Serials for Integrating Pragmatics in EFL Educational Contexts: A Research-based Proposal for Developing Refusals

Treball Final de Grau en Estudis Anglesos. Codi: EA0938. Curs acadèmic: 2017/2018Over the span of the last few decades, pragmatics has risen to prominence amongst linguistics literature. Pragmatics, the study of meaning in interaction, happens to be pivotal when developing educational curricula from a communicative perspective and so learners’ full communicative competence. In educational frameworks, coursebooks are incontestably preferred sources of input and the presenters of pragmatics aspects. Nevertheless, as recently discussed in the pertinent literature, coursebooks are non-authentic sources of input and seem to have difficulties in presenting pragmatics aspects (Gilmore, 2004; Mandala, 1999; Salazar-Campillo & Usó-Juan, 2002). Consequently, this paper attempts to present a research-based teaching proposal completing and covering deficiencies and limitations coursebooks entail. With that aim in mind, the paper first proffers a comprehensive overview of the pragmatic paradigm encompassing some of the more acclaimed topics in the realm such as speech act theory and politeness theory. Focusing on scholastic contexts, advances accomplished in teaching and learning pragmatics over the last decades are also outlined. Afterwards, two sections devoted to audio-visual materials as pragmatic mediums of instruction as well as a description of the nature of the speech act of refusing are provided. Without further ado, the pedagogical proposal is presented to integrate pragmatics into English as Foreign Language instructional settings through the usage of a serial to develop refusals by following Eslami (2010) and Martínez-Flor and Usó-Juan (2010)