At TESOL 2010, I spoke about using videotaped role plays with native speakers to help nonnative speakers develop their pragmatic competence.

It is well-documented that pragmatic competence is difficult even for advanced learners (Blum-Kulka & Olshtain, 1986; Bodman & Eisenstein,1988; Tanaka, 1993) and that native speakers may be less tolerant of pragmatic (as compared to linguistic) errors made by nonnative speakers (Wolfson, 1983). Moreover, international students may shy away from participating in academic discussions with native speakers because they have not learned pragmatic strategies for turn-taking. In fact, they may transfer the knowledge of pragmatics from their first to their second language (Ervin-Tripp, 1972; Wolfson, 1983), and at times this transfer may be inappropriate. It is precisely for these reasons that I perceived a need for teaching pragmatic competence to my students, and designing role plays with native English speakers was one way to achieve this aim.

STUDENTS’ BACKGROUNDS

I teach international graduate students from around the world, all of whom are seeking a master’s degree in International Business, International Policy Studies, or Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. All students have attained at least an 80 on the Internet-based TOEFL. I used the role plays with students enrolled in my introductory oral communication class in the English for Academic and Professional Purposes program at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

DESCRIPTION OF THE ROLE PLAYS

In the role plays I designed, I targeted a variety of speech acts for participating in an academic discussion, such as expressing disagreement, taking the floor, stating an opinion, negotiating turn-taking, challenging a colleague, interrupting a professor, and returning to a previous point in a discussion. I also targeted speech acts for facilitating an academic discussion, which included staying on topic, connecting topics, balancing perspectives, stacking turns, and establishing consensus. I filmed an intentionally poor performance and a good performance by the native speakers. Though I gave the actors a general guideline of what could be considered inappropriate and appropriate, I did not provide them with a script so that their speech would be as natural as possible.

DESCRIPTION OF THE LESSON

The lesson had three main components. I had students begin by critiquing the intentionally poor performance by the native-speaking actors and identifying what led to the communication breakdown. After critiquing an inappropriate performance by the actors, students gained confidence by employing what they learned to perform a better rendition of the role plays in front of their peers. Feedback from the class opened the floor to an intriguing discussion of pragmatics and intercultural communication, such as how the degree of social distance affected the interaction. Then students had the opportunity to critique a successful performance by native speakers, noticing how the use of politeness strategies, word choice, hedging, question formation, and nonverbal cues contributed to the success of the communicative task. I gave students a handout with strategies and expressions they might use to perform these speech acts appropriately, with many of the expressions coming from The Language of Meetings (Goodale, 1995) and Discussion and Interaction in the Academic Community (Madden & Rohlck, 1997).

LEARNING OUTCOMES

I perceive the role plays as beneficial to helping students improve their pragmatic competence. The lesson was carefully scaffolded so that students first increased their awareness of pragmatic norms by critiquing the performance of native speakers. Then, after receiving explicit feedback on their performance, they were able to develop their interlanguage pragmatics.

CREATING ROLE PLAYS

I recommend instructors follow these steps for creating their own role plays: 1) Survey the speech acts for which students may need assistance. Instructors can either poll students directly about the speech acts they struggle with, or consult textbooks for the speech acts students are likely to encounter in their academic and professional lives. 2) Write role-play prompts for the actors and the students. 3) Recruit native-speaking actors to perform the role plays. 4) Find appropriate stage props for the scene. 5) Provide general guidelines for the actors. 6) Film actors. 7) Direct and coach actors throughout the shoot; multiple shoots may be necessary. 8) Edit the videotaped material, perhaps by using iMovie if the footage of the actors is digital.

CONCLUSION

Creating and editing the role plays can be time-consuming for the instructor; however, if the actors have a background in theatre and are provided with explicit guidelines prior to the filming, it can make the entire process more efficient. So that the videos can be used throughout multiple years, it is advisable that the native speakers’ discussion not be centered on current events that would quickly become outdated. Providing learners with a transcript of the videotaped role plays may help them identify instances of pragmatic failure more easily, which is especially helpful for learners at lower proficiency levels.

REFERENCES

Blum-Kulka, S., & Olshtain, E. (1986). Too many words: Length of utterance and pragmatic failure. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 8(2), 165-179.

Bodman, J., & Eisensten, M. (1988). May God increase your bounty: The expression of gratitude in English by native and non-native speakers. Cross Currents, 15(1), 1-21.

Ervin-Tripp, S. M. (1972). On sociolinguistic rules: Alternation and co-occurrence. In J. Gumperz & D. Hymes (Eds.), Directions in sociolinguistics (pp. 213-250). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Goodale, M. (1987). The language of meetings. Hove, Great Britain: Language Teaching Publications.

Madden, C. G., & Rohlck, T. (1997). Discussion & interaction in the academic community. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.

Tanaka, K. (1993). Strategies in second language communication: A case study of adult learners of English in Japan. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.

Wolfson, N. (1983). An empirically based analysis of complimenting in American English. In N. Wolfson & E. Judd (Eds.), Sociolinguistics and language acquisition (pp. 82-95). Rowley, MA: Newbury House.

Lisa Leopold is an assistant professor of English for academic and professional purposes at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. She teaches a wide array of courses to international graduate students, including Business Communication, Academic and Policy Writing, Public Speaking, Oral Communication, and Advanced Writing and Editing. She has published research on innovative curricula and students’ learning transfer to their content courses and has delivered numerous presentations at international and national conferences.