CLER Workshop. Building rapport through language: Addressing pragmatics in the L2 classroom.

Without cultural knowledge, we may not fully understand the meaning of a message in an additional language (L2). Even with perfect grammar, we may unintentionally offend our conversational partner without using the language in a socially acceptable manner. Learners of an L2 need not only the knowledge of grammar and vocabulary but also pragmatic competence, or the ability to understand and use socioculturally preferred language according to the given social context. However, pragmatics has generally received little attention in the L2 curriculum and teacher development. In this workshop, you will have a hands-on opportunity to experience how pragmatic aspects of an L2 can be explicitly introduced to learners, how (meta)pragmatic awareness can be enhanced, and how production of socially preferred language can be practiced according to the social context. Students are encouraged to remain true to their hybrid identities while learning to build rapport through language. Given today’s globalization, we will be mindful of the sociocultural diversity of the learners and aim for culturally sensitive pedagogy.

Noriko Ishihara is Professor of Applied Linguistics and (T)ESOL at Hosei University, Japan. She holds a PhD in curriculum and instruction from the University of Minnesota and currently teaches intercultural communication, TESOL methods, and English as an additional language at Hosei University. She also facilitates professional development courses in Japan, the U.S., and elsewhere with a particular focus on L2 pragmatics and intercultural awareness. Her research interests include instructional pragmatics, identity and culture in language learning, (im)politeness and microaggressions in language teaching, teacher education, and aviation English. She is an author of Teaching and learning pragmatics: Where language and culture meet (2nd edition, Routledge 2022), earlier editions of which have been translated into Arabic, Japanese, and Korean, as well as other publications in (critical) applied linguistics and language pedagogy. More information about her work can be found on her personal profile webpage.

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