The Need to Incorporate Pragmatic Instruction in EFL/ESL: Theoretical and Conceptual Review

Proceedings of The 5th World Conference on Education and Teaching

Year: 2023

DOI:

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The Need to Incorporate Pragmatic Instruction in EFL/ESL: Theoretical and Conceptual Review

Mihretu Yihunie Yalew,Dr. Birhanu Simgn, Dr. Dawit Amogne

ABSTRACT: 

This paper aims to recapitulate the theoretical and empirical research findings of articles and books on pragmatic instruction in EFL/ESL. Interlanguage pragmatics studies have emphasized the compulsory nature of incorporating pragmatics instruction in EFL/ESL for various reasons. It mainly familiarizes learners with speech acts, the social and cultural norms of NSs, and/or context in general. This, in turn, could pave the way to learners’ pragmatic awareness and communicative competence development which plays paramount role in the appropriate and accurate use of target language for successful communication. The social and cultural norms, that determine appropriate language use, are not emphasized by most conventional EFL/ESL curricula. That is why most pragmatics research findings suggest the importance of incorporating pragmatic instruction into an EFL/ESL classroom. Therefore, this literature review also advocates that incorporating pragmatics instruction into an EFL/ESL would improve students’ pragmatic awareness and communicative competence development, which is central for successful communication.

keywords: Pragmatics, Sociopragmatic, Pragmalinguistic, EFL/ESL, Pragmatic Awareness, Pragmatic competence and Communicative competence