Supplementing ELT textbooks with game-based pragmatics instruction: A proposal for the CSE classroom in times of COVID-19

Abstract

Pragmatics has been usually depicted as the Cinderella of language and communication (Sintonen, 1989). Yet, globalisation and the transformation of English in the main lingua franca (ELF) has made the teaching of “how-to-say-what-to-whom-when” (Bardovi-Harlig, 2013, p. 68) more important than ever. The Valencian curriculum in Compulsory Secondary Education (CSE) for the English subject does take into account pragmatics when defining its pedagogical aims. This curricular inclusion, though, is not mirrored in the two main sources of pragmatic input in the English language classroom: textbooks and teacher talk and planning. While most textbooks implemented in Spain underrepresent and/or misrepresent pragmatic elements (see Salazar-Campillo, 2007; or, Usó-Juan, 2007), both teacher training and teacher practice usually fail to compensate for this lack of authentic and effective instructional materials. The present master thesis dissertation offers a didactic proposal of improvement for teaching how to make requests in English to a group of seventh-graders in a Valencian state-run secondary school. Apart from the curricular aims and the limitations of the mandatory textbook, the point of departure for this didactic proposal is the students’ needs and interests as digital natives and as ELF speakers. In that vein, the sessions planned are inspired into a handful of recent studies that have shown the benefits of game-based pragmatic instruction (see Alemi & Haeri, 2017; Alemi et al., 2017; Tajeddin & Alemi, 2020; or, Yang & Zapata-Rivera, 2009, 2010)