A01 cohe4573 01 se fm. Qxd

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G R O U N D I N G I N T H E T E A C H I N G A N D L E A R N I N G O F L 2 P R A G M A T I C S
practice in the institution or in the textbook? Is it because when she learned
another language, she was taught only one example of a greeting routine
herself ? Is it because she believes that mastering one routine is a sufficient
start for beginning learners? Was it because she did not have much time to
spend on the first chapter and did not wish to overload her learners with too
many forms? Why does she teach the way she does? It is important to ask
this question because if she does not teach according to what she believes
and is actually a bit uncomfortable with how she currently teaches and why
she teaches that way, she may consider changing her practices.
So if readers of this book are already knowledgeable about instructional
pragmatics and see the value in enhancing L2 learners’ pragmatic ability,
then we would recommend that they attempt to align their practice as much
as possible with their knowledge and beliefs (“teaching by principles”
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), 
or if there are inconsistencies, that they try to identify the reasons why. If
their exposure to instructional pragmatics has been somewhat limited until
now, then hopefully reading and working through this book will help them
become more familiar with current thinking in this field. Then if they feel
pragmatics is important to teach in the L2 classroom, this opportunity in
turn could contribute to the further development of their beliefs and to
classroom practices that are consistent with these beliefs.
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Let us go back to the case of the English teacher above. If her way of
teaching greetings is based on mere habits, then identifying the discrep-
ancy between her knowledge, beliefs, and practice may offer an opportunity
for this teacher to rethink and perhaps introduce the notion of pragmatic
variation into classroom practice. This could be done, for example, by ex-
posing learners to another, more informal greeting routine (see Activity 8.2
in Chapter 8 for an example). But if her decision to limit instruction to 
one standard greeting was based on a lack of instructional time, it helps 
to have that explicit realization; she may be more likely to incorporate 
variation when more instructional time is available. If this teacher were to