with Lauren Wyner

This chapter opens the discussion as to how best to teach pragmatics in the TL classroom. Among the issues considered in this chapter are awareness raising about pragmatics among language teachers, the inclusion of pragmatics in teacher development programs, the search for appropriate pragmatic materials – especially in the case of teaching in FL contexts, improving learners' understanding of teacher talk about pragmatics, the potential role of SA in facilitating TL pragmatic development and supporting learners in their choices regarding TL norms. The next chapter will provide numerous specific ideas both for teaching TL pragmatics and for motivating learners to pay more attention to this area. Many of these reflect my expansions upon ideas contained in the responses to the international survey reported on in Chapter 4.

How can the research findings presented in Chapter 2 and elsewhere in this book regarding the accessibility of the TL, pragmatic transfer and motivation to learn the pragmatics of the TL be translated into actual recommendations to the classroom teacher? One way to teach TL pragmatics is through a graded approach that caters to learners according to their proficiency level and the nature of the task, with the knowledge that lower-level learners may simply not have the grammatical ability to produce the range of options considered pragmatically appropriate. It is also possible that learners are resisting abiding by TL norms out of a desire to express their own subjectivity or agency. A problem with a graded approach to teaching this material, however, is that learners may need pragmatic routines such as appropriate greetings and requests right away, even if their grammar is insufficient to truly control what is needed in their performance. Therefore, one solution is for the learners to simply memorize essential routines without understanding the role of grammar in them. As it is, many learners do communicate effectively without ever truly understanding the role of grammar in what they are saying or writing.