Teaching and Learning Pragmatics

An understanding of sociocultural context is crucial in second language learning yet developing this awareness often poses a real challenge to the typical language learner.

This book is a practical language teachers guide that focuses on how to teach socially and culturally appropriate language for effective communication.  Moving beyond a purely theoretical approach to pragmatics, the volume offers practical advice to teachers, with hands-on classroom tasks included in every chapter.

Readers will be able to:

        Identify possible causes of learner errors and choices in cross-cultural communication

        Understand second language acquisition theories that support their classroom practices

        Develop a pragmatics-focused instructional component, classroom-based assessments, and curricula

        Help learners to become more strategic about their learning and performance of speech acts

        Incorporate technology into their approach to teaching pragmatics

This book aims to close the gap between what research in pragmatics has found and how language is generally taught today. It will be of interest to all language teachers, graduate students in language teaching and linguistics, teacher educators, and developers of materials for teaching language. 

Noriko Ishihara is Associate Professor of English as a Foreign Language at Hosei University, Japan and leads language teachers professional development courses in the US and Japan. Her work has appeared in various journals and she is co-author of a Japanese language textbook with Magara Maeda,  Advanced Japanese: Communication in Context (2010).

Andrew D. Cohen is Professor in Second Language Studies at the University of Minnesota. He has had many encounters with pragmatics, as a  Peace Corps Volunteer in rural development with Aymara Indians in Bolivia, a Fulbright Scholar in Brazil, and a professor in Israel for many years. He is co-editor with Ernesto Macaro of Language Learner Strategies (2007).