Context, Individual Differences And Pragmatic Competence (second Language Acquisition)

This book examines L2 learners’ development of pragmatic competence - the appropriate language use in a social context. It reveals patterns of development across different aspects of pragmatic abilities measured over one year and presents the participants’ experiences and the individual characteristics that shaped their developmental trajectories. Pragmatic competence plays a key role in the era of globalization where communication across cultural boundaries is an everyday phenomenon. The ability to use language in a socially appropriate manner is critical, as lack of it may lead to cross-cultural miscommunication or cultural stereotyping. This book describes second language learners’ development of pragmatic competence. It proposes an original theoretical framework combining a pragmatics and psycholinguistics approach, and uses a variety of research instruments, both quantitative and qualitative, to describe pragmatic development over one year. Situated in a bilingual university in Japan, the study reveals patterns of change across different pragmatic abilities among Japanese learners of English. The book offers implications for SLA theories, the teaching and assessment of pragmatic competence, and intercultural communication. This book describes second language learners' development of pragmatic competence - the appropriate language use in a social context. It reveals patterns of development across different aspects of pragmatic abilities measured over one year and presents rich descriptions of participants' experiences and the individual characteristics that shaped their developmental trajectories Content: Chapter 1: Context, Individual Differences, and Pragmatic Development: An Introduction Chapter 2: Longitudinal Studies in Interlanguage Pragmatics Chapter 3: Theoretical Framework, Research Questions, and Methodology Chapter 4: Patterns and Rate of Pragmatic Development Chapter 5: Individual Differences in Pragmatic Development Chapter 6: Summary and Conclusion This work describes second language learners' development of pragmatic competence - the appropriate language use in a social context. It reveals patterns of development across different aspects of pragmatic abilities measured over one year