Pragmatic Markers in Spoken Interaction among EFL Young Learners

Abstract

Learning English has gained importance in our global society. The methodologies used in English as a foreign language (EFL) classes provide poor opportunities for developing pragmatic competence. Students should develop this particular competence in order to create meaning, interact successfully and convey communicative purposes in concrete situations. The study presented here focuses on a concrete pragmatic aspect, specifically, pragmatics makers (PMs). PMs serve speakers to mark discourse coherence, show interpersonal relationships, and organise the discourse (Hyland, 2005). By integrating PMs in the FL classroom, students can develop their pragmatic competence since they can expand their knowledge as regards the organisation of discourse. Drawing on observation tools that reveal students’ lack of knowledge concerning PMs use, and diagnosing the area of improvement, a task-based language teaching (TBLT) approach was designed to address pragmatic markers at the level of spoken interaction. The aim of this study is to analyse students’ spoken interaction from a quantitative and qualitative perspective; that is, types and functions of PMs produced after the task and how these PMs are used in context. The study involved 21-EFL students in 4th year of ESO whose proficiency level was A2 according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Council of Europe, 2001, 2018). Data were gathered by means of a role-plays and consist of a small spoken corpus of students’ interactions. The results of the analysis show that although PMs are frequently and appropriately used according to the context of the role-play, students performed a limited variety of PMs. Thus, further research is required to find out the effectiveness of the implementation in a large-scale study with more participants and more levels of language proficiency.