Developing pragmatic awareness: closing the conversation

ELT Journal ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Bardovi-Harling ◽  
B. A. S. Hartford ◽  
R. Mahan-Taylor ◽  
M. J. Morgan ◽  
D. W. Reynolds
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
American English ◽  
Language Instruction ◽  
Classroom Teachers ◽  
Language Curriculum ◽  
Pragmatic Awareness ◽  
English Language Instruction ◽  
Specific Activities ◽  
Guide Lines

Abstract Many commercially available English-language materials do not provide natural, or even pragmatically appropriate, conversational models for learners. This paper argues for increasing the role of pragmastics in English-language instruction. Classroom teachers can integrate pragmatics into the language curriculum by drawing on natural conversations, students' observations, and incomplete dialogues in textbooks. The paper provides guide-lines for pragmatically-centred lessons, as well as examples of specific activities, using closings in American English to illustrate these examples.

scholarly journals Analyzing Use of “Thanks to You”: Insights for Language Teaching and Assessment in Second and Foreign Language Contexts

2011 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 29-50
Author(s):  
Betty Lanteigne ◽  
Peter Crompton
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
American English ◽  
Language Instruction ◽  
Intended Meaning ◽  
American University ◽  
English Language Instruction ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Arabic Speaker ◽  
News Programs

This investigation of thanks to you in British and American usage was precipitated by a situation at an American university, in which a native Arabic speaker said thanks to you in isolation, making his intended meaning unclear. The study analyzes use of thanks to you in the Corpus of Contemporary American English and the British National Corpus to gain insights for English language instruction /assessment in the American context, as well as English-as-a-lingua-franca contexts where the majority of speakers are not native speakers of English or are speakers of different varieties of English but where American or British English are for educational purposes the standard varieties. Analysis of the two corpora revealed three functions for thanks to you common to British and American usage: expressing gratitude, communicating “because of you” positively, and communicating “because of you” negatively (as in sarcasm). A fourth use of thanks to you, thanking journalists/guests for being on news programs/talk shows, occurred in the American corpus only. Analysis indicates that felicitous use of thanks to you for each of these meanings depends on the presence of a range of factors, both linguistic and material, in the context of utterance.

Competing Nationalisms

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosina Lozano
Keyword(s):  
Puerto Rico ◽  
New Mexico ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
English Language ◽  
The United States ◽  
Language Instruction ◽  
Spanish Language ◽  
Spanish Speaking ◽  
English Language Instruction

Comparing the approaches to Spanish language instruction in New Mexico and Puerto Rico offers a focused study of how language and national identity intersect. In Puerto Rico, Spanish remained a language of necessity into the 1940s despite educational efforts to incorporate English language instruction. In 1942, a Senate subcommittee hearing exposed the absurdity of trying to impose English on a weak educational system. Additionally, the fact that U.S. officials pushed English was an affront to Puerto Ricans' sense of nationalism, which included being a Spanish-speaking society. Puerto Rican educators supported Spanish-language instruction in their schools for pragmatic reasons and as a form of nationalism that distinguished them from the United States. By contrast, Spanish in New Mexico was largely the language of culture and the home and no longer politics or society by the 1940s. New Mexicans rooted themselves as U.S. citizens first and used Spanish as a means of aiding the nation. The major political argument used in New Mexico to reintroduce Spanish language instruction in public elementary schools centered on the crucial role of the language in helping to fulfill national hemispheric goals.

A case for decolonizing English language instruction

ELT Journal ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul J Meighan
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Language Instruction ◽  
Letters To The Editor ◽  
English Language Instruction ◽  
Current Concern

Abstract Comment is a feature that allows contributors to express a personal, and sometimes controversial, view about a matter of current concern in the profession outside the format of a reviewed academic article. The views expressed are not necessarily those of the Editor or the Publisher. Reaction to Comment features, in the form of letters to the Editor, are especially welcome.

scholarly journals Using Pictionary Game to Increase Learners’ Vocabulary Mastery in English Language Instruction

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-51
Author(s):  
Welliam Hamer ◽  
Ledy Nur Lely
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
English Language ◽  
Language Skills ◽  
Language Instruction ◽  
Smart Board ◽  
Unsatisfactory Result ◽  
Classroom Activities ◽  
English Language Instruction ◽  
Learning English

This article aims at sharing information on how pictionary game is used to increase the learners’ vacabulary mastery in the process of teaching and learning. It is clear that vocabulary is one of components of English language. When the learners are reading, they need to master vocabulary related to certain topic. Therefore vocabulary is important thing in learning English. However, mastering English vocabularies is not easy. English is foreign language in which learning English is often considered to be difficult to comprehend. This problem can be seen from the unsatisfactory result when learning English. The learning processs commonly used in the classroom just puts the teacher as a center of learning. It means that the teacher always dominates him/herself to teach, not to focus on how the learners learn effectively. This makes the learners passive and less interested in following the course of learning. In fact the learners’ interest is the most important factor in the study. Interest can be developed if the learning process run with fun, vary, and conducive athmosphere. There are many factors that can support the existance of an increase in the study, i.e. teachers, learners, materials, media, methods, and other learning sources. One factor that can help the learners learn vocabulary is the use of pictionary game. In this study, pictionary game is a classic game of drawing and guessing pictures. Pictionary game can also increase the imagination of learners, where learners are asked to draw according to the word given by the teachers. Things that are needed to play pictionary game are a list or card of vocabulary items, whiteboard, calkboard, or smart board and markers. Pictionary game will help learners to get involved in classroom activities. Other advantages of using pictionary game can be concluded that it provides fun language practice in the various language skills.

scholarly journals ENGLISH PERFECT IN COGNITION OF SLOVAK ISCED3 LEARNERS OF ENGLISH – PRELIMINARY EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomáš Hlava
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Proficiency Test ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Procedural Knowledge ◽  
Language Instruction ◽  
Declarative Knowledge ◽  
Present Perfect ◽  
The Past ◽  
English Language Instruction ◽  
Different Types

In English language instruction in Slovakia, a strong preference for declarative knowledge at the expense of procedural knowledge development has been reported over the last two decades. However, the cognitive aspects of language attainment predict no impact of instructional efforts, since mental representations of language to be attained are told to be supported by different cognitive systems than associative learning develops. Language variation materializes differences among languages based on differences in digitalizing the experience and thus understanding the world. For Slovak learners, the English present perfect is one such anomaly in categorization. This paper aims to answer what the specific interactions between past simple and present perfect are and how the predicted cognitive aspects of language attainment influence the use of different types of knowledge. A proficiency test focusing on declarative knowledge and language use without context and in context was distributed to 600 Slovak learners of English at the ISCED3a level. In Past simple conditions, students proved highly proficiency in all 3 types of tasks. In present perfect conditions, declarative knowledge strongly dominated over language use in context. In Present perfect conditions, substitutions by past simple were significantly more frequent than substitutions of present perfect by past simple. Cognitive funneling was recognized as a process inhibiting fast proceduralization of the English present perfect compared to fast and reliable proceduralization of the past simple.

Imperial Millennialism and the Battle for American Indian Souls

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Rivett
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Language Instruction ◽  
Indigenous Populations ◽  
Shared Knowledge ◽  
Glorious Revolution ◽  
Military Alliances ◽  
English Language Instruction ◽  
Native Populations ◽  
Integral Role ◽  
The Glorious Revolution

Indigenous words offered a rich resource for rescripting national and colonial narratives in a time of intensified imperial conflict. Millennial zeal pitted Jesuit and Protestant forces against each other with renewed fervor during a purportedly secular period of diplomacy from the Glorious Revolution (1688) to the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), even as developments in natural history undermined previously accepted truths of Mosaic history. The British sought national uniformity by imposing English-language instruction on Indian proselytes, while the French continued to augment their own linguistic skills through a rigorous culture of dictionary writing and hymnody that helped to secure military alliances. This chapter argues that missionary linguistics played an integral role in consolidating British and French nationalism among indigenous populations, even as the shared knowledge forged in specific missionary locations helped native populations undermine imperial scripts.

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