Web-based Curriculum for Pragmatics Instruction in Japanese as a Foreign Language: An Explicit Awareness-raising Approach

Abstract

Pragmatic ability has been recognised as an essential component of communicative competence (Canale & Swain, 1980; Hymes, 1972). However, it has been largely neglected in today's second/foreign language (L2) instruction and teacher education; few curricular attempts for teaching pragmatics have been made. This paper describes a web-based pragmatics curriculum for learners of Japanese as a foreign language, and presents the key components and principles of the curriculum. The curriculum takes an explicit pragmatic-focused awareness-raising approach (learners-as-researchers/ethnographers, Bardovi-Harlig, 1996; Tanaka, 1997) with the intention to instil in learners a sense of appropriate language use. A series of awareness-raising tasks are provided throughout the curriculum that features naturalistic audio samples and empirically established pragmatic information. Learners study L2 pragmatics through various exercises while self-checking or self-evaluating the answers and electronically sending exercise responses to the teachers and curriculum writer through the web system. During 2003–2004, this curriculum was adopted in a third year university course where learners independently completed an assigned portion of the curriculum for an introductory unit and two speech act units. The paper also explores the instructional impact on 18 learners' pragmatic awareness as found in their reflective journaling.

Keywords:

• pragmatic ability
• pragmatic awareness
• awareness-raising
• web-based curriculum
• speech acts
• pragmatic norms