Ma tesl 5350 5t s2 2022 Language and Culture

MA TESL 5350 5T S2 2022
Language and Culture
Nabiev Sherzodbek
Week 1
Evaluation Assignment of the activity
The activity 1.1 Enhancing awareness of pragmatic in the book Teaching and Learning Pragmatics by Ishihara and Cohen (2010) shares some sample activities to boost learners’ awareness in pragmatics with the help of different social contexts, status and distance. Further I will be giving my evaluation on the activity on pages 17-20 and support that as an appropriate task to educate intercultural aspects by suggesting certain ways to modify it a little bit.
The Engage-Study-Activate (ESA) principle is held in this activity where students are given a transcript of a dialogue to simulate a role-playing task. The learners are divided into groups of three, in which of the learners observes the other two participants read a dialogue making their talk more real adding various emotional patterns. This way of doing the activity can play a great role in understanding subtle features of the speech acts in the dialogue since multiple students can perform their emotions differently having countless colors on the act. Ishihara and Cohen (2010, pp. 3-4) state that the pragmatic competence is the ability to distinguish a great many non-verbal aspects of a language which could be implemented in different social contexts. Learners need to understand these mentioned-above subtle signs of tone and attitude in the script while reading. It can be slightly more challenging for students as these forms of features are found in an oral activity due to a great number of non-verbal clues. In that way, including an audio or video format is much better in which speakers talk giving enough opportunities for learners to feel the behavioral patterns of the speech. Instructors can apply this as a post-task to learners to check their comprehension or to instruct them how to change their tone and attitude in terms of contextual concerns such as the level of formality, directness or politeness.
Along with it, the activity hasn’t got distinct cultural points and may not activate students to clarify countless cultural norms across the globe. According to Ishihara and Cohen (2010, p.24), learners should know how speech acts work metapragmatically to have enough chance to weigh numerous cultural norms up. For that reason, I would suggest boosting students’ pragmatical awareness over the scope of cultural divergencies. The group discussion task hasn’t been given enough time after role-plays and reporting the results of observation. Despite the fact that the chosen speech act, which is apology, deals with receptive and productive perspectives, not all learners can be engaged. And a single activity within a very short period of time can not cover the pragmatic ability in listening, reading and speaking. For instance, the pre-activity has (a) two minuses and (b) one possible plus for the student observer: (a) he or she doesn’t read the dialogue which means no self-challenge to understand the pragmatics and he or she doesn’t work on oral pragmatic skills at all and (b) can listen actively and boost the ability to catch every set of acts like complaining, requesting, or denying. Mainly for this case, I believe that, firstly, all learners should be observers having a video/audio format of the dialogue on and then they should have a chance to work in pairs in terms of dialogue role-playing. As for the assessment of activity, there is no clear pragmatical assessment rubric. As a support, I can say while Ishihara and Cohen (2010, pp.137-139) do not distinguish ‘appropriate’ and ‘somewhat appropriate’ rubric, Mertler (2000) suggest numerous ways in terms of pragmatic rubrics; thus, teachers should make a clear rubric which helps to mark learners basing on how they perceive a speech act.
Although the activity has problems with student interaction, time and pragma-linguistic skills, I can say it is well-developed. The learners are provided with a chance to comprehend the level of directness, formality and politeness besides their effect on the results of the apology. Ishihara and Cohen (2010) mention that social distance and status as one of the crucial reasons that can change of how speech acts are delivered. The activity 1.1 gives (a) the learners different social contexts to practice their knowledge; (b) as mini groups, the learners can boost understanding verbal and non-verbal clues in the dialogues; (c) the clear objective from the given task.
The conclusion can be that mentioned-above weaknesses need making practical for learners to have much better understanding cultural differences and raise pragmatic knowledge.
References:

1. 
   “Ishihara, N., & Cohen, A. D. (2010). Teaching and learning pragmatics: Where language and culture meet. Harlow, England: Pearson Longman. ISBN: 978-1408204573.”
   
2. 
   “Mertler, A. C. (2000). Designing scoring rubrics for your classroom. Practical Assessment, Research and Evaluation, 7(25). DOI: https://doi.org/10.7275/gcy8-0w24.”