Mixed methods in raising sociopragmatic awareness: a proposal for combining insights from the teacher\u2019s feedback and the interlocutor\u2019s point of view

This paper comprises two parts. First, it reports on native-speaker English lecturers\u2019 envisaged reactions to and evaluation of Italian EFL graduate students\u2019 written discourse (41 written offers and 17 written requests). Participants were asked to comment on the texts\u2019 perceived positive and negative traits (e.g. (im)plausibility, (un)naturalness); to rate them along several dimensions (e.g. structure, amount of content); and to envisage their possible immediate and delayed effects. The teachers\u2019 comments on and anticipated reactions to the student discourse revealed the importance they attributed to the learners\u2019 awareness of interactants\u2019 interpersonal needs and social rights, suggesting that perceptions of pragmatic norms may serve to explore language learners\u2019 interactional competence. Instead, the teachers\u2019 ratings expressed technical evaluations of the strengths and weaknesses (e.g. (in)coherence, register (in)appropriateness) of the texts, highlighting areas for focused instruction. In the second part, the lecturers\u2019 responses indicated that they considered it useful and suitable to alert learners to the interpersonal-social consequences of linguistic-interactional choices. The findings suggest that foreign language learning could be enhanced through the provision of complementary forms of assessment: a projection of the envisaged reactions of a \u201cmodel\u201d interlocutor (socially oriented feedback) with a technical description of standard parameters of \u201ccommunicative adequacy\u201d (formal evaluation)