Linking Empirical Research in Interlanguage Pragmatics and Syllabus Design

Kusevska, Marija and Ivanovska, Biljana (2018) Linking Empirical Research in Interlanguage Pragmatics and Syllabus Design. In: 10th World Conference on Educational Sciences (WCES2018), 04-06 Feb 2018, Prague, Czech Republic.

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Abstract

Globalization has intensified communication among people and has spurred their interest in other peoples’ values and social organization. There is curiosity and willingness on the part of language learners, especially adult learners, to discuss pragmatic principles and to welcome a pragmatics-focused curriculum. Many authors, however, share the view that curriculum writers should rely on empirical findings in order to make informed decisions about what to teach and how to teach pragmatics (Bardovi-Harlig, 2001; Gesuato, Bianchi & Cheng, 2015; Greer, Tatsuki, & Roever, 2013; Ishihara & Cohen, 2010; Kasper & Rose, 2001; Schmidt, 1993). This paper contributes to that trend of linking empirical research with syllabus design. In particular, we demonstrate how syllabus design and instruction can benefit from interlanguage pragmatics research. The results presented here were obtained through the project “The role of explicit instruction in developing pragmatic competence in learning English and German as foreign languages” carried out at Goce Delcev University, Stip, Republic of Macedonia. In this paper we focus on English complaints. We first investigate how Macedonian learners of English formulate their complaints and compare it to native speaker performance with respect to complaint strategies, frames and speech act modification. The obtained information is then used for selecting the target forms for instruction and designing a syllabus addressing the identified deficiencies. Our findings suggest that interlanguage pragmatics research can provide valuable guidance for teachers in tracing their learners’ needs so as to provide them with the pragmatic knowledge necessary for learning the social rules of speaking.

Key words: interlanguage pragmatics, syllabus design, complaints, instruction

Item Type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Subjects: Humanities > Languages and literature
Divisions: Faculty of Philology
Depositing User: Marija Kusevska
Date Deposited: 19 Jun 2018 13:37
Last Modified: 19 Jun 2018 13:37
URI: https://eprints.ugd.edu.mk/id/eprint/20093

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