Наталя Фрасинюк, Ірина Свідер
(Кам’янець-Подільський національний університет імені Івана Огієнка)
TEACHING PRAGMATIC COMMUNICATION TO PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES
Nowadays there are many situations where misunderstandings occur in the middle of every-day conversations. These missteps can lead to confusion and in worst-case scenarios to long-term consequences. Far too little attention has been paid to the actual intentions of speakers and to the sub context (hidden thoughts, desires etc.) Simply knowing how to read, mastering pronunciation and practicing grammatical exercises will not make a foreign language learner fluent.
The aim of this paper is to highlight the importance of pragmatics in terms of teaching a foreign language. Learning English has become a global trend. Due to real opportunities of being hired abroad or being admitted for studies people are forced to communicate well in a foreign language and be pragmatically competent. Learning foreign languages should be aimed at using language in real-life situations, in particular contexts.
The term “pragmatics” has come to be used to refer to the context and meaning of what has been said including the intention of the speaker and other additional factors. Pragmatics also studies language from the perspective of real life communication and tries to understand the relations between context and language, which lead to language understanding [4, c. 55].
A precise definition of pragmatics was given by David Crystal, who claims that it is the: “… study of LANGUAGE from the point of view of the users, especially of the choices they make, the CONSTRAINTS they encounter in using language in social interaction, and the effects their use of language has on the other participants in act of communication” [3].
Nowadays the biggest problem that non-native speakers have is that they have quite abstract knowledge of the language. People tend to focus on grammatical rules and principles rather than on useful activities, which are geared to make one’s speech fluent. Cultural norms such as familiarity, politeness, good manners, formality and so on form the notion of what pragmatics is. Pragmatics analyses social and cultural levels of language usage in every day environment, it deals with relevant and useful language that can be implemented in one’s speech. Teaching and studying with the help of a native speaker or through original movies, authentic TV shows or books are good illustrations of this. This enables learners of foreign language to convey meaning exactly as it was intended to and there is a bigger chance to be better understood by others.
Pragmatic and communicative competences are crucial and essential in both language learning and language teaching because they are integral parts of successful communication. Pragmatic competence is the ability that can be acquired in order to both accurately convey the meaning of one’s message and interpret the one you get in various social situations. Communicative competence is explained as having “… knowledge of rules of appropriate speech behavior (e.g., speech act usage, topics), turn talking, and such conversational phenomena as interrupting” [3].
Сommunicative competence can be divided into four elements:1. Grammatical competence: words and rules; 2. Sociolinguistic competence: appropriateness; 3. Discourse competence: cohesion and coherence; 4. Strategic competence: appropriate use of communicative strategies. Teachers should aim at paying more attention to speaking and listening skills practicing more in communicating new information, encouraging students’ involvement to overcome passive learning and focusing on practicing the language in real-life situations rather than on producing well-formed sentences or in individual words.
Pragmatics is indeed the study of contextual meaning and it can be used to solve communication difficulties. Teachers should aim at improving students’ competence level, which can be done with the help of authentic materials and putting students in the natural environment. In the beginning stages of teaching, strategic competence has to be inserted in learner’s speech, which is the way how to keep communicating even if there are some misunderstandings or breakdowns. Students have to know basic strategies (asking for help, miming and gesturing or topic avoidance) to be able to convey some kind of message [2, c.67].
There are different ways of implementing pragmatics into classroom context. The number of activities is enormous. It is definitely better to start with some warm up exercises and to take advantage of naturally occurring situations (practice greeting). For instance, ask students “What do people say to introduce themselves in their first language?” and then ask students to compare their answers to what people say to introduce themselves in the target language. This warm up exercise shows differences and similarities in two language and what phrases have to eliminated from the students’ speech in the target language.
The way of analyzing drama is both good and creative way how to implement pragmatics into the lesson: “The discussion of what is meant, implied, etc. by characters in dramatic dialogues can also be used in class to make students explicitly aware of the communicative nature of discourse”. Although due to the obvious development of technologies, it would be better to engage student not only with the written materials, but also learners can analyze audio files or short films.
Students can also be asked to complete the dialogue with appropriate responses. This activity will require logical thinking and good knowledge of vocabulary. Students can be provided with tricky sentences in order to see the differences of meaning in different sentences. These activities emphasize the importance of pragmatic competence in the classroom context. They are meant to improve and develop pragmatic skills of foreign language learners.
Communicative and situational exercises can be accompanied as explicit and implicit instructions about the nature of the pragmatic meaning that is learned, but at advanced levels of foreign language learning it is the explicit explanations that are most appropriate, especially in the case of essential ones differences between native and foreign language pragmatics [1, c.87].
The development of exercises involves several stages. Firstly, there is an analysis educational material that contains pragmatic meanings formed by language, speech and non-speech means (e.g. special stress, intonation, the use of certain types of sentences, interjections and constructions, specific gestures, facial expressions, posture, etc.).
Further, in order to form the necessary skills communicative tasks are created and pragmatic means are selected for them performance with support. Also, a real or simulated professionally oriented situation is presented, which will require a creative approach to implementation pragmatic functions of language and/or speech units being studied.
Finally, the task is accompanied by a so-called “lecture component”, that is, the explanation of the corresponding pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic phenomena of the foreign language.
Therefore, learning the pragmatics of communication is an important aspect of the formation of foreign language communicative competence and requires a lot of attention in teaching foreign language.
REFERENCES
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2.Маслова Т. Б. Прагматична складова іншомовної компетентності. Іншомовна освіта педагога: виклики, проблеми, перспективи [Текст] : Київський університет імені Бориса Грінченка, Гуманітарний інститут. Київ : Київ. ун-т імені Бориса Грінченка, 2015. С. 66-71.
3.Nicholas Allott. Key Terms in Pragmatics. https://uogbooks.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/key-terms-in-pragmatics-by-nicholas-allott.pdf
- Wisniewska H. Communicative Competence in Professional Discourse. Linguistics and Literature Studies. Vol. 3(2). 2015. pp. 50-57.