Why Teachers Don’t Use Their Pragmatic Awareness
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Lesson Observation
Interviews
The interviews were opened with a Grand-tour question, namely “In your opinion how is an L2 acquired/learnt, meant to prompt participants to speak about language learning/acquisition and eventually touch upon CF in general and CF in Pragmatics. When faced with this topic the informants expressed in different degrees the belief that they offered their learners CF in Pragmatics. The first informant, for example, said, “I think I correct everything [different areas]. I think it’s balanced. (...) Pronunciation, grammar and politeness, what you talked about, what we dealt with in the course.” She went on to add that “sometimes they are doing a role play and they make questions which should not be made in that situation. I tease them, ‘What’s that? How can you ask this?’, because it’s not appropriate for that situation.”. The second informant, on the other hand, said he believed that he did not give as much CF in Pragmatics as in the other areas and explained by saying, “Maybe because I have the belief that it [Pragmatics] is not a priority, mainly at the elementary level, for example. (...) Pragmatics is always important, but as I try to avoid a more explicit type of correction, maybe it is difficult to correct Pragmatics at a lower level, but it’s still important.” Even so, he expressed the belief that he corrected what he called “minimal things”, such as the need for thanking or apologizing. As for the third informant, she was unsure about whether she offered CF in Pragmatics, “Sometimes I think I do, sometimes not.”. However, when asked whether in her opinion the learner would react in the same way to CF in Lexis and in Pragmatics, she seemed to believe that she offers CF in Pragmatics since she says, “I believe so. He will laugh at me when I say it. They laugh at me when they ask for something and I say ‘please’ or wait for them to say ‘please’ they find it funny, but they say it, especially if they’re asking for something, if there’s no ‘please’ I don’t give it to them.”.
In spite of the fact that the questionnaire answers were conflicting, all informants expressed surprise during the interview at the fact that they had not on the whole offered CF in Pragmatics in the lessons observed. Even though that fact might seem curious, it can perhaps be explained by the fact that the questionnaire was given out before the awareness-raising course was administered, which might have called their attention to Pragmatics and made them have a false expectation that they were more committed to Pragmatics than it was actually true.
All three informants expressed their belief that the awareness-raising program had been too short to effect real changes in their teaching. They said that the course was complete and well administered, yet not successful in promoting classroom change. Although they did not specify the reasons why it was not successful, it was hinted that to be successful such a course would have to be offered at least once a year. The question may be that the Pragmatics of an L2 is not easily incorporated by individuals outside of the country where it is spoken. Given that it is not only language (but also culture) which is at play, it becomes difficult for people to use the pragmatic rules, so to speak, that they learn unless they are often reminded of them. Possibly if a course on Pragmatics was offered every term some change might take place eventually.
A related point raised by the informants is the belief that only by living in an English-speaking community would they acquire enough pragmatic knowledge to provide CF to their learners. In a community where English is the native tongue, those who do not follow the pragmatic rules of the community will be stigmatized, whereas in Brazil, where both teachers and learners have Portuguese as a mother tongue, it becomes very easy to get by without following the pragmatic rules of English, since most people involved will not even notice that these rules are being ignored.
Indeed an informant raised the question that the EFL classroom is a contrived setting for the learning and practice of Pragmatics, which led me to understand that the classroom would be like an arena where a game is played. Since there is already an underlying pragmatic code shared by all participants, there is no need to seek a new one.
Differently from what I expected at the outset of the research, teachers do not seem to choose to withhold feedback at the pragmatic level for fear of embarrassing their learners. The first informant denied having this kind of concern and added that she would not mind being corrected in Pragmatics herself. The same idea was expressed by the second informant, who claimed that none of his learners who have received feedback at the pragmatic level have shown to be hurt, threatened or upset and added that he himself as a learner would welcome such type of correction. The data from my third informant do not shed much light on this question, since at times she said that her learners would not mind being corrected and at other times said that they could be offended and would need long explanations so that they could understand it.
