Opportunities for developing L2 politeness strategies in EFL classrooms in France

International audienceThe present study explores the development of politeness strategies in requests among young English as foreign language (EFL) learners in France. Research in interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) has demonstrated the inadequacies of traditional foreign language classrooms to develop pragmatic competence (Bardovi-Harlig & Taylor 2003). The integration of pragmatics in classroom activities is therefore advocated (Takahashi 2010), but more research is needed, particularly with respect to younger learners (Bardovi-Harlig, 1999) and methodology (Bardovi-Harlig & Hartford, 2005b). This study extends the scope of ILP research by focusing on a larger group of younger learners, using multiple methods including a cartoon oral production task, role plays, classroom films, textbook analysis, and participant interviews. This paper analyses the observational data collected by classroom filming in French secondary schools, involving some 250 EFL learners from three different levels (approximately 11, 14, 17 years). The data set includes empirical examples of politeness strategies in requests, with analysis based on Blum-Kulka et al. (1989). The paper also involves a critical analysis of the opportunities in classrooms to practice L2 pragmatics. Preliminary results suggest that the learners’ range of politeness strategies is quite restricted; they use French in classrooms predominantly; and the classroom activities mainly focus on L2 lexico-grammatical functions rather than aspects of L2 pragmatics