{"title":"Teacher agency in pragmatic pedagogy","authors":"Z. Tajeddin, M. Bagheri","doi":"10.1558/jalpp.21054","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Despite the existence of a large body of research on pragmatic instruction, teachers’ beliefs about teaching and assessing pragmatic competence have received scant attention. The present study sought to investigate Persian-speaking EFL teachers’ beliefs and perceived knowledge about pragmatic instruction and assessment and their self-reported instructional practice. To achieve this aim, a questionnaire was administered to 204 EFL teachers and 30 of these teachers also participated in semi-structured interviews. The findings showed that even though the teachers were aware of the importance of pragmatics, they did not consider themselves highly competent in teaching the subject to learners or in the assessment of learners’ pragmatic abilities. The most frequent method they reported having used was pragmatic corrective feedback. Further, the teachers believed that their colleagues and institute directors also gave little weight to the improvement of learners’ pragmatic abilities, and they further argued that textbooks and exams, while containing some pragmatics-related sections, failed to enhance and measure learners’ pragmatic knowledge. These results have critical implications for teachers’ pragmatic awareness in their professional development and for the inclusion of more explicit pragmatic activities in textbooks.","PeriodicalId":52122,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jalpp.21054","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"Arts and Humanities","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
Despite the existence of a large body of research on pragmatic instruction, teachers’ beliefs about teaching and assessing pragmatic competence have received scant attention. The present study sought to investigate Persian-speaking EFL teachers’ beliefs and perceived knowledge about pragmatic instruction and assessment and their self-reported instructional practice. To achieve this aim, a questionnaire was administered to 204 EFL teachers and 30 of these teachers also participated in semi-structured interviews. The findings showed that even though the teachers were aware of the importance of pragmatics, they did not consider themselves highly competent in teaching the subject to learners or in the assessment of learners’ pragmatic abilities. The most frequent method they reported having used was pragmatic corrective feedback. Further, the teachers believed that their colleagues and institute directors also gave little weight to the improvement of learners’ pragmatic abilities, and they further argued that textbooks and exams, while containing some pragmatics-related sections, failed to enhance and measure learners’ pragmatic knowledge. These results have critical implications for teachers’ pragmatic awareness in their professional development and for the inclusion of more explicit pragmatic activities in textbooks.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice was launched in 2004 (under the title Journal of Applied Linguistics) with the aim of advancing research and practice in applied linguistics as a principled and interdisciplinary endeavour. From Volume 7, the journal adopted the new title to reflect the continuation, expansion and re-specification of the field of applied linguistics as originally conceived. Moving away from a primary focus on research into language teaching/learning and second language acquisition, the education profession will remain a key site but one among many, with an active engagement of the journal moving to sites from a variety of other professional domains such as law, healthcare, counselling, journalism, business interpreting and translating, where applied linguists have major contributions to make. Accordingly, under the new title, the journal will reflexively foreground applied linguistics as professional practice. As before, each volume will contain a selection of special features such as editorials, specialist conversations, debates and dialogues on specific methodological themes, review articles, research notes and targeted special issues addressing key themes.