in past research included written discourse completion,oral discourse completion,multiplechoice,discourse self-assessments,and roleplaying (Olshtain &Cohen).Various studies have carried out repeated tests on the above methods,confirming that these methods have high reliability and validity(Takahashi,2006).Some studies have proposed that the reliability and validity of written text completion and multiple choices are relatively low (Rose &Ng,2006).In response to this,further research has found that written discourse completion and various other decisions are still useful pragmatic measurement tools.

Through a comprehensive review of the experimental studies on the pragmatics of language in teaching,this review finds that the investigations possess these characteristics:they focus on the learning of the availability of discourse markers,pragmatic routines,and acts of speech.Researchers may count on a variety of teaching activities to ensure the absorption of the relevant material.The teaching process directly involves input,output,and assessment and is cautious about creating research designs while providing the relevant information in detail.In the analysis of the data,essential reliability and the validity of the information were evident.

Suggestion for future study

Generally speaking,earlier pragmatic language teaching investigations focused on the teachability of pragmatic competence.They then explored other teaching approaches to improve learners'pragmatic competence by using presumptuously pragmatic teaching materials.It is believed that the primary goal of pragmatic teaching research is to only prove that input enhancement is effective.The most important features to find out in research are different teaching materials and teaching targets,with a proper teaching approach to make more the process more efficient.Here,in view of pragmatic language teaching questions,basic theory,and framework,suggestions for future research are provided.

Future studies should broaden pragmatic teaching.The teaching content can reflect the researcher's interpretation of pragmatic competence,as evident in past studies.These studies indicate that the content of pragmatic teaching is limited by category,and they only examined isolated pragmatic features.The dynamic characteristics of pragmatic competence require that future research incorporate communicative and interactive competence into interventional pragmatic teaching studies(Lu,2013;Ren,2018).To explore the teaching of complex discourse organizational competence,this paper puts forward that pragmatic education based on conversational analysis embodies the interactive features of pragmatic competence.

Learning and absorbing the other discipline's research frameworks should also be explored in future studies.As the branch of pragmatics and second language acquisition,L2 pragmatic theories based on these two categories.While the L2 pragmatic competence development theories mainly focus on Schmidt'sNoticing Hypothesisin earlier studies.It explained how target language learners develop their pragmatic competence,which is noticing the specific utterance and related communicative pragmatic features.TheNoticing Hypothesishas explained that the learner's language level and motivation are affected by the pragmatic consciousness.The explicit instruction has raised leaners'attention distribution,which can help them to develop pragmatic competence through discussing and analyzing the metapragmatic in the classroom(Takahashi,2010).As a result,some interventional researches has the positive effect of an explicit teaching approach in improving the learners'pragmatic competence(Rose&Kasper,2006;Ren,2018).

Future research should seek flexibility and diversification of pragmatic instruction.Pragmatic teaching research is currently in the name of explicit and implicit teaching approach.But there is no apparent boundary between explicit and implicit teaching in actual teaching(Rose&Ng,2006).The degree of explicitness depends on factors of teaching goals and the level of students.The effectiveness of the implicit approach depends to a large extent on learners'attention to the pragmatic convention(Ren,2018).

Future research should pay attention to the diversity of language collection and evaluation and try to ensure the authenticity of the language.From the research articles,the most commonly used language collection methods are the discourse completion test,roleplaying,and discourse(Takahashi,2010).While all of the language collecting methodologies in the research is artificially induced or unnaturally based on the intuition of native speakers,they are not related to the authentic language.Moreover,the validity of the assessment is questionable(Takahashi,2010).Researchers have realized the role of "real language" in pragmatic teaching research,and language collection methods have shown diversified trends,such as telephone interview recordings,topical discussions,and conversational analyses.Based on spontaneous speech rhetoric,the features of the systematic pattern in a specific language are found from the most basic and original conversational data.Therefore,compared with commonly used inductive methods,this method may avoid the second language learner's pragmatic use of the target language.

Conclusion

This paper reviews studies pertaining to pragmatic experimental instruction from three aspects:the necessity of the pragmatics of teaching;the content of pragmatics of teaching;and the pragmatic approach.Moreover,this review combines the relevant methodological issues of pragmatic teaching research to suggest future research trends and propose corresponding solutions.It was stated that research on pragmatic teaching in China has just started,and current research is lacking.Domestic language researchers and teachers should appropriately draw on and consider the results of international pragmatic teaching studies to align with the local learning environment.

Acknowledgements

This study was funded by the Fundamental Research Funds of Educational Reform in Dalian Maritime University (Grant No.0034012129);Fundamental Research Funds of Educational Reform in Dalian Maritime University(Grant No.2020Y78),and Fundamental Research Funds of Education Department of Liaoning Providence(Grant No.L17BYY015).