Barno Juraeva Variant 11 Types of pragmatic competence

Barno Juraeva

Variant 11

1. Types of pragmatic competence

2. Explain micro-level and macro-level of teaching FL

3. Features of FL as a curricular subject

Answers

1. 
   Teaching pragmatic competence is one of the neglected
   

aspects in English language teaching. Teaching English to foreign students should involve not only

familiarizing them with the sounds, vocabulary, and grammar of

English, but also helping them to use the language effectively

through making them acquainted with the pragmatic rules that

govern the appropriate combination of utterances and

communicative functions.

Although many linguists and specialists in the field of language

teaching realize the importance of pragmatic competence, little has

been written on the nature of what must be taught or how teachers

may go about helping students acquire it. This paper introduces a

program for teaching pragmatic competence to foreign students,

mainly through explicit instruction, role play and simulation.

Before setting out to talk about the proposed program, it is

convenient to shed light on: pragmatics, competence

(communicative and pragmatic), the need for teaching pragmatic

competence, the goals of teaching pragmatic competence, and the

teachability of pragmatic competence.

Pragmatics

The study of pragmatics explores the ability of language users to

match utterances with contexts in which they are appropriate. This

paper is not after reviewing all the definitions that have been put for

pragmatics. Thus, the study adopts the

definition of pragmatics offered by Richards, Platt, and Platt

(1993:284): “the study of the use of language in communication,

particularly the relationships between sentences and the contexts and

situations in which they are used”.

Pragmatics, in Yule’s words (1996:3) explores the following four

areas of study:

- What people mean by their utterances and what the words or

phrases in those utterances might mean by themselves.

- How speakers organize what they want to say in accordance with

whom they are talking to, where, when, and under what

circumstances.

- How listeners can make inferences about what is said in order to

arrive at an interpretation of the speaker’s intended meaning.

- How does distance/closeness determine the choice of the amount

of the said and the unsaid?

3. Competence

Befor the study sets out to define what is meant by pragmatic

competence, it is necessary to define competence in the first place.

Then to move to define communicative competence, of which

pragmatic competence is seen to form a part.

Crystal (1997:74) defines competence as:

“a term used in linguistic theory, and especially in

generative grammar, to refer to speakers’ knowledge of

their language, the system of rules which they have

mastered so that they are able to produce and understand

an indefinite number of sentences, and to recognize

grammatical mistakes and ambiguities.”

So, competence refers to the person’s ability to form and understand

sentences, including sentences s/he has never heard before. It also

includes a person’s knowledge of what are and what are not

sentences of the language s/he is familiar with.

Pragmatic Competence

Pragmatic Competence

the ability of using language effectively in a contextually appropriate way It is a fundamental aspect of a more general communicative competence. It is important to note the distinction between language transfer and pragmatic transfer.

Types of pragmatic competence are:communicative competence from pragmatic

competence, which is the focus of this paper. Communicative competence has a broader scope and

involves capacity to participate in communicative situations. Pragmatic competence, differently, is

not only this capacity, but also the appropriateness of what is said by the speaker according to the context.

Therefore, pragmatic competence is a much more specific concept. It involves linguistic competence, communicative competence and also a notion of how the context is built and what it

demands from the participants. Participants, status, age, situation, and other features make part of the context of a communicative situation.

One good definition of pragmatic competence is provided by

Barron_(2003:10)'>Barron (2003:10): Pragmatic competence . . . is understood as

knowledge of the linguistic resources available in a given language

for realizing particular illocutions, knowledge of the sequential

aspects of speech acts and finally knowledge of the appropriate

contextual use of the particular languages’ linguistic resources.

Two limbs of pragmatic competence can be discerned in this

definition: the linguistic resources of the learner in the target

language and the contextual use of those resources.

This definition by Barron views pragmatic competence as

knowledge: the knowledge of available linguistic resources and the

knowledge of the appropriate contextual use of language. Thomas

(1983), on the other hand depicts pragmatic competence in terms of

ability. Thomas (1983:92) writes that pragmatic competence is a

speaker’s "ability to use language effectively in order to achieve a

specific purpose and to understand language in context". He calls the

two limbs of pragmatic competence, that is, the linguistic aspect,

and the social or contextual aspect, ‘pragmalinguistics’ and

‘sociopragmatics’ (ibid).

2. 
   Micro level teaching is teaching in lower level classes to younger learners . macro level is teaching adults in a expanded classes. Schools are greatly influenced by what happens outside of the school doors. The social environment influences policies at the federal and state level, which ultimately
   

impact what occurs in the classroom. Inequities that are prevalent in the greater

society are reflected in inequities in student achievement and school outcomes. It is

important for teachers to understand the sociopolitical context and impact of the

broader, societal forces that are prevalent in the twenty-first century on schools.

Students and educators are living in the post-9/11 era where the fear of

“terrorists”has influenced our domestic policy about others who are “foreign.”

Efforts to “protect” the United States have been focused on militarizing the southern

Mexican border despite the entry of more people who are undocumented from

Canada (Public Broadcasting Service, 2003) . This attempt to exclude people has

also influenced views of language. The English Only movement and anti-bilingual

initiatives have strengthened their efforts to devalue the linguistic heritage of a

growing number of school-age students (Crawford, 2004 ; Menken, 2008) .

Another broader, macro-level force that is prevalent in the twenty-first century

includes neoliberalism, or the capitalist interests of the business community (Apple,

2001) . Testing, textbook, and tutoring companies are posting record profits, and

education has become—literally—big business. Neoliberal policies have applied a

business model to education, increasing the focus on outputs—or student scores—

and decreasing the focus on inputs—or educational resources. Schools have been

asked to produce better results, commonly referred to as standards, and educators

are being held accountable for student progress. A positive feature of the accountability

and standards movement has been the increased focus on the educational

attainment of underperforming groups. Schools now disaggregate and separately

All pedagogical practices are considered equally valid as long as they achieve the desired outcomes and so pedagogy is not a macro-level issue but rather needs to be addressed in local contexts of implementation. The deproblematisation of pedagogy in the text does not,

however, produce the pedagogical agnosticism that the document proclaims as there remains an implicit assumption in the text that some pedagogies are more appropriate for achieving particular outcomes than others. This tension between different pedagogical possibilities needs therefore to be resolved at the micro-level by teachers who need to recognise and respond to the implicit pedagogy of the document in shifting their teaching towards new objectives. In doing so, teachers may or may not be supported by national level macro-level or meso-level agents in understanding the pedagogical shifts implied or developing the capabilities needed to adopt new pedagogies. In the Japanese documents, pedagogy is rendered invisible and so unproblematic – the policy issue is the introduction of a new curriculum area into existing teaching.

3. 
   English is not a new subject for the students at schools. Recent years, the
   

students have learnt English since they was at Elementary School.. Some of them

already known English since they was at kindergarten. The reason is simple; it is

caused of the identity of English as international language. The use of English as

global language has affected point of view of many people that make them want

to learn English, at least for communication purpose.

learners, because they are in the early ages that start from six until

twelve years old. Most of students in Indonesia start entering

Elementary School when they are six years old. This age is considered

as the right phase to learn formally at school.

Suyanto (2008) states that young learners are the students in

Elementary School have age between 6-12 years old. It means that

students who have entered Elementary School can be categorized as

young learners; where they are starting to learn material that has been

designed for their ages.

Young learners consist of two group, they are young group (6-8

years old) and older group (9-12 years old). While based on their class,

it can be called as lower classes student that includes grade one until

three and upper class includes grade four until six. Commonly, English

in Elementary School is learnt by the students in Upper classes.

Curriculum is a part that has role to reach the national education

goals. It takes important role in guiding the teachers and related

stakeholders to achieve the goals. Curriculum also can be used to

predict expected outcomes of teaching because it shows what things

need to be learned and what activities should be experienced by

students.