The Language Teacher
05 - 2003

How Does "Research on Pragmatic Development" Relate to Language Teaching?

Yuriko Kite

Kansai University

All teachers should be interested in learning how learners make progress towards the goals or objectives set between teachers and learners. If the objective of your course in an EFL situation is, for example, "to learn to successfully communicate in English in classroom activities," you need to know if and how the learners are making progress towards successful communication. What does successful communication mean? One definition is performing linguistic actions in accord with the speaker's intention. Thus, what is said should (because of grammatical competence) be matched with what is meant (because of pragmatic competence). Since the research on pragmatic development in interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) has just begun, we do not know a great deal about developmental patterns (e.g. Kasper & Schmidt, 1996; Rose, 2000). In this article, however, current ILP development research will be used to allow us to revisit and reflect upon two stereotypical views held in language teaching: (1) a foreign language context does not provide a learning environment that is sufficient for the development of pragmatic ability; and (2) developing pragmatic ability is only relevant to intermediate and advanced learners. (1) Is a foreign language context sufficient to provide a learning environment for development of pragmatic ability?

No one questions the idea that the amount of input and the number of opportunities for interaction outside of the classroom are much less in an EFL context than in an ESL context. Since classrooms seem to be crucial opportunities for interaction in an EFL context, what does the environment inside the classroom look like? Does it provide sufficient and varied input and interaction opportunities for learners? The answer seems to depend on what type of classroom instruction the learners are exposed to. In a teacher-fronted classroom, for example, the research demonstrates that the classroom discourse shows a narrow range of input or limited functions (see summary in Kasper, 1997). In this type of classroom, a typical interactional pattern is I-R-F (Initiation-Response-Follow-up). In I-R-F, "learner participation is usually restricted to the response turn of the sequence; because of this, in classes where the I-R-F dominates the discourse, learners may not have the opportunity to more fully develop their communication skills" (Ohta, 1999, p. 1474). On the other hand, a learner-centered classroom seems richer in its provision of opportunities for interaction (Kasper & Rose, in press). One study by Ohta investigated American university-level beginning learners of Japanese from the perspective of language socialization. She looked at both teacher-fronted I-R-F and student-student interactions. She focused on language assessment comments such as ii desu ne (That's good, isn't it?). Candace, one participant in the study, began to use expressions such as Ah, soo desuka? (Oh, really?) and Mm ii desu ne (Uh-huh, good, isn't it?) to show language assessment in the spring semester, even though she did not use any of these assessments earlier. Ohta states that "[b]y the end of the year Candace spontaneously produced ne-marked assessments in learner-learner activity" (Ohta, 1999, p.1509). Ohta observed that learners in peer-interactions have access to opportunities to interact in a much more elaborated manner than in teacher-fronted activities. The provision of opportunities for peer-interaction may well be of key importance for pragmatic development in a FL setting.

These results call into question the notion that a foreign language context is too limited for learners to develop any pragmatic ability. As Kasper and Rose rightly state, "[r]esearch evidence does not support the summary dismissal of foreign language teaching as an effective environment for L2 pragmatic learning" (in press, Chapter 6).

(2) Can beginners learn pragmatics? Is development of pragmatics possible only when a learner has a threshold level of grammatical competence? The research methods in learner development literature can be categorized into two types: cross-sectional and longitudinal studies (Kasper & Rose, 1999; Kasper & Schmidt, 1996). The first group of studies focus on how learners develop either their production of speech acts, or assessment of pragmatic awareness as their proficiency increases from a beginning to an advanced level. For example, Rose investigated the development of speech act strategies by three different levels (P-2, P-4, and P-6) of young learners in Hong Kong. Using a picture discourse completion test (with situations such as "X asks to borrow a pencil from his classmate" in the students' L1 with a picture cue), Rose collected oral responses from the participants. One finding was that there is evidence of developmental patterns. Consider the case of requests. A request is a speech act in which one asks someone else to do something. In request studies in ILP, three levels of request strategies are often used for analysis. Using examples from Rose (2000, p. 40), they are: (a) direct (e.g., Give me your notes.), (b) conventionally indirect (e.g., Can I borrow your notes?), and (c) hint (e.g., I missed class yesterday. Did you go?). The developmental sequence usually progresses from direct, through conventionally indirect, to hint strategies. Rose found that the direct strategy was most frequent among the P-2 group, and the conventionally indirect strategy was used increasingly more with older participants (35.4% for P-2, 85.7% for P-4, and 96.8% for P-6). In another request study, Hill (1997) studied Japanese adult learners of English in three different proficiency groups, and found that the direct request strategy was used by low-proficiency learners much more than by advanced learners whereas for the conventionally indirect strategy, the opposite was observed. Thus, increased proficiency is linked with increased use of indirect request strategies.

The majority of these studies use elicitation techniques (e.g., discourse completion tests, role-plays, or verbal protocols) as the data collection method, and focus on strategies realized or performed in speech acts such as requests, apologies, or compliments (see summary in Kasper & Rose, 1999). Thus, the participants in these studies are either at an intermediate or an advanced level. As can be expected, the participants in these elicited studies are those who have a threshold level of grammatical competency. One finding from these studies is that learners have access to a range of strategies. Contrary to expectations, even lower-level learners use native-like strategies, but they use them with less frequency than learners with higher proficiency levels.

The previously mentioned cross-sectional studies imply that the development of pragmatic ability may be relevant only among intermediate or advanced learners. However, a group of longitudinal studies presents a different picture: Even beginning learners develop pragmatic ability. One example comes from a well-known study on Wes, an adult Japanese learner in Hawaii (Schmidt, 1983). When Wes arrived in the United States, his English ability was minimal. At first, Wes used either formulaic requests such as Shall we go? or incorrect forms as Sitting? (intended to mean, Shall we sit down?). Over three years of observation, however, he showed increasingly elaborate requests (Shall we maybe go out coffee now, or you want later?). It is interesting to note that despite the fact that Wes' grammatical accuracy did not improve much (he was characterized as having fossilized grammatical development), his pragmatic development did.

Interested in seeing how younger learners acquired a request strategy, Ellis (1992) observed two newcomers to London (aged 10 and 11) in their classrooms. Ellis made notes of their request strategies for two years and showed their request strategy development from direct to indirect. He reports that early patterns of request were an ellipsis type, followed by a direct strategy. Hint requests appeared only in the speech of one participant during the last term, but were never observed in the other participant. Table 1 summarizes some developmental examples produced by one of the participants, which interestingly are consistent with those found in cross-sectional studies in ILP.

Table 1. Patterns in pragmatic development (adapted from Ellis, 1992, p.16-17)

Pattern	Example	Time
Ellipsis	Sir. (no verb)	Term 1
Ellipsis	Big circle. (no verb)	Term 1
Direct strategy	Give me a paper.	Term 1
Conventionally indirect	Can I have . . .?	Term 1
Hint	You got a rubber?	Term 3
Hint	This paper is not very good to color blue.	Term 4

Further, both studies show that the learners relied on formulaic routines at the initial stage of observation. Wes used requests like Shall we go? or Can I have X? in the early stages of his development. He also used the V-ing form to communicate an imperative request. For example, by saying Sitting? he meant to say, Shall we sit down? He used them like ready-made chunks, but he was not able to use them creatively. Similarly, Ellis reports that one learner used an imperative, like leave it, leave it (Term 1), or give me (Term 2), "which seemed formulaic" (Ellis, 1992, p. 11).

Though these are only a couple of longitudinal studies, they seem to provide evidence that beginning learners learned how to make requests by first using formulaic or direct strategies both inside (the two learners in Ellis' study) and outside of the classroom (Wes in Schmidt's study). Obviously more studies are needed to understand issues such as relationships between the development of pragmatics and the learners' level of proficiency and between the length of stay in the target community, and the role of formulaic expressions in pragmatic development. So far, however, research in development in ILP seems to imply that even a beginning learner can develop pragmatically in order to communicate efficiently. Thus, the stereotypic notion that only intermediate or advanced learners are able to develop pragmatic ability needs to be questioned. If the teaching/learning goal includes to become successful in communication, then it seems practical to consider development of pragmatic ability from the earliest classroom experiences.

References

Ellis, R. (1992). Learning to communicate in the classroom. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 14,1-23.
Hill, T. (1997). The development of pragmatic competence in an EFL context. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Temple University Japan, Tokyo.
Kasper, G. (1997). The role of pragmatics in language teacher education. In K. Bardovi-Harlig & B. Hartford (Eds.), Beyond methods (pp.113-136). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Kasper, G., & Rose, K. R. (1999). Pragmatics and SLA. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 19, 81-104.
Kasper, G., & Rose, K. R. (in press). Pragmatics in second language use and development. Oxford: Blackwell.
Kasper, G., & Schmidt, R. (1996). Developmental issues in interlanguage pragmatics. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 18, 149-169.
Ohta, A. S. (1999). Interactional routines and the socialization of interactional style in adult learners of Japanese. Journal of Pragmatics, 31, 1493-1512.
Rose, K. R. (2000). An exploratory cross-sectional study of interlanguage pragmatic development. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 22, 27-67.
Schmidt, R. (1983). Interaction, acculturation, and the acquisition of communicative competence: A case study of one adult. In N. Wolfson & E. Judd (Eds.), Sociolinguistics and language acquisition (pp. 136-174). New York: Newbury House.