A01 cohe4573 01 se fm. Qxd

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T H E N U T S A N D B O L T S O F P R A G M A T I C S I N S T R U C T I O N
Below is the sequence of activities that was tested with adult learners in a
university-level course of English for Academic Purposes in New Zealand:
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1
recording learners’ role-plays in which a learner attempts to change
his/her tutorial schedule with a co-ordinator;
2
discussion about the social factors involved in the context;
3
learners’ transcribing and analyzing their own recorded role-plays;
4
analysis of authentic dialogue samples by ordering cut-up strips of
possible strategies, studying the strategies in the transcript, and
discussing linguistic features of requests (e.g., an explicit request 
using want, softening requests with just);
5
comparison of the sample and learner dialogues; and
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discussion of pragmatic norms of the target culture and learners’ own.
The authors of this article ask the question of how realistic and effective it is
to have learners analyze authentic conversation. Would it be too distracting
or confusing to learners? Would they find it useful? Can they really learn
anything from the discourse analysis? The empirical answers to these ques-
tions are quite positive in their study, and this seems to point to the value of
utilizing authentic pragmatics materials, as well as teaching pragmatics in
discourse.
Teaching conversational closing
Another article in the literature focuses on teaching how to close con-
versations in English and bases the instruction upon naturally occurring
data. While some languages and cultures (such as Thai and Nepali) permit
exchanges to end rather abruptly with little or no closing, others (such as
English and Swahili) tend to require fairly elaborate steps.
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Learners particu-
larly from those cultures that tend to allow relatively shorter closings may
be unaware that a more gradual transition to closing is preferred in other
cultures. And even if learners have that awareness, they may not know 
the language for wrapping up conversations in the L2 in an appropriate
manner. Explicit teaching of typical conversational closing routines is likely
to help learners to avoid coming across as being hasty, awkward, or abrupt.
The following set of activities is geared to high-intermediate adult ESL 
learners
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and is readily applicable to EFL students as well:
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The activities are from Crandall and Basturkmen (2004: 46–8).
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Bardovi-Harlig et al. (1991).
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More details of these suggested activities can be found in Bardovi-Harlig et al.
(1991: 1–13).

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