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F I G U R E 1 2 . 1 Learner at work
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Attempting to approximate what competent speakers of the L2
might do in that speech act situation:
(a) weighing the assumed force and impact of several different
approaches, and then on that basis selecting one;
(b) going on the basis of “feel” as to what competent speakers 
would do based on L2 knowledge that has accrued;
(c) basing speech act performance on a sense of what seems
reasonable to expect competent speakers of the language to do 
in that speech act situation based on the learners’ perception as
to how similar the L2 is to their language.
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Compensating for a gap in knowledge by translating from the L1 or
from another language what would be said in that language in order
to perform the speech act (i.e., without any preconception that the
words and phrases will be acceptable).
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Having the knowledge to perform the speech act appropriately but, 
as an expression of self-agency or subjectivity, remaining true to your
own inclinations in your speech act delivery and trying not to be overly
native-like (referred to in Chapter 5 as “resistance to using perceived L2
pragmatic norms”).
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While the taxonomy distinguishes strategies for learning speech acts for
the first time from those for using the speech act material once it is learned,
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Kellerman (1983).
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See LoCastro’s 1998 paper and a chapter in her 2003 book for a description of
learner subjectivity, and Ishihara (2006) for research on the topic.

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F U R T H E R I S S U E S I N L E A R N I N G , T E A C H I N G , A N D A S S E S S M E N T
there actually is some overlap. In fact, it is possible that the same strategy
used to learn new speech act behavior could also be used to perform the
speech act once learned. For example, an entry under “Strategies for Perform-
ing Speech Acts”, below; “Asking competent speakers of the L2 for feedback
as to what was and was not appropriate in the speech acts performance”
could also be seen as a strategy for learning new things about that speech
act.
Metacognitive strategies for the learning and
performing of speech acts
We now come to the strategies for a) planning which pragmatic strategies to
use and when to use them, b) checking how their use is going, and c) evalu-
ating afterwards how effective it was to use them. These are the metacogni-
tive strategies for supervising the use of strategies. Here are some examples:
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Determining the extent to which the focus is on comprehension of the
speech act, on the production of it, or on both.
■
Focusing attention on tone of voice, facial expressions, and gestures 
in speech act delivery. (Whereas an actor usually gets coached in 
such matters, language learners are invariably left to figure it out by
themselves.)
■
Determining the amount of pre-planning of the speech act to do
beforehand, the nature of the monitoring that will go on during its
delivery, and the evaluation that will go on afterwards.
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In an effort to avoid pragmatic failure, monitoring for:
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the appropriateness of the chosen level of directness or indirectness
in the delivery of the speech act (e.g., finding the right level of
directness with an L2-speaking stranger on an airplane);