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
(a) What part of Karla’s language demonstrates appropriate levels of directness,
politeness, and formality? (*1)
(b) What part of her language may need improvement, considering the appropriate
level of directness, politeness, and formality called for by this situation? 
(*1) What should she have said? Write the actual expressions that you think 
she could have used. (*2)
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Request strategies:
(a) What requesting strategies did Karla use appropriately? Check the ones that she
used on the left column, and write out the expressions that she used in the right.
(*1) (Table of strategies here.)
(b) What other strategies could she have used? What might she say? (*2)
3
Listener’s interpretation: How do you think Karla’s request sounds to Professor
Johnson, considering the situation? Check the one that most likely represents
Professor Johnson’s reaction. Then, explain why you think that is the case. (*1)
(a) Prof. Johnson would be willing to give her an extension because . . .
(b) He would give her an extension, but may not be very happy with Karla’s 
language because . . .
(c) He may not give her an extension because . . .
I Analysis of speaker’s intention and listener’s interpretation
Because in foreign-language contexts learners’ authentic L2 input tends to be limited, a
feature film is used to demonstrate how speaker’s intention is encoded in the language and
how it can be interpreted by the listener. One such scene that might be used for this pur-
pose is a short dinner scene from the Hollywood film, What about Bob? in which three
requests appear. Learners are asked about the message that the speaker intends to convey,
how else the message could be phrased, and how the listener interprets the speaker’s 
message. Learners are then invited to discuss the ways that they would like to convey 
their intention and practice pragmatic L2 use as if they were in the scene.
J Teacher–learner collaborated assessment regarding intention and
interpretation
At this final stage of instruction, learners’ intentions in making requests are elicited, as well
as their language for requesting. Learners and the teacher can collaboratively assess the
match between the learners’ intent as speakers and the most likely interpretation that 
listeners would have (see Chapter 15 for how learners’ goals and intentions can be elicited).

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C L A S S O B S E R V A T I O N A N D T E A C H I N G D E M O N S T R A T I O N S
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Sample teacher’s assessment based on learner input
1 Linguistic ability to use community norms
Excellent
Good
Fair
Needs more work
2 Awareness of most probable listener’s
interpretation
Highly aware
Aware
Less aware
Unaware
3 Match between learner goal/intention and
most probable listener’s interpretation of 
learner language
Excellent
Good
Fair
Needs more work
Overall assessment
Excellent
Good
Needs more work
This assessment is intended to focus the learners’ attention on their linguistic skills and
awareness of community norms in order to help them to approximate their goal and inten-
tion as speakers. The teacher’s assessment below is based on the elicited learner input:
Sample material
1 Request scenarios for eliciting learner production and sample data
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(see instruction/
assessment procedure B, above).
(a) Chris and Pat
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are university students and roommates in an apartment near
campus. They are very close friends. Last week, Chris was sick and missed two
class sessions. Since the exam is coming up soon, Chris would like to see Pat’s
class notes. Because Pat is a good student, Chris also wants to ask if they can
study together.
Pat: Hey, how’s it going?
Chris – 1:
Pat: Sure, no problem, I just need my notes back in a couple of days.
Chris – 2:
Pat: Okay. Let’s plan on doing that then.
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Sample data collected from pragmatically competent English speakers (Ishihara
2003b). Three different responses were selected to demonstrate pragmatic variation.
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Unisex names are used in Scenarios a and c, so that learners are free to choose the
gender. In this way, the scenarios become more authentic to learners’ needs.

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